Remote Control Your Mac With Node.js and Arduino

An excerpt from http://www.sitepoint.com/remote-control-mac-node-js-arduino/, by @patrickcatanzariti

The combination of Arduinos and Node.js allows us to do a lot of unexpected things. In this article, I’ll show how you can create a remote control for your Mac via Arduinos, Node.js and AppleScript.

If you are new to combining Arduinos and Node.js, I’ve previously covered turning on LED lights and displaying web API data on LCD text displays.

Our Arduino remote control will increase and decrease our Mac’s volume, tell our Mac to play an iTunes playlist of our choosing and set it to stop whatever is playing on iTunes (which is likely to be that playlist!).

Keep in mind, this demo provides access to commands directly on your Mac – there is the potential for this to be misused or harmful if you provide too much access! Keep it for personal use rather than big corporate projects.

Setting Up Our Arduino

Ensure that you’ve got the StandardFirmata sketch installed on your Arduino board itself, as we’ll be using the johnny-five library to send instructions to our Arduino. That will only work if you’ve got StandardFirmata on there first:

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