AIR and Hardware

[Josh Knopp]

As my development team is finally beginning to adopt Flex, we are also
looking at some potential desktop applications that we might like to
build in AIR. One question I have, though, is related to third-party
hardware. We would like to connect to fingerprint readers, electronic
signature panels, and potentially some POS hardware. Does AIR offer
support for ActiveX/COM drivers, etc?

[Brian LeGros]

@Josh - From what I can recall from Ben Forta's presentation in Jan,
it sounded like AIR would not have native support for much of anything
in terms of OS integration for devices. On a more positive note, the
Merapi (http://www.merapiproject.net/index.php) project seems to be in
full swing, although its in alpha, as a bridge between Java and AIR.
It started out as Artemis but then it looks like Effective UI gave it
a new name. The syntax looks simple enough, although it doesn't look
like its production ready.

-Brian

[maxim.porges]

As I recall, Adobe has stated that they are working on native
interface support for AIR, but with their usual (rightfully placed)
paranoia about security issues with the Flash platform, I expect it
will be a while.

Merapi let me in to their alpha release program without any more
effort than filling in the sign-up form, so this is definitely your
best bet as Brian said.

- max

[Adam Flater]

Hey guys... just to clear things up.... I co-founded the Artemis
project while I worked for EffectiveUI. Interest in that kind of
dropped off. I've since moved on to work for Universal Mind and
founded Merapi as a new project. We started fresh with the source and
adopted a slightly different focus.

Thanks for your interest and be sure to check out Nathan the Merapi
Robot: http://adamflater.blogspot.com/2008/08/recap-from-360-flex-san-jose_19.html

-adam

[maxim.porges]

Hey Adam,

Thanks for the correction to the thread.

> Thanks for your interest and be sure to check out Nathan the Merapi

> Robot:http://adamflater.blogspot.com/2008/08/recap-from-360-flex-san-jose_1...

I saw the Merapi robot on one of my feeds last week - pretty cool
stuff! I must say I'm surprised that the "native connectivity" space
was left open in AIR by Adobe, but I am glad to see the community
filling it (at least for the interim - who knows what the future will
bring).

- max

> Robot:http://adamflater.blogspot.com/2008/08/recap-from-360-flex-san-jose_1...
>
> -adam

[Brian LeGros]

@Adam - Sorry about that, I guess I completely mispoke. Thanks for
clearing up the confusion I always seem to cause :)

-Brian

On Aug 23, 5:43 pm, Adam Flater <adamfla...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Robot:http://adamflater.blogspot.com/2008/08/recap-from-360-flex-san-jose_1...
>
> -adam

[Adam Flater]

Cool guys.. thanks for the interest.. no problem on the EUI mix up
Brian.

thanks
-adam