motion data should be structured

[yliu0]

The motion data is returned as a string. For example:

s = device.readMessage(500)

The content of s is:

"UserFrame(button1=0 button2=0 button3=0 button4=0 button5=0 deltaX=0 deltaY=0 deltaWheel=0 sequenceNumber=2192591 linearPosX=0 linearPosY=0 linearPosZ=0 angularPosA=-11493 angularPosB=12130 angularPosC=-20052 angularPosD=-19807)"

This string can be parsed easily. However it would be more convenient to receive:

s = {
    "type": "userframe",
    "buttons": [False, False, False, False, False],
    "delta": [0, 0, 0],
    "sequenceNumber": 2192591,
    "linearPosition": [0, 0, 0],
    "angularPosition": [-11493, 12130, -20052, -19807]
}

An alternative is to return the structure above in JSON format.

[JT Burgess (jt-burgess)]

Actually, readMessage does not return a string, it returns an object. The type of the object returned depends on the message received, but in this case it's actually of type freespace.UserFrame

If you run

> s = device.readMessage(500)
> dir(s)

you can see that s actually has a number of read-only attributes to it, which are the fields listed in the string representation above.

You can access each field by doing

s.button1 (which is a boolean)
s.linearPosX (which is an integer)
etc.

[JT Burgess (jt-burgess)]

Misunderstanding of pyfreespace. Probably an indication that I need to create documentation for how to use it properly.

[yliu0 (yliu0)]

You are right. The s is of type UserFrame.

>>> type(s)
<type 'freespace.UserFrame'>