> The initial implementation of a Ruby FFI interface to a Vernier GoIO sensor now works!
> 
>    http://gist.github.com/254981
> 
> It's an adaptation of the GoIO_DeviceCheck.cpp sample app supplied with the Vernier GoIO SDK.
> 
>    http://www.vernier.com/downloads/gosdk.html
> 
> Vernier makes all kinds of inexpensive sensors and interfaces:
> 
>    http://www.vernier.com/go/
> 
> [...SNIP..]
>
> While the initial implementation is ugly (and doesn't do much) I think it's quite amazing that I can use one dynamic library 
> from Vernier and the same FFI code in Ruby and JRuby!
> 
> Vernier supplies the full source code for their SDK as public domain. They have dynamic libraries for Mac OS X and Windows (not 
> sure how hard it would be to also compile one for Linux).  I don't have a Windows system here but if Nokogiri can work on 
> Windows I'll bet this can also.

That looks really cool and along the same lines I've been itching to start playing with an FFI version of Alan's http://tenderlovemaking.com/2009/09/19/ruby-and-rfid-tags/  Alas, where does the time go :(

If you decide to pull your info together into a blog post, would you mind starting a Tutorial's wiki page at http://wiki.github.com/ffi/ffi and put a link to your blog entry, something similar in style to http://wiki.github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller/tutorials

Jon