VMD-L Mailing List

From: Axel Kohlmeyer (akohlmey_at_gmail.com)
Date: Fri Apr 23 2010 - 15:59:34 CDT

hi everybody,

in the past people have asked here repeatedly for drivers would
allow to use the Novint Falcon, an affordable haptic device
(= a 3d-mouse with force feedback), to be used with VMD for
interactive molecular dynamics simulations (through VRPN).
if you don't know what i am talking about, have a look at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novint

i am happy to announce that this kind of driver does now exist
and that it has reached a good enough state to tested by a wider
audience. details and future updates can be found on this webpage:
http://sites.google.com/site/akohlmey/software/vrpn-icms

the driver is maintained as a branch of the VRPN version 07.26
software distribution, but will hopefully be merged with the
official code, since the VRPN maintainers have access to the
svn repository where i maintain the code.

if you are interested to try it out, please drop me an e-mail
and i'll provide you with instructions on how to access the
sources. for people running fedora 12 on x86_64 type processors,
i can also provide a pre-compiled vrpn_server binary and some
test programs. but i am particularly interested in people that
are able to help in debugging and (perhaps) improving the code
(there is still a long TODO list).

at this time the driver has only been tested on linux, so i
would be particularly happy if people running macosx or windows
would respond. pre-requiste is, that you have some experience
in compiling your own software and can send me patches, since
i have no (proper) access to either platform and would prefer
to focus on completing the missing features and optimizing
the code.

if you don't own a falcon, but are interested in buying one,
please note that Novint will give anybody a 20% discount on
one of their "falcon bundles" when they use a suitable referral
code. if you use 'vrpn-icms' as referral code, you will get
this discount and also support the ICMS outreach project that
i wrote this driver for. The Novint folks and particularly
its CEO Tom Anderson have been extremely supportive of this
effort; morally and by donated two devices to the ICMS. A big
thanks also goes to greg and gary scantlen who made the contact
and were the most enthusiastic early adopters ever. ;-)

at the URL from above you can find a few example inputs and
some rudimentary documentation for how to set up a falcon
with VMD and run it in combination with either NAMD or LAMMPS
as MD engine.

comments, questions, suggestions are welcome.

cheers,
    axel. 

-- 
Dr. Axel Kohlmeyer  akohlmey_at_gmail.com
http://sites.google.com/site/akohlmey/
Institute for Computational Molecular Science
Temple University, Philadelphia PA, USA.