Having fun with Proximity for mac
One of the things I love about my mac is how easy it is to hack things to work the way I want. I’m always amazed by how many easy hooks there are into system settings and native applications.
I recently stumbled upon a neat application called Proximity. Proximity detects when a selected device (cell phone, wireless mouse, etc) comes in or out of bluetooth range and executes selected scripts. Since my iPhone is almost always with me, I decided to write a couple scripts to password protect my laptop when my iPhone isn’t around, and unlock it when I return. As an added bonus, my code also mutes my audio and sets an away message on iChat when I leave. It then sets my status to “available” when I return.
The cool thing about this is that it keeps my laptop secure without having to mess with a screen-saver password all the time. I can think of a lot of other uses for this technology. For example, I wonder how many people would like to have a notification pop up when their boss is about to walk into the room, or just have a bluetooth device automatically sync when it’s in range of their computer. I should add that Bluetooth detection has its limitations, particularly because the underlying hardware makes it tough to detect realtime changes causing a significant lag. You also don’t have anyway to detect the strength of the signal to get any sense of how far away the device is from your computer — it’s entirely binary — the device is on and in-range or it’s not. That said, it’s still a powerful demonstration of what can be accomplished with technology when you start getting creative.
Here are my scripts. First, the one that gets executed whenever my iPhone goes out of range:
set volume with output muted
-- set status to away
tell application "iChat"
set status to away
end tell
-- turn on the screen saver password
tell application "System Events"
tell security preferences
set properties to {require password to wake:true}
end tell
end tell
-- activate the screen saver
tell application "ScreenSaverEngine" to activate
-- if the above line doesn't work, try uncommenting this instead:
-- do script "/System/library/Frameworks/Screensaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine"
And, in range:
tell application "iChat"
set status to available
end tell
-- disable screen saver password
tell application "System Events"
tell security preferences
set properties to {require password to wake:false}
end tell
end tell
-- turn off the screen saver
tell application "ScreenSaverEngine" to quit
Let me know if you come up with any other applications for this or have suggestions for other functionality I should add to my fancy phone-triggered security system.
