sketch writing service

hiya all,

I was wondering if there is anything like a sketch writing service.

I have a project but I am struggling to get where I need to be. so I am hoping that there is somewhere I can enlist the help in order to create the sketch and a circuit/component diagram.

in short it's 3 sets of stepper motors that have 30 commands that is distance and direction based. within each the three sets of stepper motors require to operate in a set order.

there is also one end stop in the circuit. I would like to add a TFT touchscreen over RF link. but that might be an expansion depending on how things go.

I have all the details but if there is a service or person that is willing to help I would love to discuss and see where we can go with this.

if any one can point me in the right direction that would be great.

kind regards

Bex

if any one can point me in the right direction that would be great.

This is a good place to start. You could look in Products and Services, too. There have been several posts there about sites where Arduino programmers can be advertised for.

How successful those sites are is not something I have any clue about.

rebekah_harper:
I have a project but I am struggling to get where I need to be. so I am hoping that there is somewhere I can enlist the help in order to create the sketch and a circuit/component diagram.

in short it's 3 sets of stepper motors that have 30 commands that is distance and direction based. within each the three sets of stepper motors require to operate in a set order.

there is also one end stop in the circuit. I would like to add a TFT touchscreen over RF link. but that might be an expansion depending on how things go.

I have all the details but if there is a service or person that is willing to help I would love to discuss and see where we can go with this.

Sure!

I don't know of any sketch-writing service, aside from this forum. There just isn't enough money in it to make it full-time work, you know? There are embedded systems programmers, of course, but they aren't working on arduinos: they have lumpy industrial stuff or proprietary hardware running in refrigerators … although 3d printing is becoming mainstream these days and a lot of them are arduino based.

Why not start laying out here what your requirements are? After all - you'll have to explain to your programmer what you actually want eventually, why not do it now? At some point, you'll need to get away from describing things in these very general terms and state exactly what they need to do.

You have 30 'commands'. How will those commands be being given to the sketch? Serial? IR remote? Wireless network? Buttons on your device itself? Do you have some sort of wire protocol worked out? Is the data coming from a computer? Do you want a menuing system working with some sort of screen? Do you want the device to work with one of those IoT websites? Do you know which one? Do you want it voice activated, some sort of Alexa connection?

Are you yourself actually able to build the device? Speaking personally, I'm just a programmer, and in any case I'm not where you are.

I'd approach this by first dealing with parsing these commands of yours, dealing with whatever input you want to give to the sketch. At first, the sketch wouldn't attempt to operate motors, i would just print to serial what it would do if it had motors.

Next problem is probably dealing with these sets of steppers of yours and your requirement that within each set they operate in a set order. Are we talking to the steppers directly (four wires per), some sort of controller, an I2C bus, a series of other arduinos whose job it is to talk to the steppers (a possible scenario, if each of the three steppers in each group are four-wire jobbies)?

And then, of course, there is the issue of money. This will take several hours of programmer time, and that doesn't usually come cheap. Do you have money? Do you have a compelling reason why a programmer might want to do this gratis? Charity? A share of the profits, some sort of licensing deal? That will have to be worked out after there is some idea of project scope.

I've done something that sounds similar to what you want -- it was a remote control for a welder.

The remote had 2 knobs, a display, a radio, and a battery.

The controller fitted to the front of the welder and had two stepper motors, two limit switches, and a radio. The stepper motors were mounted so that they would turn the knobs on the front of the welder.

I designed and assembled all of the electronics (from off-the-shelf components and modules) and wrote the arduino sketches for the remote and the controller. The remote and controller would automatically pair when both turned on, allow the operator to view and adjust the welder settings from up to 30 meters / 100 feet away, turn the welder off when the radios got out of range, re-pair when they got back in range, and offer to set the welder to the last settings before contact was lost.

If this makes you think I could help you, please PM me.

  • avh