Lilt utilizes the ambient light and sudden motion sensors found on recent Apple Macintosh portable computers to trigger actions such as launching applications, files, or scripts. By launching a script Lilt can do some amazing things. Wave your hand over the light sensors (located under the speaker grills) and play your next iTunes track. Tilt the computer back and hear the time spoken to you. The possibilities are endless.
Lilt is fully-functional trialware. However, until you register, you are limited to using Lilt for only 15 minutes at a time and when it is launched you will receive a notice asking you to register and pay the registration fee. If you find Lilt useful—and we hope you will—please consider paying the nominal registration fee. Once registered, the initial dialog will no longer be displayed and the 15-minute trial period limitation is removed.
Please contact us with any comments, requests, or bugs that you encounter. Your help to make this an even better product is greatly appreciated. This is just one of our many applications available for download—and most of them are free! To see our other work, click here.
Disclaimer
Of course, it should go without saying, please be kind to your computer. Use Lilt at your own risk. Excessive movement or violent actions used to trigger the various sensors tracked by Lilt can cause damage to your machine. Any such damage incurred is your responsibility and, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, you agree that the risk is entirely your own. For complete terms, please see below.
Installation
Simply copy Lilt to your Applications folder (or anywhere, really), and launch.
Usage
Lilt uses the sensors of your portable Macintosh computer to initiate an action when the sensors detect a change. The sensors monitor the ambient light and sudden motion of your machine. When these sensors detect a change that is equal to or surpasses the threshold you’ve set in the main Lilt screen, the associated action will be triggered. The actions can do virtually anything. To assign an action, just click the “+” button to the right of the corresponding sensor. You can then choose any application, file, or script to launch or open.
By default, new actions are assigned to the “Unspecified Global” Active Application Set. You can add new Active Application Sets, each with its own set of actions. If you create an Active Application Set for a particular application, if that application is active when a sensor passes a threshold to trigger an action, the action assigned to that sensor in the associated Set will be used. If no Set is defined for the active app, then the action in the “Unspecified Global” Set (if one is assigned) will be triggered.
When triggering an AppleScript action, Lilt can pass the name of the sensor, the current reading and the previous reading. In this way you can build complex actions in your AppleScripts to do different things based on the degree of the sensor reading. In other words, with an if-then-else block you could, for instance, go to the next iTunes track if the machine tilts right by 10 or more but if it tilts 50 or more, you could fast forward 5 seconds through the current track.
If you’ve used an AppleScript file as your action, instead of opening the file, the script will be run. This makes Lilt very versatile indeed. Included on the Lilt disk image are example scripts that demonstrate many advanced features such as controlling iTunes, locking the screen, or displaying your current IP address. You can even use AppleScript to launch shell scripts.
When Lilt is launched, the actions are active, even if the application is not frontmost. To make the actions inactive, simply quit the application. Lilt utilizes the UniMotion Library to monitor the sudden motion sensors so it should work with all Macintosh portables built with SMS (iBooks, PowerBooks, & MacBooks).
Notes
- On test machines, the right ambient light sensor appears somewhat less sensitive than the left. Several users have observed the same behavior. There could be many reasons for this: it could be by design by the manufacturer, inconsistency in hardware sensors, incorrect placement of the sensors on the machine, dust or other debris in the speaker grills, etc. Further, in many cases, it seems the right sensor is actually dependent on the left sensor.
If your machine exhibits this same behavior, it is most likely that your particular machine is not defective but simply the nature of the design by the manufacturer. To address the issue, a future version of Lilt may be designed so that independent readings are ignored and the two sensors will be taken as a single value to trigger an action. In the meantime, however, be aware that it may require that the left ambient light sensor must be obscured for the right to register a valid value. - Currently, Lilt only tracks the SMS for the x- and y-axes. A future version may enable a trigger based on tracking the SMS along the x-axis (up and down).
Version History
- v1.0 - Released November 30, 2006
- Initial commercial release. Lilt is fully functional except that it will quit after 15 minutes of use until registered.
- v1.0pr9 - Released November 16, 2006
- Added light & SMS calibrations.
- Added version check.
- Added many new AppleScript actions.
- Improved handling of actions when a left/right or forward/backward tilt action just occurred (there is now a 1 second grace period before triggering actions on the same axis).
- Restored previous behavior where the “Swap Light Sensors” button is only displayed on PPC-based machines.
- v1.0pr8 - Released November 13, 2006
- Major code re-write.
- Added Active Application Sets. Create a new set per application to only trigger actions when the target application is frontmost. Adding actions to the default set will trigger them when any application that does not have its own set is frontmost.
- Added customizable read interval. Smaller intervals will make Lilt more responsive to changes but will utilize more CPU cycles.
- Several minor interface enhancements.
- v1.0pr7 - Released October 31, 2006
- Extended the trial period to November 30, 2006 while new features and improvements are added to the software.
- v1.0pr6 - Released October 19, 2006
- Added option to flip the left and right light sensors for machines where these readings were incorrectly swapped.
- Added arguments when running scripts to pass the sensor and its current and previous readings when the action was triggered.
- Added more script action examples.
- Improved compatibility with some G4-based machines.
- Fixed a bug that prevented the app from launching on international systems.
- Fixed a bug that caused the main window to sometimes jump erratically when adjusting the tilt threshold combo boxes.
- v1.0pr1 - Released October 16, 2006
- Initial public pre-release. This version will cease to function after October 31, 2006.
Copyright © 2007 JNSoftware LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Mac, Macintosh, Mac OS X, and AppleScript are trademarks of Apple, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.
All other products mentioned are copyright of their respective owners.
No endorsement of or affiliation with any third-party product or service is implied.
Terms and Conditions
Download Details
Version: 1.0
Post Date: November 30, 2006
License: Trialware
File Size: 1.0MB
Benefits & Features
- Utilizes Ambient Light & Motion Sensors to Trigger Actions
- Features Application Sets to Trigger Different Actions Based on the Frontmost Application
- Included Actions:
- Control iTunes, DVD Player, Keynote, Microsoft PowerPoint, & Others
- Growl Notifications
- Enable Exposé, Dashboard, & Front Row
- Screen Lock
- Say Text
- Volume Control
- Switch Applications
- And More
- Universal Binary — Runs Natively on PPC & Intel Macs
System Requirements
- Mac OS X 10.4+
- An Apple Macintosh portable computer that has ambient light and/or sudden motion sensors.



