Very new to Arduino/coding in general and am seemingly trying to do one simple thing for automation:
Send the letter 'U' from my mac to the Arduino via serial/USB port via keyboard shortcut. Coding the Arduino was easy and sending the 'U' via the Arduino serial monitor works like a breeze, but i've no idea how I can automate this via the mac. As far as I can tell my only avenue is the Terminal which nothing seems to work very well. Any ideas?
Congratulations on getting some thing to work the way you want, but the above sentence does not give a clue about your actual question.
Sorry about that.
Basically the way my code works is that when I type the letter 'U' into the serial monitor it executes code on the Arduino to turn on a red led (very basic). However, I want to be able to execute sending the 'U' character via a keyboard shortcut on my mac without needing to use the Arduino serial monitor at all. I've just no idea how I can do that. I've been reading that it is doable via the terminal.app, but I want to automate this
Tricky. You would need to write a program in your language of choice for Mac and figure out how to create a global keyboard hook. Google wasn't particularly helpful for that.
Then it's easier - just send a U out of the right serial port.
You may want to find a different way to do it, at least initially.
Well, I can hook the keyboard shortcut up myself later (problem for another day), but at the moment i'm just trying to send the 'U' to the Arduino somehow with a 'single click' so to speak. Something like an Applescript or a single Terminal command would be ideal, but nothing out there seems to have this functionality.
You have a C compiler available to you. The Arduino IDE uses gcc and I expect the Mac provides one too, so you can write a tiny program that sends the U out and invoke it from terminal.
Be aware that the port the Arduino is connected to varies, at least on Windows. I haven't had a problem with my Mac once i figure out where it is, but YMMV.
still very new to coding, so writing a tiny program seems daunting at the moment - but at least I have an avenue to explore now instead of being totally lost. Thanks for the suggestion. I also read a shell script might work, wondering if this might be easier?
You're writing C++ for your Arduino code already, but a shell script might indeed be easier. Look in the IDE to see what port the Arduino is using.
Then check the /dev directory on your Mac and see if you can find it. Likely, you can use echo and > to send your U.
thanks for the tips.
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