ReactionGrid announces contest to win a hosted virtual world for a year
One of the fastest growing Opensim grids, ReactionGrid, announced a competition to use a voltage meter reading from the real world in the context of a virtual world. The best visualization or usage earns a free Opensim world for a year.
There are already many examples how the real world sensoring can be connected to the virtual world and vice versa. However, this is the first time the connection is popularized in a contest like this. I believe we are going to see many exciting examples coming as a result from this competition.
Here’s the announcement from ReactionGrid:
Electro-Primchanical 2009
Now that’s a funky name for a contest! So what does it mean? Well to get the full details you must login to ReactionGrid and see Doc Manhattan on the Project Manhattan simulator. In a nutshell we have connected ReactionGrid, a “Virtual World” to the “Physical World” at ReactionLab in our Ft. Pierce Florida USA offices.
We have done this with a power supply that has a variable DC voltage connected to a device called a DATAQ DI-194RS that monitors that voltage and relays it via a serial port cable to a PC.
On that PC a small Visual Basic application has been created and it polls the serial port and posts the latest readings to our datacenter server that also powers ReactionGrid and stores it in a SQL Server 2008 database.
An ASP.NET webpage coded to query that SQL Server 2008 database makes the data available for a LSL script inworld to then query for the latest reading.
That LSL script then prints out the latest voltage, timestamp and device name to chat channel 42. The script you are asked to modify is the one that listens for this voltage and does something interesting with the outpout like drives a virtual DC power meter, or cause doors to open, an elevator to move,etc.
Any expression of how to display a “safe” voltage we deem as under +7 volts and “overvoltage” over +7 volts within a 0-10 volts DC range. These are arbitrary values just to give the contest some direction.
Here is a basic example of the listener script:
integer listenChannel = 42;
float msg = 0;
integer alert = 7;
default
{
state_entry()
{
llListen(listenChannel, “”, NULL_KEY, “”);
}
listen(integer channel, string name, key id, string msg)
{
integer volt =(integer)msg;
if (volt > alert )
{
llSetColor(<1.0, 0.0, 0.0>, ALL_SIDES );
llSay(0,”Alert-Overload Detected- +” + msg + ” Volts”);
//llPlaySound(“electric44″, 5);
}
if (volt < alert )
{
llSay(0,”Safe- +” + msg + ” Volts”);
llSetColor(<0.0, 1.0, 0.0>, ALL_SIDES );
}
}
}
When you see Doc inworld you can also get the sound file to enable it in the script if added to the Content tab of the prim you are adding this script to.
You can modify that script above or create your own. ReactionGrid provides a DC voltage simulator that creates random 1-10 Volt simulated messages to channel 42 so you can test your concept.
The contest will run for 1 week and be judged next Saturday at 12PM SLT – 3PM EDT – 7PM UTC by the ReactionGrid team. Contact us for details. Winner receives 1 $25 monthly full simulator for one year until the next contest in 2010.
You must be willing to “open source” the script to all OpenSim users but we will keep your credits intact as a requirement for use.
Thanks Gridizens see you on Project Manhattan Simulator for details and inworld help.
