Week 16 - Interface and application programming

This week we have to use a board from previous assigments and write an application that interfaces with it.

I chose to use a board of input assignment with a light sensor and Processing program using an interface which receive sensor data via cable FTDI

Using Processing

It's my first time using Processing so I have started from a simple read example from Processing.

I noticed in another practice another year where the modified code SimpleRead to draw a circle.
I found the following problems:
To ensure that the sensor worked first thing I connected to Arduino noting that receiving data, it's works!

When trying to connect to Processing I realized that did not receive data from the usbserial so I had to a bit more research ...

I made a list of serial and I "discovered" that the right is the second in the list:

 

//import serial library
import processing.serial.*;

Serial serialPort; // Create object from Serial class
int diameter= 500; // initial diameter of the circle
String buf;
int lightIn;

void setup() {
size(500, 500);
// I know that the first port in the serial list on my mac
// is always my FTDI adaptor, so I open Serial.list()[0].
// On Windows machines, this generally opens COM1.
// Open whatever port is the one you're using.
println("listado de serials");
//println(Serial.list());

String portTwo = Serial.list()[2];
println(portTwo);
serialPort = new Serial(this, portTwo, 9600);

 

The second problem I found was that the data sent from Arduino did not read correctly into Processing, since it only reads "integers". I have to write some code.

 

// this is for convert data from arduino in integers
void serialEvent(char digito) {
if (digito>=47 && digito<=57) { //digito>='0' && digito<='9' || digito=='/') {
buf += digito;
} else if (digito == 13) {
lightIn = int(buf);
buf = "";

First I created a ball that gets bigger the less light to enter the sensor.
In the second case I had that same ball random colors.

light stepper with processing from Jose Real on Vimeo.

light stepper with processing 2 from Jose Real on Vimeo.

WHAT I HAVE LEARNED?

Processing is a very powerful tool for managing data received from sensors, Arduino, etc. I think that eventually learn to use it better to apply to architectural projects, as I think it is not using its potential in this environment, although you can see interesting projects such as LED facades.

I have learned that different languages can understand and that seems very interesting. Contectar Arduino with Processing is fine, but I would like to learn how to connect both with Grasshopper. The hardest part has been able to read that data from Arduino Processing

FILES

processing code