Control Panel Stuff

steprog

Ive been digging around for a professional way to make a control panel that would interface with the prop.· I looked
Robotbasic - Seems to have a neat interface, but not really professional looking
LabView - looks good and the interface has been worked out here in the discussions, but kinda pricy
Viewport - Has a good interface well documented and has that cool OpenCV·but seems tough for me to make a unique control panel look for my project. Trying but not much luck

Have I looked at everything? am I wrong here? Is there something Im missing.

Having a good interface has seemed to plague me for my products.
Thanks for any suggestions

SRLM

You can use pretty much any modern general purpose programming language (Java, C/C++, VB, etc.). Basically, all that is required of the language is that it has the ability to open a COM port and the ability to do GUI. The programs that you mention are just platforms that other people have made, they don't have any inherent requirement for communication with a uC.

Rayman

I would suggest Visual Basic Express... I think it's free and you can make a custom GUI...

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My Prop Info&Apps: ·http://www.rayslogic.com/propeller/propeller.htm

HollyMinkowski

You might be able to use these free BASIC tools to do this.
This translator is easy to use and generates C code that
is great for learning C if you ever want to.

The exe files this generates are extremely compact.

bcx-basic.sourceforge.net/

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"Where am I? Where am I going? Why am I in a handbasket?"

Hanno

Do you have a mock up of what you want your interface to look like? And description of how you want it to behave?

By now, ViewPort has a pretty complete collection of "widgets" that have all sorts of behavior and can be customized with the built-in Visual Designer. Think of ViewPort as a web browser, each "view" is defined by an XML file that arranges widgets onscreen. It's not trivial to build new views- because designing an interface takes time, but I think it's as easy as can be. Of course defining your own widget is more difficult, that requires actual programming- but the development kit gives you a good start.
Hanno

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Download a free trial of ViewPort- the premier visual debugger for the Propeller
Includes full debugger, simulated instruments, fuzzy logic, and OpenCV for computer vision. Now a Parallax Product!

Unsoundcode

Hi , Visual Basic Express produces a nice GUI for projects . I would recommend·using a·good graphics package for·the art work to get the "professional" look.

If you need any additional help getting started·I might be able to help with the code a little.

Jeff T.

TreeLab

I have used Delphi to drive Hanno's ViewPort via the DDE interface. It makes a very fast interface, and the Delphi is a visual design program (Pascal-like code).
Cheers!
Paul Rowntree

steprog

Thanks guys for the input. I will check out a bunch of this. Hanno I haven't figured out how you create a control panel with your examples. I sure wish I could do that it looks like the quickest. I haven't tried the Delphi trick yet and pascal is pretty easy for me. Back in the day I was a mean Turbo Pascal programmer. Visual Basic Im sure would produce some good stuff but I downloaded it last night and man has it changed. I a little concerned with the learning curve.

Leon

Altia Design is a nice piece of software for that sort of thing:

www.altia.com/

It might be a bit expensive for you, though.

Leon

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Amateur radio callsign: G1HSM
Suzuki SV1000S motorcycle

VIRAND

I like touchscreens, but I don't have any except on my PDA's.
I like how the original Palm Pilot didn't waste Megabytes or Gigabytes to be GUI.
A Propeller with a touch screen of any size would be nice.
I also Don't like a PC controlling the Propeller all the time. Hooray for stuff like PropDOS and femtobasic.

Draw a control panel, then program the Propeller to draw it using GRAPHICS object.

I also like to disassemble big old industrial control panels and dream of assembling an even bigger one,
for a synthesizer or something industrial automated or some kind of virtual space ship.

TreeLab

Steprog : Do you have Delphi? If so, I can send you my interface DDE examples with ViewPort and you can see how it hangs together (it is very simple, and follows the std examples exactly). I have been promising Hanno this code for a while, but if there is someone who needs the code, it might speed it up a bit. I use Delphi 2006.

I agree with VIRAND that sometimes it is good to break the umbilical cord to the PC. Unfortunately, most prop boards will reset when the com line is released. It would be nice to have the reset line (DTR?) on a jumper to disable this behaviour.

Cheers!
paul rowntree

HollyMinkowski

So ViewPort is a Delphi app?

MZP....

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"Where am I? Where am I going? Why am I in a handbasket?"

TreeLab

HM : No, that is not my meaning. I have written a Delphi interface that uses the underlying DDE routines of the Windows OS to communicate with Hanno's ViewPort. This allows my code to exchange information with ViewPort, which then shares the data with the propeller via his Conduit communication routines. The Delphi app can also send commands to ViewPort.

EDIT : I forgot to mention that while it is easy to write native RS232 codes in Delphi, the advantage of going through ViewPort is that Hanno has worked the Conduit transfer rate up to 2 MBits/sec (which is ~20x faster than I could get the serial port routines to run under WinXP) and because in many cases it can remove the need for a command parser loop that sits and watches the incoming information stream. This may or may not be an advantage for your apps.

I have no idea what language Hanno used, except that it is a dotNet system.
Cheers!
paul rowntree

Post Edited (TreeLab) : 10/8/2009 10:15:23 PM GMT

T Chap

RealBasic is $100 and is quite easy to get started making custom apps with. Serial to Prop is very easy. The forum is comparable to this one. Multi platform builds.