About The Roomware Project
What is it?
The Roomware Project is an open-source framework for interactive spaces. It allows developers of multiple origins to enhance any venue or event using technologies such as BlueTooth and RFID.
Why?
Because developers, artists, event organizers and other interested parties need a plug-and-play server installation to make a room more interactive and fun, instead of trying to invent the wheel all over again.
What is Roomware?
Roomware comes from the terms "room" and "software" and is a software application running in a defined physical space. People in a Roomware enabled space can use the services running on a local server through their mobile phone, laptop or other means to communicate through technology.
How does it work?
Simple: you start with the technology you want to use. For instance: Bluetooth, RFID, Wifi, or just a button somebody can push. All of these so-called scanners can be hooked up to a Roomware Server. This server polls the scanners regularly, gets the data from them (like position or media), and outputs this in a handy XML file on a given IP address. Your application can then make a HTTP GET call to that address and translate the data into something fun.
Got any real-world examples?
Linking people's photographs to the screens of a club, sharing musical tastes with the DJ (as made by Twones), finding other interesting people on your mobile phone, a photo booth activated by the entry tickets of two people (as made by Mediamatic), etc.
Here's one application we've made ourselves. You have a Bluetooth scanner in a room of about 50 people. We hook this up to a Roomware Server. The server will check every minute if there are Bluetooth devices in the room, and outputs this on http://127.0.0.10/events.xml. We also have a PHP script running that checks this XML file every minute over a HTTP connection. It puts the name of every Bluetooth device in a MySQL database. We have a Flash scripts that reads from this database, checks if any of those names corresponds to a Hyves username, and if so: shows their pictures in a nice graphic. This application is then hooked up to a screen, and voila: Roomware running!
How did it came to be?
The idea behind the roomware project arrived one blustery night in September 2006, during a conversation between James Burke, Tijs Teulings and Robert Gaal. It was kind of appropriate that we were sitting upstairs at the restaurant where previously a roomware application, made by Mediamatic, had captured peoples imagination, or ours at least. James recalled his time working at the original Supperclub and of all the people entering each night with mobile phones. He recounted how he had wanted to create an application that the guests of the restaurant could use to interact with the surroundings and each other. We talked about how we wish we could, (round the table in the restaurant), be able to bring our digital identities in some form into this place whether it be music, memories or recent activities onto some output device accessible to all (the screens above us). Roomware seemed to be a fitting term to describe the result of our conversation.
What's the goal?
To develop Roomware as a framework and server with test applications that is stable and easy to install. To provide a variety of applications people can use as a guideline to developing their own. A research environment where we can explore new potential use cases for Roomware applications that just work in relation to human behavior.
What's the bigger picture?
So what exactly is it? Are the flowers going to be looking back at us through their own LED lenses? Well not exactly. Initiatives like Roomware intend to address the growing mobility of devices and create an easy way for people to design for and understand what applications will be able to add to a physical space. We will only find out by forging ahead and through trial and error bringing to life a monster or perhaps more positively, blasting ourselves with yet another means of communication that can offer us a widening of options in how to reach each other and ourselves.
Our approach is to focus the efforts of this project locally by developing
ideas within a certain sector. Right now we have chosen for nightlife
and all that emcompases. Of course we expect others to take the tools
off into many other areas.