1. Robotic arm out of control
Hello,
At the moment I am making for a school project a program in Euphoria to
control a robotic arm (to make it play a game of Solitaire - you know,
the one where you jump balls over each other on a board until you only
have one left). I have a little test program I made because the main
program didn't work when I added the code to move the arm:
include get.e
constant pos={600,300,200,100,90}
object arm
arm = open("COM1", "ub")
puts(arm,3) -- Init
puts(1,"Arm initialised.\n")
puts(arm,128) --Three-byte coords for Axis 1
puts(arm,floor(pos[1]/256))
puts(arm,remainder(pos[1],256))
puts(arm,129) --Three-byte coords for Axis 2
puts(arm,floor(pos[2]/256))
puts(arm,remainder(pos[2],256))
puts(arm,130) --Three-byte coords for Axis 3
puts(arm,floor(pos[3]/256))
puts(arm,remainder(pos[3],256))
puts(arm,131) --Three-byte coords for Axis 4
puts(arm,floor(pos[4]/256))
puts(arm,remainder(pos[4],256))
puts(arm,137) --Three-byte coords for Rotating table
puts(arm,floor(pos[5]/256))
puts(arm,remainder(pos[5],256))
if wait_key() then end if
close(arm)
What happens is that the 'Arm initialised' message comes up after about
2 seconds (I'm forced to run this on a 386 SX-16!) and then the arm does
absolutely nothing. It only moves to the correct postion after I press a
key. I assume this is because of some outgoing buffer that is forced
upon me by Euphoria which is automatically flushed when I close the
device. Of course I could continally open and close the arm to avoid
this, but then it means waiting two seconds all the time.
All the commands are correct and the equivalent code in QBasic (PRINT
#1,chr$(xxx);) works fine. I didn't have much time on Friday to test
this problem - am I missing something obvious here or do I have to use
some flush_buffer() or similar command?
Thanks,
Stephen Spencer
stephen.spencer at usa.net
p.s. Does anybody want the arm-communication disabled version of the
full program (that works!) so you can play a game of solitaire?
2. Re: Robotic arm out of control
- Posted by Robert Craig <rds at EMAIL.MSN.COM>
Mar 01, 1998
-
Last edited Mar 02, 1998
Stephen Spencer writes:
> It only moves to the correct postion after I press a
> key. I assume this is because of some outgoing buffer that is forced
> upon me by Euphoria which is automatically flushed when I close the
> device. Of course I could continally open and close the arm to avoid
> this, but then it means waiting two seconds all the time.
I haven't done much work with the COM1 device.
Maybe someone else can give you more information.
I do know that the CON (console) device does line
buffering - which means it will flush whenever you send
a '\n' end-of-line character to it, or you close() it.
Maybe COM1 is the same - try it.
Euphoria itself is not doing any buffering of COM1,
unless maybe the WATCOM library is.
Regards,
Rob Craig
Rapid Deployment Software
3. Re: Robotic arm out of control
- Posted by Stephen Spencer <stephen.spencer at USA.NET>
Mar 02, 1998
-
Last edited Mar 03, 1998
Thanks Rob,
Yes it was to do with \n. If you have an external modem with flickery
lights, you can see the problem.
-----------------------------------------
include get.e
object modem
modem = open("COM1", "ub")
puts(1,"I'm going to send \'AT\' to the modem (standard test)...\n")
puts(1,"Press a key to begin or Ctrl-C to quit")
if wait_key() then end if
puts(modem,'a')
puts(1,"\n\nI've sent an a...")
puts(1," You should have seen no flickering lights...\n")
if wait_key() then end if
puts(modem,'t')
puts(1,"I've sent a t...")
puts(1," You should have seen no flickering lights...\n")
if wait_key() then end if
puts(modem,'\n')
puts(1,"I've sent \\n...\n")
puts(1,"The buffer should have flushed and the modem flickered!\n\n")
puts(1,"Press a key to quit...")
if wait_key() then end if
close(modem)
-----------------------------------------
It's a good job characters 10 and 13 (\n) don't do anything on the
robotic arm or I would be in trouble then!
My arm-controlling program still probably won't work, but you never
know! I'll be putting the stand-alone and with-arm versions on my
website once I've finished it and I'll let you all know how it went.
Many Thanks,
Stephen Spencer
stephen.spencer at usa.net
p.s. I've given up with the idea of the diskmag intro, so can you just
send any interesting articles to the above address, and I'll sort out
all the formatting and stuff when I get them. Expect the full diskmag
out in a couple of months (when all my coursework is out of the way!)
