Say it ain't so!
realolman
Posts: 65
I am new to the Stamp. Got a usb board of education an worked through some of the experiments... seems like a great little gizmo.· I got antsy though, and wanted to move on to what I wanted to do, rather than follow a set of lessons.
I am beginning to come to a sickening realization that if the makers of the stamp want you to use it in your own application, they certainly don't seem· accomodating with the how to do it.
Are there no drivers, functions, or something whereby I can communicate with the basic stamp· within my own visual basic app?· Do I have to sit there and peck all this stuff into the the "Stamp Editor ".·Or try to make my own serial communication?·· ·Surely to God not!·
I certainly wasn't expecting that.· It's one thing to have a little chip turn I/O on and off in response to timers or other I/O... it's a couple orders higher to be able to modify those responses from a PC.
Show me I'm wrong please...
Say it ain't so.
Post Edited (realolman) : 9/15/2007 1:29:47 PM GMT
I am beginning to come to a sickening realization that if the makers of the stamp want you to use it in your own application, they certainly don't seem· accomodating with the how to do it.
Are there no drivers, functions, or something whereby I can communicate with the basic stamp· within my own visual basic app?· Do I have to sit there and peck all this stuff into the the "Stamp Editor ".·Or try to make my own serial communication?·· ·Surely to God not!·
I certainly wasn't expecting that.· It's one thing to have a little chip turn I/O on and off in response to timers or other I/O... it's a couple orders higher to be able to modify those responses from a PC.
Show me I'm wrong please...
Say it ain't so.
Post Edited (realolman) : 9/15/2007 1:29:47 PM GMT
Comments
NOTE: I have not done this but it doesn't sound hard.
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I think your wrong.
http://www.parallax.com/dl/docs/cols/nv/vol3/col/nv89.pdf
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Have Fun
TR
So look at it this way.· --> The beauty of the STAMP is· "THERE IS MORE THAN JUST A FEW WAYS TO DO IT".·· There are NUMEROUS ways to solve your design problem of getting the Stamp to talk to your PC.·
Also, more than almost any other device I've used to date... there is WAY more·reference material·to read·than I even have time for.· The NUTS and VOLTS articles alone are a GOLDMINE.
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There's nothing like a new idea and a warm soldering iron.
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Dave Ratcliff· N6YEE
The stamp editor is very easy to use to communicate with the stamp... I didn't have to do anything with it to get it to work I installed it and plugged it in. They couldn't do something similar that could be put in a VB app to pass data from variables in my app to variables in the stamp without the user having to type the stuff in a little textbox? .... I think they could ... and should.... why don't they? If there's one on the site. please direct me to it.
I see they have a freebie graphing app. I bet you don't have to re-invent the serial comms wheel to use that. How about a freebie object that can be dropped onto a form to send stuff from VB6 and VB.NET to the stamp and vice versa that isn't going to give you fits about framing errors or buffer overflows or all that sort of stuff..
I want to work on my app... my app to be the interface, collect the input from the user , send data to the stamp and collect info from the stamp... I don't want to have to mess with serial comms.
I definately didn't see this coming
I was not expecting to have to screw around with serial comms these days. I'm pretty bummed about it.
-Phil
Bon Voyage,
TR
Now having said all that, StampPlot can be used to create a GUI and with a little code get some communications back and forth.
For pure control, you can add a serial control to a VB app and write the code to do what you want. Though it's odd you want to code the VB, but not the Stamp.
Feel free to create that control super-control for the rest of the community! Or, go back to your labjack that has everything ready to go for you. I'd sure hate to have a PC tied up controlling my sprinker system though!
By saying Parallax doesn't give you the resources on "how to do it" is completely wrong. They provide nearly everything you need, much for free. It's up to the developer (YOU!) to take the resources to make the system do what YOU want it to do.
Maybe your idea of what you were expecting is way off, and not the company or it products.
-Martin
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StampPlot - GUI and Plotting Software
Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Electronic Systems Technologies
Check out this link for a VB interface http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=671804
Post on these forums for support, these forums have some of the greatest resources you will find anywhere.
Jeff T.
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Never give up when things go wrong.
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- Stephen
Until it is as simple as "StampVariable=AppVariable" and " AppVariable=StampVariable" ....it has a ways to go.
. Perhaps someone would illustrate why it should NOT be that simple...how the availability of something that made it that simple would decrease the functionality that different users would need. Seems to me being that simple would make it useful to a whole bunch MORE users. Jason Fox could still write his own stuff, using his binary calculator.
We all know that the stuff you type in the IDE is not what works the electrons and transistors anyway, and that unless you're using a computer with a black screen and greater than sign on it ( or maybe fluorescent numeric displays and punch cards), there is a lot going on that you don't have to code.
I think it is ridiculous that Parallax does not have available a free download for a means of communication between a VB app and a basic stamp, but rather I have to code one. I think something that basic should never have to see the light of day in a forum such as this...in this day and age. It should have been included.
If you want to go·binary on me for that... feel free
Post Edited (realolman) : 9/15/2007 9:36:36 PM GMT
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So you can stop stating what you feel should exist and work with the resources you have.
Using StampPlot, you can easily add a slider to the screen using drag and drop, name it say 'sldVar', and quickly read it from the stamp using:
DEBUG "!READ (sldVar),CR
DEBUGIN DEC myVar
I'm sorry it's not as easy as you think it should be, but believe me, the BASIC Stamp is easier than just about anyother controller on the market, none of which support what you want, and if there really was a large need for it, would have been by now. The closest other controllers come is in circuit emulators and other hardware to interface to the controller real time. but the costs become VERY large quickly.
Most users adjust their variable, download, observe and debug data to determine operation, tweak code and retry.
The point is, there are means to the end you want, but to complain it's not all plug n play programming is not going to make it happen.
-Martin
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StampPlot - GUI and Plotting Software
Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Electronic Systems Technologies
You seem to think it would be a snap for me do do it myself... I think it would be an even bigger snap for Parallax to do it and make it available. Since it's such a snap, it should be free.· Purists would not have to use it. and their resources would not be affected.· More mortal men might appreciate it.
Not once did I complain that" it's not all plug and play programming", and you are wrong to suggest that I did.
Do me a favor and don't put words in my mouth.· Apparently there is no such communication tool available.
· I get that.
·There should be ... Do you get that?
·
It may ease your pain, but you will still need customized code on both sides.
In fact, PLX-DAQ, with it's ability to read/write any cell may also be used as a means to adjust variables in real-time.
If you install PLX-DAQ, the control will be listed when you go to add it a program (selmaDAQ2.ocx), and I don't think I have licensing turned on. But there is no documentation.
Sorry if I came across cross, but that's why many of us use controllers, is to develop what we need and not rely on others to have a generic package ready to use. Many of us are very loyal to Parallax and what they have done for community, and your initial post slamming them for what they don't have set me in the wrong mood to be answering the post.
So, there's a couple options, StampPlot and PLX-DAQ, both of my labor to provide to the BASIC Stamp community and not expecting the company to meet the huge variety of needs of all it's users.
-Martin
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StampPlot - GUI and Plotting Software
Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Electronic Systems Technologies
theabramgroup.com/basicstamp
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Dave Ratcliff· N6YEE
Post Edited (ratronic) : 9/16/2007 12:47:34 AM GMT
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- Stephen
One Parallax product that might be of interest to you is the netburner PINK, internet connection kit. Your internet browser, or internet enabed application, can read and modify variables on the PINK, and then a BASIC program on a Stamp can read and write. Why does Parallax sell such a device? They don't say. The documentation they supply with it is relatively short and sweet. But maybe still it has to do with empowerment.
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Tracy Allen
www.emesystems.com
http://www.siskconsult.com/page7.html
I hope this helps!
·have been messing with this sort of this for many (20+) years and if I were trying to make a circle, it doesn't matter what I try, there is always·a·piece·missing.·If it's not here... it's over there., but it's always missing.·..
A-Bus,· dataq,·· microchip,· labjack·· to name a few.·..and now Basic Stamp. To paraphrase Everett Dirksen," A couple hundred here and a couple hundred there, and pretty soon you're talking about some real money."· And some real time.
When I bought this and looked at the site and products, I truly did not consider that I would have to write serial comms to use this device in conjunction with a PC... I am still astounded over that.
You have to·check when you buy a pc or notebook to make sure it even has a 232 port and I don't know anything about usb, except that it doesn't go very far without daisy chaining a bunch of hubs or something. It is hard for me to understand that anyone would think that communication with a pc is·a trivial thing. From my experience with Ms Comm, it is not.·
Maybe I am trying to do something that is beyond the capabilities of the stamp, but I would not think so.
I have a usb board of education, visual basic 6 ,and visual basic.net. I am far more comfortable with VB6, but·VB6 is history.· ( another frustration )
I believe the best way to describe what I am trying to do would be an "electronic camshaft".·· Machines used to have a rotating shaft with many cams mounted on it that operated switches... the switch would be ·turned on when the cam engaged·it and off when it did not..· someone had to loosen the cam and move·it to adjust the timing of the "outputs".· Adjusting the "period" or "dwell" of the output required a diferent shaped cam.
I want someting that will count· a 500 Hz encoder pulse train , and toggle all available·outputs· as the counter increments from 0 to 360.· Whether the outputs are hi or low depends upon parameters that the user would set via the pc, and then the pc would be out of it.
For example: output 1 "on" from 20° to 140°.· If that didn't produce the desired effect, the "on"·degrees could be changed via the pc... maybe 27° to 140°... or whatever. Entire programs could be saved on the PC and downloaded to the stamp.· I don't want the user to have to use the "Stamp Editor" so I want to accomplish this all within my VB GUI app.
I think I read that one of the stamps did about 12000 instructions / sec.· I don't know if that means BASIC commands, or assy. language, or what.· All I want the stamp to do is count the pulses and turn the outputs on and off within the·period of the encoder pulse train so it doesn't miss any pulses... and communicate with the pc to change the "timing" or "dwell" of the "cams" during a time when it is not counting pulses.
If anyone would care to comment on the feasabilty of this with a stamp, I'd be very glad to hear it.· And again... I apologize for offending.
I feel a better match for your needs would be the Propeller with 8 processors.· You can either use the internal counter hardware to count your pulses or another cog to do it, and have one cog dedicated to making decisions based on the count, at around 100,000 instructions/second in the high level language of Spin.
For the end user, you may also consider connecting the video and mouse/keyboard DIRECTLY to the controller for their·adjustment instead of being tied to a PC.
The Propeller, in my mind, is actually easier to program than the BASIC Stamp because there are fewer constraints when trying to accomplish multiple tasks.
Thanks for the info on what you want to accomplish, it helped a lot.
-Martin
I guess I will look into the propeller.
What do I need to buy to be able to·do what I have described?·
I expect to be able to program the controller, and communicate with it from a VB app when it is running.·
thanks
On the controller side, I'd recommend the "Extended_FullDuplexSerial" object available on the objects download pages, it allows you to accept comma separated values to the serial input (PropPlug) making it a little easier send a sequence of values to be put into an array or such.
THe PC side doesn't need to do much then, simply assemble a string of values such as "20,1,50,0," etc.
The serial object does only have a 16 character buffer, but if it starts accepting and using the data right away it will stay ahead of the data flow.
You could test using hyperterminal to manually send a string like above and have the Prop spit back the parsed settings to the screen.
If you need help with the Spin code to accept an array of values, let me know.
As to counting, a cog using "WAITPEQ" (wait until pin equals) would be fast enough, or you could enable one of the hardware counters and monitor it - I don't recall now if there is an instruction to wait for a specific count on these, but if there is it would be the most efficient. Post again if you have problems with this.
As to getting a feel for Spin, there's some getting started info at the top of the Propeller forums. It's a prett clean languange.
-Martin
Post Edited (Martin Hebel) : 9/16/2007 4:33:30 PM GMT
-MH
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=670093
http://forums.parallax.com/showthread.php?p=671804
Are three people using VB in some way to communicate with the BS
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- Stephen
One last thing... what should have given me an indication that the BS 2 would not do what I have described?
thanks
·
Well, the problem is, that "Problem Statement" is so vague, that many different hardware platforms would support it quite well.
The BS2, in fact, with a very simple program, would fulfill that requirement:
MyStr VAR Byte[noparse][[/noparse]10]
MAIN:
SERIN 16, I9600, [noparse][[/noparse]STR MyStr]
SEROUT 16, I9600, [noparse][[/noparse]STR MyStr]
GOTO MAIN
Now, the BS2 only 'cycles' at about 2000 Instructions Per Second. And, it can't 'talk' while it's 'listening'. So if those parts
of your requirement are critical, you'll need some other platform like the SX or the Propeller.