DEBUGIN on Chrome IDE and Chromebook IDE

kschmidt526

I am a teacher using Stamps in my classroom. I recently have started having students use their chromebooks with the parallax ide, but I cannot get the IDE to accept an input from the keyboard, using the DEBUGIN command. It works perfectly fine in the basic stamp editor. It will show output from a DEBUG command. Here is the chunk of code that can't get past...

debug "Player 1 - Enter a number between 1 and 10",CR   'CR means carriage return (ENTER)
debugin DEC number

Again, it works fine in the basic stamp editor

VonSzarvas

@"Jeff Martin"
Have you any known issues logged for PIDE and the serial commands ?

VonSzarvas

@kschmidt526 said:
I am a teacher using Stamps in my classroom. I recently have started having students use their chromebooks with the parallax ide, but I cannot get the IDE to accept an input from the keyboard, using the DEBUGIN command. It works perfectly fine in the basic stamp editor. It will show output from a DEBUG command. Here is the chunk of code that can't get past...

debug "Player 1 - Enter a number between 1 and 10",CR   'CR means carriage return (ENTER)
debugin DEC number

Again, it works fine in the basic stamp editor

Have you tried adding a small pause at the top of the code?

VonSzarvas

I just tried a quick experiment with Chrome on Windows, and Parallax IDE v. 2771
This worked on my PC

'{$STAMP BS2}
'{$PBASIC 2.5}

number          VAR     Word

Init:
  PAUSE 200                                     'short startup-pause

debug "Player 1 - Enter a number between 1 and 10",CR   'CR means carriage return (ENTER)
debugin DEC number
debug "Got: "
debug DEC number

kschmidt526

my problem is chromebooks... everything works fine in windows. It is the chromebook IDE that is no accepting input

VonSzarvas

@kschmidt526 said:
my problem is chromebooks... everything works fine in windows. It is the chromebook IDE that is no accepting input

Understood. Thanks for confirming.

I'll ping @"Jeff Martin" to help - hopefully he'll be available soon.

Jeff Martin

@VonSzarvas said:
@"Jeff Martin"
Have you any known issues logged for PIDE and the serial commands ?

No, this is the first time I've heard of DEBUGIN issues with PIDE. We have a DEBUG_DEBUGIN example in the /examples folder of Parallax IDE that I've used many times without trouble. Nothing is wrong in the code (as is also confirmed by it working fine on Win with BASIC Stamp Editor) but do you have a Chromebook? I'll have to try it on my Chromebook which has the latest version of Chrome to duplicate the problem.

The download process uses bi-directional serial communication, so it would seem that it's not purely a serial communication issue.

Jeff Martin

Idea: Since the debug terminal is built in as a pane at the bottom of the Parallax IDE, the way it works is the user must load the code (in the editor) and download it, then they should see the text "Player 1 - Enter a number between 1 and 10" appear in the Debug Terminal pane... however, I think the cursor (focus) is left in the editor and I believe they have to click on the small horizontal bar that appears above the debug output (above where the "Player 1..." text appears) before they type.

If they click down in the debug output region, I don't think their typed characters will send to the BS2. Both those panes (below the editor) are essentially disabled and unable to receive keyboard input until there's an active Debug session happening.

VonSzarvas

@"Jeff Martin" said:
Idea: ... however, I think the cursor (focus) is left in the editor and I believe they have to click on the small horizontal bar that appears above the debug output (above where the "Player 1..." text appears) before they type.

Good idea!
Correct - the text entry "debug in" bar is above the debug output pane.

@kschmidt526 Maybe the students hadn't noticed that, and need to click the text-entry pane before they can type the reply ?