text interfacing

Using Arduino Programming Questions
#1

Hello everybody,
I am using the Arduino to control some electronics in a dollhouse as part of a school project. I have coding experience in Java and COBOL but I am pretty new to the Arduino language. I need to make an app that will control the Arduino and the electronic components. My goal is to be able to print out a statement in a terminal window that would say something like "LIGHTS ON OR OFF: " and if the user wrote "OFF" the lights connected to the board would turn off. Basically my question is, can I write code that executes certain functions on the board based on user text input, and how can I read text input.
Thank you.

#2

You could collect serial input as it comes in and act on it using a state machine.

char chr;

if ( Serial.available() )
{
chr = Serial.read();

// what you do here can vary
}

If serial monitor is set to add a newline char (ascii ‘\n’, value = 10) it will add an end-of-input marker.

Then you want to watch for letters to arrive in sequence to form a ‘legal’ message.

Do you know state machines? They can be very simple.

#3

Read Robin2's Serial Input Basics - updated thread to give you some ideas.

#4

Here's a small program to experiment with. It doesn't answer your question completely, but play around with it, then try to think how you might implement GOForSmoke's state machine.

#define LEDPIN  13

void setup() {
  // put your setup code here, to run once:
  Serial.begin(9600);
  Serial.println("Enter ON or OFF");
  pinMode(LEDPIN, OUTPUT);
  digitalWrite(LEDPIN, LOW);     // Make sure onboard LED is off to start
}

void loop() {
  char buffer[10];
  int charsRead;
  int i;

  if (Serial.available() > 0) {
    charsRead = Serial.readBytesUntil('\n', buffer, sizeof(buffer) - 1);
    buffer[charsRead] = NULL;            // It now a C string
    i = 0;
    while (buffer[i]) {                  // Spin through letters until we read the NULL
      buffer[i] = toupper(buffer[i]);    // All letters now uppercase
      i++;
    }
    if (strcmp(buffer, "OFF") == 0) {
       digitalWrite(LEDPIN, LOW);
    } else {
      if (strcmp(buffer, "ON") == 0) {
         digitalWrite(LEDPIN, HIGH);
      }
    }
  }
}
#5

While it may be a little less elegant, if you get the user to send a single character command it will make the Arduino code much simpler. For example they could send 'N' for ON and 'F' for OFF. Or maybe '+' for ON and '-' for OFF.

Just my laziness ...

...R

#6