January 2014

iPhone and BlueTooth Enabled Device Communication Using NodeJS and iOS7’s ANCS

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With iOS7 Apple have allowed access to the Apple Notification Center Service (ANCS) and it has opened up a lot of fun opportunities to develop for connected devices. Essentially the ANCS allows Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) devices to listen and respond to your iPhone’s local notifications. With the current proliferation of BTLE enabled devices (Pebble, … Continue reading iPhone and BlueTooth Enabled Device Communication Using NodeJS and iOS7’s ANCS

SpriteKit Bit Blitting By Drawing To A Texture For Performance Optimization

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UPDATE: This post is a companion/comparison to my other post on drawing 1000s of sprites using SpriteKit’s native batch drawing. I was interested to see if rasterization of the scene before the GL draw pass would improve performance. In this particular instance it doesn’t seem too. SpriteKit’s native batch drawing of the full node hierarchy … Continue reading SpriteKit Bit Blitting By Drawing To A Texture For Performance Optimization

Delaunay Triangulation On The iPhone with SpriteKit

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The use of Delaunay triangulation as a visual effect has become very popular recently in motion graphics, and interactive works. It’s a pretty cool effect, but there aren’t a lot of examples of how to get it working. In this post I’m using this collection of Objective C Delaunay triangulation math classes I found on … Continue reading Delaunay Triangulation On The iPhone with SpriteKit

10,000+ Sprites Animating And No Loss In Framerate Using iOS7’s SpriteKit

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UPDATE: Upon further research into SpriteKit’s inner workings I’ve updated this post. Because SpriteKit automatically uses batch drawing where possible it is not always nessesery to draw the display hierarchy to a texture. I’ve found that SpriteKit can animate 10000 particles on screen at 60fps without blitting. If you are interested in blitting the display … Continue reading 10,000+ Sprites Animating And No Loss In Framerate Using iOS7’s SpriteKit

Using Websockets To Stream Real Time Accelerometer Data Between iPhone and a Web Page via NodeJS

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Several months ago I worked on an in store retail project for a large international brand. The brief was to allow users of their iPhone app to control screens and interact with kiosks as they entered their stores. It also had to live alongside their existing IT and web infrastructure, and the app needed to … Continue reading Using Websockets To Stream Real Time Accelerometer Data Between iPhone and a Web Page via NodeJS

iOS7’s SpriteKit and Real 2.5D

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An app I’ve been working on recently required a user interaction/experience similar to a Rolodex, as you swipe a view down it pulls out slightly and flips over and around exposing the next view below, while anchored to a central cylinder at the base. Seeing as most developers are moving away from Cocos2D (which usually would … Continue reading iOS7’s SpriteKit and Real 2.5D