Andy Powell, a fellow Universal Mind team member, has been experimenting with Merapi, the bridge which allows you to connect AIR with Java (we have covered Merapi before here on InsideRIA). In his experiments, Andy has managed to connect AIR with a GPS unit as well as an RFID receiver. These experiments begin to give us a view of what is possible with AIR and Merapi.

Background: What is Merapi?

Experiment 1 - GPS Visualization

The first experiment I followed was when Andy got his personal GPS unit working with Merapi and AIR. Andy gave me a bit of an idea of why he got into this experiment:

Andy: I went to Adam and Jordan's presentation at 360Flex and saw the cool stuff she was doing with hardware... I had received my Garmin Foretrex GPS for use with MapMyPix (a geospatial-photo relational app that Universal Mind had built for MapQuest to show off the AS3 API). To connect it to my Mac, I had to buy a serial adapter (because it only talked over a serial port). The idea of hooking into the serial port and reading data from the GPS had crossed my mind, but I just let it go....until I saw that presentation. Something re-ignited in me, and I immediately set out to get my Foretrex talking to Java with rxtx. From there, it was a very simple leap to get it to talk to Merapi (with the help of some very easy to use GPS APIs for Java). After the data was into Merapi, I could take it and plot it on the MapQuest maps, no problem. One thing that did show up immediately was "drift" from the device. Talking to some of our GIS experts here at Universal Mind, I found out that there's really no way to compensate for that, except to get a fix with more satellites. I wouldn't have known that without Merapi and AIR.

The results, were pretty cool. In the article (link below) Andy gives a demonstration that shows the actual application in action. In addition, Andy also included all of the Java code that he used to get it working.

AIR and Merapi GPS Visualization with MapQuest

InfoAccelerator.net: Live GPS Visualizations With AIR & Merapi

Experiment 2 - RFID

GPS alone wasn't enough for Andy - he kept moving. Here is a bit of background on the RFID experiment:

Andy: Once the GPS sample was working, the floodgates opened. I was looking for any hardware I could talk to with a serial port. Luckily, I came across Phidgets.com. They have a plethora of hardware devices with their own API. I went for the sexiest one first: RFID. I was able to get an AIR app to recognize when a RFID tag came within range based on the Phidget Java library and Merapi.

In this experiment, Andy successfully linked the RFID tag with the RFID receiver and communicated with his AIR application through Merapi. The video below gives the details on how it works, and it also demonstrates the application in action.

Note

Close Move

InfoAccelerator.net: RFID Enabled AIR Applications With Merapi

Conclusion

Andy has a few more experiments with Merapi and AIR on his site - including sending Growl notifications from an AIR application. If you are interested in connecting AIR with Java, you will certainly want to check out his blog on a regular basis. Here are some of his thoughts on the capability and future of Merapi:

Andy: Merapi opens up not only hardware, but other enterprise services to AIR that were previously only available with a Java server and BlazeDS. Imagine being able to send email from AIR without a third-party SMTP server, or produce and consume JMS messages without BlazeDS. In the near future, you'll be able to access MS Office functionality via AIR and Merapi. There is cool stuff on the horizon because Merapi + AIR take the chains off of AIR and lets it be a true desktop platform.

I am very interested to see how Merapi will be used in the future (especially with upcoming versions of AIR). If you are working with Merapi - leave a comment and let everyone know what you are working on.

Read more from David Tucker.