Using a MacBook's builtin sudden motion sensor with Manipulate

Question

With the following code I can get the value of the "Sudden Motion Sensor", which is build into MacBooks:

Dynamic@ControllerState[{"X", "Y", "Z"}, ControllerPath -> {"Sudden Motion Sensor"}]

I want to use the values to control some variables in a Manipulate statement, however this doesn't seems to work:

Manipulate[x,"X" -> {x, -1, 1}, ControllerPath -> "Sudden Motion Sensor"]

Answer 1

One can set variables equal to the controller values like below. They can then be used in a computation. Here I just scaled them by a.

Manipulate[
 {x0, y0, z0} = ControllerState[{"X", "Y", "Z"}, ControllerPath -> {"Sudden Motion Sensor"}];
 a {x0, y0, z0},
 {a, 1, 100}
 ]

Controlling the view point of 3D graphics could be fun, except that it's rather shaky on my computer. Here the ViewVector is determined by the controller values, and a changes the plot:

Manipulate[
 Plot3D[x^2 + a y^2, {x, -1, 1}, {y, -1, 1}, 
  ViewVector -> Dynamic[{-5 Normalize@ControllerState[{"X", "Y", "Z"}, 
        ControllerPath -> {"Sudden Motion Sensor"}], {0, 0, 0.5 + a/2}}],
  SphericalRegion -> True],
 {a, 0.5, 2}
 ]

But I find my SMS rather noisy and in need of smoothing. Also my "Y" coordinate seems to take on only two values, plus or minus 0.0039.

---

Or perhaps one would like to see a slider:

Manipulate[
 x,
 {x, -1, 1,
    Slider[Dynamic[x, x = ControllerState["X", ControllerPath -> {"Sudden Motion Sensor"}]], {-1, 1}] &}
 ]

However, the Dynamic inside Slider overrides the usual action of the Slider. It basically just displays its position according to the sensor's x value.