📱 iOS space writer

Around Christmas this year, serial entrepreneur Mark Paul (later the founder of Fallen Planet Studios) had an idea to make an iPhone app that’s a “space writer” - those LED signs that you wave back and forth to write a message in the air.

Should be possible with the iPhone’s accelerometer, right? So yeah, I’m game; he can do the graphics, marketing and business side of things, I’ll do the low level code, and we’ll get rich making toys for phones.

A few days of messing about in Xcode, it turns out I can smooth out the noise from the accelerometer and get the timing right, and I can get the screen to display a strip of light that represents the letters:

But… the screen isn’t fast enough, so all it can display is “HI”, and only in a dark room.

Oh well, fun project and learned a bit about the iPhone and mobile dev.