WP7 Tutorial - part 2: Vibration

This examples shows how to activate the vibration motor / vibration actuator in the phone. The calls Microsoft.Devices.VibrateController.Default.Start and Microsoft.Devices.VibrateController.Default.Stop are used to switch the actuator on and off.
When switching the vibration on the parameter sets the duration for which it should be on. The duration is between 0 and 5 seconds. With the function TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(duration), where duration is a number, the parameter can be set easily.

The standard API only supports to switch on and off the vibration. We experimenting with the code you can explore how to have vibrations of different intensity. To do this you have to switch on and off the vibration (e.g. 100 ms on then 50 ms off) - basically doing pulse-width modulation.

There is more information on the vibration controller on the Microsoft site.

See below the c# example for controling the vibration a windows phone 7.
You can also download the vibration project directory in a single ZIP-file.

using System;
using System.Windows;
using Microsoft.Phone.Controls;

// example of how switch on the vibration motor for a given time
// another call to switch it off
// Albrecht Schmidt, University of Stuttgart

// see:
// http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.devices.vibratecontroller.default(v=VS.92).aspx


namespace Vibration
{
 public partial class MainPage : PhoneApplicationPage
 {
     // Constructor
     public MainPage()
     {
         InitializeComponent();
     }

     private void button1_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
     {
         double duration;
         duration = Convert.ToDouble(textBox1.Text);
         if (duration > 5000)
         {
             duration = 5000;
         }
         // starts the vibrations (valid duration are between 0 and 5 seconds)
         Microsoft.Devices.VibrateController.Default.Start(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(duration));
     }

     private void button2_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
     {
         Microsoft.Devices.VibrateController.Default.Stop();
     }
 }
}