Breakthrough With Serial Communication Mason/Nick

It may not look like much but this is the result of quite a few frustrating hours. One the hardware side it is a led sure but what is  more important is what is turning that led on. This light is controlled by a text file, and a very simple one at that THe main problem that we had was getting a serial communication between processing and the Arduino. That has been solved.  The main issue was file conventions for macs

Our next steps will be to apply this to the weather report file we have and code some motors.

Processing code below

import processing.serial.*;

Serial comPort;

int counter=0; // Helps to keep track of values sent.

int numItems=0; //Keep track of the number of values in text file

boolean sendStrings=false; //Turns sending on and off

StringLoader sLoader; //Used to send values to Arduino

void setup(){

 comPort = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[6], 9600);

 background(255,0,0); //Start with a Red background

}

void draw(){

}

void mousePressed() {

 //Toggle between sending values and not sending values

 sendStrings=!sendStrings;

 //If sendStrings is True - then send values to Arduino

 if(sendStrings){

 background(0,255,0); //Change the background to green

 /*When the background is green, transmit

 text file values to the Arduino */

 sLoader=new StringLoader();

 sLoader.start();

 }else{

 background(255,0,0); //Change background to red

 //Reset the counter

 counter=0;

 }

}

/*============================================================*/

/* The StringLoader class imports data from a text file

 on a new Thread and sends each value once every half second */

public class StringLoader extends Thread{

 public StringLoader(){

 //default constructor

 }

 public void run() {

 String textFileLines[]=loadStrings("/Users/Nick/Desktop/srialblink/3.txt");

 String lineItems[]=splitTokens(textFileLines[0], ",");

 numItems=lineItems.length;

 for(int i = counter; i<numItems; i++){

 comPort.write(lineItems[i]);

 delay(500);

 comPort.write("6");

 }

 counter=numItems;

 }

}