Saturday, September 10, 2011

Openframeworks - ofxPUI

ofxPUI is an Open Frameworks addon for building user interfaces with the PUI c++ classes. It has been tested on Windows but should run on Linux and Mac OS as well.

Base Software

OpenFrameworks is a cross platform open source toolkit for creative coding in C++.

http://www.openframeworks.cc/

PUI: A Picoscopic User Interface - The Picoscopic User Interface (PUI - pronounced 'poohey') is a simple set of C++ classes that allow programs written in GLUT and OpenGL to create buttons, sliders, menus etc.

http://plib.sourceforge.net/pui/index.html

Installation

To use ofxPUI, first you need to download and install Open Frameworks.

To get a copy of the repository you can download the source from http://github.com/digitalhack/ofxPUI/zipball/master or, alternatively, you can use git clone:

git clone git://github.com/digitalhack/ofxPUI.git

The addon should sit in openFrameworks/addons/ofxPUI/.

Next you will need to download the source for PUI which is included with PLIB and can be downloaded from SourceForge at http://sourceforge.net/projects/plib/.

You will need to copy the following directories from the PLIB distribution: fnt, puAux, pui, sq and util to openFrameworks/addons/ofxPUI/src/.

Files from openFrameworks/addons/ofxPUI/src/ should be recursively added to you openFrameworks project with the src, fnt, puAux, pui, sq and util directories added to the Compiler include path.

ofxPUIexample.cbp is a Windows Codeblock's project that should compile the example project.

Openframeworks – A Much Deserved Introduction.

Looking back over my posts I cannot believe that I don’t have a post dedicated to this outstanding c++ library.

Quoting from the Openframeworks website:

Openframeworks is a c++ library designed to assist the creative process by providing a simple and intuitive framework for experimentation.

I first came across this library while working on my Bicycle Trainer project in March last year (2010) and since then have used it as part of a number of projects.

Openframeworks makes developing interactive graphic projects extremely easy.  It has routines that make accessing an Arduino from you host of choice (Linux, Windows or MAC) down right simple.  It also has interfaces to a number of additional libraries.

It has an extremely active user community that is enthusiastically supported by a core group of developers, Zach Lieberman, Theo Watson and Arturo Castro and a number of others.

If you are looking for an environment to do anything with interactive graphics or interfacing with an Arduino or a number of other things you should really try Openframeworks.

Time Flies – January to September 2011

It has been a long while since my last post.  During this time I have worked on a number of things.

February – Programmatic access to Bluetooth, accessing DLLs generated with MS Visual C++ in MINGW, and wiimote coding.

March and April – An extension for Openframeworks to access the Picoscopic User Interface named ofxPUI.

April – A very simple interactive graphics framework in QT.

May – QT and wiimote using libwiiYourself.

July – Reconstituted work with the Arduino and RFM12 along with some work with Arduino and SD Cards.

August – gstreamer on Windows 7 and UPnP Servers for Windows 7.

My plan is to post some articles based on this work over the next couple of weeks.  We will see how it goes.