Flash Hardware API for Peripheral Control
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Solution Overview
Problem
The Flash platform has limitations in supporting direct hardware interactions beyond traditional keyboards and pointing devices, restricting user interaction in shared online environments like virtual communities and online games, as it lacks support for innovative hardware features such as vibration and physical object movement.
Innovation Solution
An integrated hardware platform with distributed objects is introduced, allowing Flash applications to interact with external hardware devices via a hardware API that uses Remote Method Invocation (RMI) to control environmental monitoring, mechanical control, and presentation systems, enabling more advanced user interactions through hardware devices like sensors, servos, and displays.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If Flash applications use traditional hardware support only, then hardware compatibility is maintained, but hardware interaction capabilities are limited
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces a hardware abstraction layer with standardized APIs that act as intermediaries between Flash applications and diverse hardware devices. This layer translates high-level Flash commands into device-specific operations, enabling broad hardware compatibility without requiring Flash to directly support each device type. The intermediary handles protocol translation and device management, resolving the contradiction between versatility and complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent creates a universal hardware interface framework that enables a single Flash application to interact with multiple types of hardware devices through standardized methods. The hardware API layer provides multi-functional support for sensors, actuators, displays, and other devices using common interaction patterns, allowing one system to serve multiple hardware purposes without increasing apparent complexity.
2Adaptability or versatility
If dedicated gaming hardware is used, then hardware interaction capabilities are enhanced, but ease of access is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements automatic hardware detection and configuration where the Flash runtime environment automatically identifies available hardware devices, loads appropriate drivers, and configures communication protocols without user intervention. The system self-services the hardware integration process, allowing users to access enhanced hardware capabilities through standard Flash applications without needing to install dedicated gaming hardware or complex software.
Solution Approach 2:
The hardware abstraction layer serves as a mediator that translates diverse hardware capabilities into unified Flash-accessible interfaces. This intermediary layer handles the complexity of hardware integration internally, exposing only simple, consistent APIs to Flash applications, thereby maintaining ease of access while enabling sophisticated hardware interactions.
3Measurement precision
If hardware control is implemented without abstraction layer, then hardware control precision is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the hardware control system into distinct layers: a standardized API layer for Flash applications, a translation layer for protocol conversion, and a device driver layer for direct hardware control. This segmentation allows the Flash application to work with simple, precise APIs while the underlying complexity of direct hardware control is handled by separate, specialized components. Each layer maintains precise control for its specific function without exposing that complexity to other layers.
Data Source
AI summary
There are provided systems and methods for providing an integrated hardware platform to allow hardware control via an Application Program Interface (API) used by a Flash application executing in a Flash runtime environment on a host system. There is a provided a computer platform comprising a processor, a peripheral hardware, a connector device, and a memory. The memory contains an API implementation for remote methods provided by the API for the Flash application, a proxy server for enabling communications between the Flash application and the platform processor, and a security service for providing a security policy to grant network connection permissions for communications with the platform processor. API remote method invocations allow the Flash application to control the peripheral hardware, and a networked server may manage remote invocations to control platform hardware of multiple networked clients.