Problem myproblem;

Hi all, I wonder if anyone can help me.

I'd like to know if there is a way of arduino communicating with windows in the following ways:

Can arduino open an external application?
Can arduino control any of this applications functions? (At present I'm using the robotclass library which sends keystrokes to the application but I'm looking for a better way).

Is there a way of arduino being able to read the contents of a folder on my desktop to check whether a new file has been added to it?

Can arduino open a program and wait for the program to have finished loading before sending the next command?


In essence I the program I am trying to write will control a scanner and some stepper motors. I would like to be able to scan, save the file to a folder on my desktop. ONCE the file has been saved, I would like to signal to the motors to move the scanner to the next position and then scan again. The easy way to do this is to simply use the delay(amount of time); function in between each scan. However, the time it takes for the scan to complete varies depending on how busy my computer is. So i need to be able to have arduino understand when a process has finished before repeating this action.

I hope all of this makes sense!

Kind Regards, Arthur

Have a look at Gadgets og teknologi | Dansk Tech Blog - Mikmo. It seems to be able to do most of what you want.