Building a Simple Desktop application to inferface

Using Arduino Project Guidance
1

I am trying to build a simple desktop application that will comunicate with Arduino. What language and framework would be the simplest to code this in? It just needs to have one view, with some radio buttons and a list view of a database which can be searched.

2

bigluc:
I am trying to build a simple desktop application that will comunicate with Arduino. What language and framework would be the simplest to code this in? It just needs to have one view, with some radio buttons and a list view of a database which can be searched.

If you like the Arduino way, you can look at Processing. If it has to be a desktop app (as opposed to a web app) the "easiest" might be more about the platform(s) you are targeting, and what programming paradigms you are most familiar with.

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I looked into processing but it seems to centered on drawing, and I need GUI. I would program it in obj-c (im on a mac) but I also need this to run on a Windows machine.

1 Like
4

What we're using...
http://embarcadero.com/products/delphi

Not Objective-C but similar syntax ( :D)...
http://embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder

5

I've done some simple stuff with VB.NET, C# would be easy as well.

Rob

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bigluc:
I looked into processing but it seems to centered on drawing, and I need GUI. I would program it in obj-c (im on a mac) but I also need this to run on a Windows machine.

Look at RealBasic from RealSoftware.

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There is a free simple programming application called JustBasic that can make simple GUIs and can do serial port I/O operations. I've used it to make code to test servos and such via a serial servo controller.

http://justbasic.com/

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Thanks for all the feedback! It's greatly appreciated.

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If you really want to show your gratitude, follow-up when you decide what tool(s) you will use then again at the end of the project. :wink:

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I have had some success using python to interface with Arduino. The syntax is far from any C-style language, but it is fairly easy to pick up. You would have to add the pySerial module to get the serial interface and then add another module for the gui, but that is quite easy. I would suggest the EasyGui module for python, as it lets you make desktop apps that look very good, but still run in a linear manner. This is about the easiest way I know to get a standard user interface. If you go beyond EasyGui's capabilities you might try to learn wxpython. It is event based and much more complicated, but it can do just about anything you would ever want to do.

If you have to distribute the code and you don't want the Windows users to have to install Python (Python comes on Macs) you could use Cython or another program like it to compile the Python to an executable file.

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My teacher recently requested that this could be networked, I actually switched to JavaScript. You can see the test code I've done here:Simple Node.js code to communicate over serial with arduino · GitHub, and the Arduino sketch is found here: Controlling an Arduino from Node.js | Michelle Tilley. Thanks for your help anyways :slight_smile: