I have an arduino and it is reading data from a series of sources - accelerometer, tilt switches, compass and an ultrasonic sensor - for height. the thing is, i am saving these values into intergers but i need to then transmit these values to a second xbee board - connected to an arduino board (minus arduino) which is then interfaced into maxMSP. From their the data is read from it serially and stuff is done.
What i am having trouble with is finding out how to transmit the data through the xbee in the first place.
I have a series of xbee shields from nkc and i was thinking it was as simple as it was with picaxe microcontrollers - where you say
serialout 7,n1900(data one,data 2,data3,...);
but alas this is not the case.
I have googled it and looked at the few sites about xbee and the arduino, but i dont quite understand what is required in just sending data strings.
If you need newline delimiters between each one, use Serial.println instead of Serial.print. If you need something else as a delimiter, print it directly, like:
I have nw got an accelerometer sending data! thank you.
The next thing, i have it sending over xbee to the recieving arduino, on the serial screeen of the arduino programmer, it doesnt display the correct data im sending - is this because its ascii characters?
This is my code so far:
int accPinY = 0; // input pin for the accelerometer Y
int accPinX = 1; // input pin for the accelerometer X
int val1 = 1; // values norm 0, but set as demo numbers
int val2 = 2; //
void setup() {
Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop() {
//val1 = analogRead(accPinY); // read the value from the sensor
//val2 = analogRead(accPinX); // read the value from the sensor //Serial.print("I read: ");
Serial.print(val1, DEC); //Serial.print("a"); //Serial.println(val2, DEC);
delay(100);
}
on the recierving serial screen, i just get a huge list of '?' (question marks) looking at the ascii table, this doesnt represent 1,2 or any other number vaguly like this.
It might very well be. Without knowing the specifics of your projects, I can tell you that a common mistake is to send ASCII data when binary data is expected and vice versa. Just know that:
byte b = 49;
int i = 49;
Serial.print(b); // This sends a single binary byte 49
Serial.print(i); // This sends ASCII '4' followed by ASCII '9'
Serial.print(b, DEC); // This is how to force ASCII printing of bytes
Serial.print(i, BYTE); // This is how to force binary "printing" of integers
basically i am trying to build a sort of controller using different sensors, which communicates wirelesly to a mac with maxMSP.
the first test is using an accelerometer (2way - X and Y)
I am trying to read the analogue values - connected to analogue inputs 0 and 1, and then send using xbee to an xbee recieving board - an arduino board without chip but with an xbee board connected.
the code im using currently is above in my previous post.
the data is being sent and i can recieve it on the serial screen of the arduino programmer, but it just displays a series of '?' characters, or other odd characters. looking at the ascii table, ? doesnt seem to be a character to expected - whilst using val = 1 and 2 for testing, as 1 or 2 is
bin oct dec hex
011 0001 061 49 31 1
011 0010 062 50 32 2
Nat, if you are seeing "?" or "other odd characters", you are almost certainly trying to interpret binary data as if it were ASCII. I haven't played with XBee, but I'll bet it is using binary bytes that can't be easily interpreted in text form. To use your example, if I write an Arduino program that sends a binary 1 to the Serial console, it draws a little square box, because binary 1 doesn't have a representable ASCII value. I think you were expecting too see an ASCII '1', which is decimal 49.
