Exposing the weird and wonderful uses of Pusher

It’s great when our users get in touch to tell us how they’ve been using Pusher, especially when it’s original and creative. So, we were very excited when Dave Agius, Digital Media lecturer at Billy Blue College of Design, got in touch and told us that Pusher was used as an interactive art exhibit in Australia called Vol No1.

Dave told us that remote control web apps were developed targeting the iPhone and iPad. These apps controlled large projections within the exhibition so the instant somebody in the room made a selection within the app the display reacted to that interaction.

We asked Dave a few questions to find out how Pusher helped.

Why did you choose Pusher?

When we looked into using iPads and iPhones as controllers for our exhibition projections, we needed a solution that provided a skinnable UI with realtime data exchange. Building an app was not an option due to cost and time restraints, so we turned to a HTML / WebSocket solution. We had never used WebSocket technology before and quickly realised that we were facing a black hole of time and hassle – setting up a WebSocket server, testing it, prototyping, API familiarisation…. Kill me now, please. When we found pusher we immediately saw the benefit – Pusher’s online tools basically “disappeared” all the setup problems we faced and allowed us to neatly sidestep the B.H.O.T.A.H and focus on the good stuff – UI development.

What problems did it solve for you?

Using pusher as our realtime messaging service allowed us to develop a HTML5 interface for iPad and iPhone in a fraction of the time and cost it would have taken to develop an app. The result was an iPhone “web page” that looked and behaved like an app! Pusher has allowed us to take full advantage of WebSocket technology in record time. We consider it a major addition to our designer’s toolkit.

Dave also plans to use Pusher again in an upcoming exhibition:

What’s really interesting is that the projection interface could be controlled by anyone, anywhere – not just the people in the room. The possibilites this presents are very exciting, we intend to ‘push’ the next show to the online community, creating an exhibition viewed simultaneously in the physical and online space.

Let us know how you are using Pusher

We love it when our users get in touch with us to share their experience of using Pusher and we’re keen to do all we can to help not only make using Pusher as simple as possible, but also let others know about it too. So, if you are using Pusher to build an interactive art exhibition, a worldwide WebSocket-powered VJing event, an HTML5 massively multiplayer game or a simple realtime web app we want to know about it.

Finally, a big thanks to Dave for getting in touch and here’s a video and some pictures from the Vol No1 event.

VolNo1 The Exhibition from Nitesh Asrani on Vimeo.