arduino uses ?

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

MG Thanks for that ,A quick look and seems as if I can follow them. So much out their I'm loosing track of what I've done.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by martin perman on 17/11/2014 11:14:16:

Could you point me in the direction of the Processing book as I cant see it for looking.

.

Martin,

It's linked in my post of 09:31:43 this morning

MichaelG.

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

MichaelG,

I was using my notebook and hadn't scrolled up to see it, thanks now sorted.

Martin P

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Anyone looked at the PCDuino on offer dfrom Maplin last week?
It seems to be a sort of arduino with built in sort of PC so you can do the development on it instead of another computer and maybe have a TV display. SInce IT 'upgraded' my laptop I can't install things like the Arduino environment.

Regarding Processing – yet another language. Why is it that in the last 40 years every new attempt has incorporated stilted syntax and limitted features that made use more complex and less intuative than Basic and Fortran instead of using the computer's power to make it easier.

[martin perman 1Participant @martinperman1]

Its still on offer at this moment, needs a HDMI screen, keyboard and mouse but looks interesting enough.

Martin P

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Bazyle on 17/11/2014 13:56:34:

Regarding Processing – yet another language. Why is it that in the last 40 years every new attempt has incorporated stilted syntax and limitted features that made use more complex and less intuative than Basic and Fortran instead of using the computer's power to make it easier.

.

Have you looked at some of the examples of what can be done with just a few lines of 'Processing' code?

and, as for 'intuitive' … Did you work-through Mr Hyperactive's tutorial, that I linked earlier.

I was absolutely boggled when I compared that with my early efforts on the ZX81.

MichaelG.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 16/11/2014 10:24:46:

If you can cope with the hyperactive presenter:

This video tutorial is well worth a look

<etc.>

.

Re-posted for Bazyle's benefit

[Gordon WParticipant @gordonw]

In my copy of an engineers diary, dated 1975, the computing section is Fortran, inputting on cards. I learnt that and Basic and forgot all of it.

[BazyleParticipant @bazyle]

Blankpage writing[words] {
/?&* comment : first I have to list all the words I will use in the reply.*&?/
The, a, word,laptop,my,list,first,geek……………………sheesh life's too short for this crap…………….

My gripe is syntax. Why have to use 3 types of brackets? The computer (language) should be intelligent enough to work out what is meant. Why have to begin with "void setup() { " when what you mean is "start here". Why have to list all the variables you want to use. and so on. Back in the days of Fortran the computer didn't have the power to understand context, and needed warning of the variables to set its limitted memory up for them but that should have been superceded 40 years ago.

MG, the video doesn't work on my laptop (probably IT geeks blocking something) but I looked at the book and some examples.

I'm not talking about power as Perl knocks spots off this if you want to write geeky code that is impossible for the poor sod who replaces you at work to maintain.
In fact Forth was far more powerful 50 years ago because it was specifically designed to create powerful additions to itself eg "MAKETEA" would be a command that did just that though in other respects it was hugely hobbled by the limitted power of the computers it was designed to run on.
Also look how many languages including Perl, Python aswell don't have multi-dimension arrays yet everyone in business uses a spreadsheet which is an array which cannot cleanly be modelled in these languages. One has to adopt kludges to do the same thing. We should have come a lot further in programming languages by now.

 The equivalent in our hobby is to remove the changewheels from all lathes and manually advance the carriage as you turn the chuck by hand.

Edited By Bazyle on 17/11/2014 17:39:43

[IanTParticipant @iant]

Careful Bazyle – you just mentioned the "Forth" word and if you are not careful you will be damned to the blackest hole of Programmers Hell for even thinking it !!

Of course, you will probably find me already there when you arrive.

Regards,

IanT

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Bazyle,

I agree that the assorted brackets may not be particularly user-friendly, but the power of 'Processing' and of the Arduino IDE is surely that they provide great output for small input.

'Processing' is just a shell for Java, and 'Arduino' is a shell for hardware.

Both of them allow us to "do stuff" [amazing stuff] with just a few brief instructions.

… For some purposes, that sounds like a great value trade-off for the loss of a cuddly programming environment.

Neither of them is a general purpose programming language, but there are plenty of those available.

… I think there is room for these two in the toolbox.

MichaelG.

.

P.S. … There may, for all I know, be a super-friendly [maybe even graphical] front-end available somewhere, for creating the "sketches".

[frank brownParticipant @frankbrown22225]

" Why have to list all the variables you want to use. and so on. ", so the computer knows how much memory to allocated for them. What about Pascal, you have to type the declared variables, so the computer knows how many bytes to reserve. Then there is it's illegitimate child, Delphi, which is a "visual" pascal, the trouble is that with every button or feature there is a complete list of variable characteristics(20?), so you end with 1000 long list of variables for your 100 line program.

Frank

[jaCK HobsonParticipant @jackhobson50760]

I think my clock project has bought a dose of reality to me.

The Arduino environment is hugely more accessible than any similar thing I've used in the past but….

20 years ago I was very comfortable programming in C – it was my day job. Last weekend I spent Sat getting a GSM module to phone home – the on-line examples didn't work out the box for me. I spent Sun getting time from the GPS module – the TinyGPS library didn't quite work out the box and it wasn't friendly for debugging so I wrote the time parsing code from scratch (a trivial achievement for a C programmer but took me all day). I suspect my previous programming experience really, really helped.

I can imagine that someone with no previous programming experience could struggle with any significant project. I would still recommend anyone to get a starter kit and run through the tutorials… but doing a lot of custom code could require a steep learning curve.

If you object to different brackets and don't know how to implement multi-dimension arrays in your favourite language (Perl, python included) then be prepared for some hard work.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 17/11/2014 18:52:06:

P.S. … There may, for all I know, be a super-friendly [maybe even graphical] front-end available somewhere, for creating the "sketches".

.

And indeed there is !!

[see here]

MichaelG.

[David TaylorParticipant @davidtaylor63402]

Bazyle,

A lot of that stuff isn't because the compiler is too stupid to figure it out. It is to help the programmer stop making mistakes.

Having to declare things before use, declare the return types of functions, etc have all been brought in to help avoid bugs which are easily introduced without them, and can take a long time to track down.

The different bracket types become second nature soon enough.

Your complaint reminds me of trying to learn maths – there is a subject with hopelessly inconsistent notation and syntax! I found it massively frustrating after 30 years with nice consistent programming languages.

Regards, David,

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

This new Yun Mini, with on-board Wi-Fi, may be of interest

MichaelG.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Definitely an interesting little unit for developing more advanced robotics/electronics projects because it avoids your main computer as far as the hardware is concerned, and is relatively cheap and compact

Having a look at wireless DRO possibilities at the moment, 30 quid gets you up and running with all the bits and bobs

It's a good too-knackered-to-do-the-lathe-and-the-telly-is-rubbish hobby

Just sit on your bum and do something genuinely interesting

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Crikey Ade, you just woke up a necro-thread from 5 or 6 years ago!

What strikes me is how Arduinos are now everytwhere and lots more of us are comfortable using them. I can see a couple of unused Arduinos and put my hand on two finished Arduino projects from where I'm sitting plus one runs my 3D printer!

Neil

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

I did a search on "arduino" and only got 3 thread hits, it looks like most of the stuff in here is in this thread

…aha! it's 3 ARTICLES

…and there's 38 threads below that I can browse… lol

sorry 'bout that

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

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