Arduino Related Resources

Stephen Wilson, Professor, Art, SFSU, Conceptual Information Arts Program

Arduino is an international project to develop open source hardware microcontroller and computer interface devices.  The project is being worked on by hardware hackers, coders, and artists around the world.  Hardware designs and code are freely shared with the community.  Below are some resources that might be of interest to people exploring the Arduino board and context.


Wilson Genereal Serial Control

wilson.serialio.ver43.txt
-- This is code that can be loaded into the Arduino board
--  You would need to be in the arduino authoring environment and paste it in
-- and then upload to the arduino board
--  ** note the previous serial io version posted here had one minor error that prevented it from reading digital input #2. 41 fixed this
 Also there was a problem that there was long delay at end of routine.  This made the routine not very responsive when talking to media program.  This new version (42) corrects that problem.
----
Version (42) had minor error with the capitalization and . in the middle on Serial.available()
version 43 fixes that
---

* General Purpose computer serial IO
 * copyleft Stephen Wilson  http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~swilson/
 * Created October, 2006, modified 4/07
 * The code activates most arduino functions
* (digital in, digital out, analog in, analog out)
 * by sending ascii strings via serial communication
 * It can be used by any program that can send & receive strings.
 * Documentation is included with the code

Example of using the Wilson general serial routine with Director:

  1. Copy the Arduino code from    wilson.serialio.ver43.txt and paste it into your Arduino sketch window.
  2. Compile it and upload to your Arduino board.
  3. Get a copy of Serial Xtra by Geoff Smith   (people in SFSU couse contact the professor)  and place it in the Xtras folder located in your Director folder.
  4. Get a copy of Steve Wilson's Template (Wilson.arduinotemp13.dir )  program  - it contains examples of the routines in Director that allow it to talk to the Arduino board - sending and receiving commands and information.
  5. Plug in the Arduino board
  6. Start Director and load the template program.  Do not run it yet.  Go to the main movie level script.  Find the handler called  'on startsensors'.  In it you will find the line that tells Director what the address of your usb connection is. You must determine that address.  It varies by computer and also by usb phyiscal plug location.
  7. Go to the Message window and issue this command 'put  findports()'  - Serial Xtra will see what ports it knows about and report the address for the usb ports.  It will look something like this -    /dev/cu.usbserial-1B1
  8. Copy that address and replace the address that is in the sample director code in the port=  line
  9. Run the Director program and go to the debugging section  - it will show how to use most features.
  10. Director will need to prepare Strings to send to the arduino for digital and analog out
  11. Director will need to extract the data from the strings that come into director from arduino for digital and analog in.
  12. Those without a lot of director experience are welcome to build their own Director movies on top of the template.  Please attribute source.

Wilson.Arduino.Com.Dir.txt (text version - paste into director movie level script window)
wilson.arduinotemp14.dir.zip   (Macintosh zip version)
(A simple Director/Lingo program that demonstrates communication with Arduino.  It relies on you having the serialXtra plugin and the Wilson.GeneralSerialIOControl loaded into Arduino)

**note this version adds demos and fixes minor problems in the the previous version 13 posted here: