Week 11

Interface and Application Programming

This week was fun! I built a new pcb to get more prepared for my final project which involves controlling 4 vibro-motors. Based on previous experiences I made this board more successful than the other ones I believe! Here is my KiCAD schematic. The idea was to have 4 vibro-motors and two photoresistors to control the motors with light, but actually I feel like, I would use proximity sensor kind of thing for final.

After miling and soldering my pcb looked like this:

> >

After finishing the PCB I tested it and yay!! It was working.

Now, it was time to implement an interface for my pcb, it was easier than I thought. My initial idea was to have 4 buttons on screen and one by one controlling motors individually. I will try to expand this idea and I hope to control my device remotely from computer for the final project. For now here is the demonstration:

Here is the code I used for the interface:

This is arduino code:

								const int motorPins[4] = {1, 0, 2, 3}; // Replace with your motor driver pins

								void setup() {
								  Serial.begin(9600); // Start serial communication at 9600 baud
								  for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
									pinMode(motorPins[i], OUTPUT); // Set motor pins as outputs
								  }
								}
								
								void loop() {
								  if (Serial.available()) { // Check if data is available to read
									char command = Serial.read(); // Read the incoming byte
									int motorIndex = command - '0'; // Convert char to int (e.g., '1' becomes 1)
									if (motorIndex >= 1 && motorIndex <= 4) {
									  toggleMotor(motorIndex - 1); // Adjust index for zero-based array
									}
								  }
								}
								
								void toggleMotor(int index) {
								  int currentState = digitalRead(motorPins[index]);
								  digitalWrite(motorPins[index], !currentState); // Toggle the motor state
								}								
							

And this is the processing code:

								import processing.serial.*;

								Serial myPort;  // Create object from Serial class
								
								void setup() {
								  size(400, 200); 
								  println(Serial.list()); // List all the available serial ports
								  myPort = new Serial(this, Serial.list()[0], 9600); // Open the first port
								}
								
								void draw() {
								  background(255);
								  // Draw symbols for motors
								  for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
									rect(50 + 80 * i, 75, 50, 50); // Symbol for each motor
								  }
								}
								
								void mousePressed() {
								  for (int i = 0; i < 4; i++) {
									if (overRect(50 + 80 * i, 75, 50, 50)) {
									  myPort.write(str(i + 1).charAt(0)); // Send command to toggle corresponding motor
									}
								  }
								}
								
								boolean overRect(int x, int y, int width, int height)  {
								  return mouseX >= x && mouseX <= x+width && 
										 mouseY >= y && mouseY <= y+height;
								}