Talking to a device for Flash input.

[lariat1997]

Hey All,

I've got a question for the technophile's out there. I want to create a Flash application that will receive data from an external device. Let's say I have a watch and I want the time from the watch to display in a flash app.

What is needed to get started on something like this? I have no idea on where to start with device communication. I don't want a joystick or keyboard, I want other types of devices that I need to understand how they talk and have it translate into input for a flash app. Do I need additional hardware and/or software? Any help would be absolutely greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[saumya]

well, first of all you must understand flash is a frontend technology.It even can not talk to different files residing near it.For that you need to use a middle ware software.
Now if you want to talk with a tv suppose, then you need all those softwares which can communicate with the devices you want to talk to.Then once their communication is done, then you begin to transform the datas in flash readable format and pass them to flash.
Directly there is no way flash can do such things.

[lariat1997]

Saumya,

Thank you for your response.

If a device has an SDK, would that be the "middleware"? And if a device does not have an SDK, would device drivers have to be written for it?

[saumya]

If a device has an SDK, would that be the "middleware"?
well, yes if they can read and write flash output formats.And if a device does not have an SDK, would device drivers have to be written for it? yes.