For this assignment, I decided to use processing to create an interface to run my hand demo machine. The first this I did was download and install processing onto my windows computer. processing.org
The next thing I did was install standard firmata on my arduino board. This explanation from the Arduino website was very helpful in understanding this process:
So I found the "Standard Frimata" under examples in the Arduino software.
Then I followed these instructions to load the standard firmata.
Next, I opened up Processing and began learning the syntax by looking through their examples. In order to make a button interface, I looked at some of the examples, which are under the File tab. There was also a very helpful example for arduino servo control which I followed closely for my own program. File>Examples>Contributed Libraries>Arduino(Firmata)>arduino_servo
Once I had a pretty good understanding of the syntax, I just worked through the code, using the examples in Processing as a guide and taking just a little bit of code from my original Arduino code for the hand demo machine.
The first part of the code I wrote was to setup the interface window.
Coding the buttons took a lot more work because I wanted them to highlight as the mouse passed over them, and there were a lot of variables for the setup, then 5 loops.
Here is what the interface looks like.
As I worked on this code, I hooked up a servo to an Arduino Uno board to test the interface. Here is the video of the code working on at least one servo and button.
Once I had it working with one servo and button, I hooked the computer up to my original hand demo machine, and I got it running!
My processing code to run this project can be downloaded here.