Live LiveCode Code Event #17 - wrap-up

Kay C Lan lan.kc.macmail at gmail.com
Tue Apr 12 23:26:07 EDT 2011


Ok this is the third time I've tried to send this email and I still
get messages saying that It's too big even though it shows up as only
9kb. So I've now split it into 3, - Part1a, Part1b and part2

------------------------------------

First off I would like to thank Mark for organising the Live LiveCode
#17 and also for putting it on line for those of us who were not able
to be there Live and thus enjoyed Preserved LiveCode #17 - which I
guess means it's LiveCode Jam #17 :-)

But my real appreciation goes to Claudi for his presentation. Claudi,
your presentation was spot on, at least for me. Doing it Live is
tough, but if we waited until everything was perfect, we'd never have
these gems of information. Most of us are way to busy to get it how
we'd really like it. So please, do a follow up, I might not be able to
view Live LiveCode, but hopefully I can always enjoy LiveCode Jam.

Claudi and Thomas, I've really appreciated your posts re the Arduino
and do hope you keep the List updated on your progress. Also a thanks
to Sarah and her Serial Test stack which saved me a couple of wheels I
didn't need to reinvent.

I also recently came across Arduino and have been experimenting with
it and LiveCode. Foolishly I spent a couple of days experimenting with
it first before heading to this List. So I reinvented the wheel a
couple of times ;-(

I'd just like to add a couple of my own observations which may be of
use to others who venture down the Arduino + LiveCode path.

IMPORTANT

My comments are based on my personal set-up, your mileage IS SURE to vary.

OSX 10.6.6
LiveCode 4.6

Arduino Mega COPY - my board is made by a company called Seeed Studio
under the open license and differs from a standard Arduino Mega in a
couple of ways, but the most important is it has 70 digital I/Os
instead of the Mega's 54.

Also it is an older board so it uses the older FTDI USB drivers.

I'm currently ONLY interested in reading Digital INPUTS. I have not
set up any outputs. My sketch simply loops through reading all the
pins, ONLY if ANY pin has changed status since the last loop, the
sketch sends a 'Serial.println' to LiveCode with the status of EVERY
input. ie 1100010111…

I started out experimenting with 2, then 10 and now 69 input pins.

WITH REFERENCE TO CLAUDI's 'MUST DOs'

I do not need to disconnect the Arduino after uploading a sketch.

My first 'read' is not 'for 1 line' but I use what I got from Sarah's
Serial Test stack, 'read from driver tDriverName until CRLF' and to
that I added 'in 1 ticks'. This seems to prevent LiveCode from hanging
on the first call.

>From then on, as Claudi said (and I know in the video he mentioned
someone said NOT to use 'read until empty') I also 'read until empty'
although I have had success with 'read until CRLF' but in that case
I'm not sure if I've missed any lines so I stick with 'ready until
empty'.

I also can not get LiveCode to communicate with Arduino at a BAUD of
115200, 57600 is the fastest I can go. At the other end of the
spectrum I can't get LiveCode and Arduino to communicate at BAUD 300
or 1200, the slowest is 2400. I am CONVINCED this is a LiveCode
problem. The Arduino Serial Monitor has no problem communicating at
300 or 115200 BAUD, so clearly Arduino + FTDI USB Driver + OS X 10.6.6
are happy. (I'm not really interested in 300/1200, if the mothership
can fix 115200 that would be great)

See Part 1b for more




More information about the use-livecode mailing list