When I first started using *nix-based operating systems I played with xeyes, which is a “follow the mouse X demo” and a very simple program. (Really, it’s not fancy, but 25 years ago, it was sort of neat.)
A few days before Maker Faire Milwaukee Vishal and I were brainstorming ideas for something done in Processing to show with a projector, and I suggested xeyes because it was silly and simple and we hadn’t slept much.
I figured there was a Processing version out there, and our old pal Alex has one at Tinkerlog. I grabbed it and started hacking. Someone mentioned putting the old Milwaukee Makerspace logo in place and putting the eyes on it. (It may have been me, I honestly don’t remember, again… not much sleep.)
Then Lexie showed up and I ran the demo and she suggested there should be a fly for the cursor. In my tired state I thought this was a great idea, and then checked on how cursors work in Processing (yes, you can use an image) and then I found a fly on OpenClipArt.org and added it.
Now we had something that let you move the mouse around and the fly would move and the eyes would follow it. I sent Vishal the code and he had a trackpad he thought about using with it… But then he said it would be cool if it just moved around on its own. I didn’t have time to write the code, so Vishal asked if I had a Teensy on me, and since I always do, I gave it to him. He then wrote code to make the Teensy act as a mouse and randomly move around the screen.
We hacked this all together pretty quickly, and it was fun, and not super-impressive, but we liked it. Oh, I also made a Processing.js version you can try. (It’s an early test version before I added the fly.)
A few days after Maker Faire I got an email from Bryan Cera about running Processing on the Raspberry Pi, which we had been discussing. He got it working, so I finally circled back around to give it a try. Well, it worked, and I got this mms-xeyes thing running as a full-on application.
This is pretty awesome. I mean, the cursor is a little weird, and disappears when you do not move the mouse (but reappears when you do move it) but overall it does work, and I’m pretty pleased with it. I’ve got a few ideas that involve Raspberry Pi computers running Processing sketches, so yeah… overall, this is good.