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Home / Tutorials / How to Control Arduino through the Serial Monitor

Posted on October 18, 2011

How to Control Arduinothrough the Serial Monitor

Written by

Dan

Posted inTutorials

Tagged

arduino, monitor, serial, serial monitor

Comments

13 Comments

When I’m developing Arduino code, I often have variables that need to be tweaked

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during testing & calibration.

Rather than recompile and upload the code (a time consuming process) I wrote a

few lines to let me open the Serial Monitor and send commands directly.

I hope you 䆗nd this useful – I use it in all my robots!

#define DELAY (5)

#define BAUD (57600)

#define MAX_BUF (64)

char buffer[MAX_BUF];

int sofar;

char test_on=0; // only used in processCommand as an ex

float pos_x;

float pos_y;

float pos_z;

void jog(float x, float y, float z) {

// do some tests here to validate x, y, and z.

pos_x=x;

pos_y=y;

pos_z=z;

}

void processCommand() {

if(!strncmp(buffer,"help",4)) {

  Serial.println("commands: where; test (1/0); jog [x(

  } else if(!strncmp(buffer,"where",5)) {

// no parameters

Serial.print(pos_x);

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  Serial.print(", ");

Serial.print(pos_y);

Serial.print(", ");

Serial.println(pos_z);

} else if(!strncmp(buffer,"test",4)) {

// one whole number parameter

  char *state=strchr(buffer,' ')+1;

Serial.println(state);

if(state[0]=='0') {

Serial.println("End test");

  test_on=0;

} else {

Serial.println("Start test");

test_on=1;

}

} else if(!strncmp(buffer,"jog",3)) {

// several optional float parameters.

// then calls a method to do something with those pa

  float xx=pos_x;float yy=pos_y;

float zz=pos_z;

char *ptr=buffer;

while(ptr && ptr

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}

void setup() {

Serial.begin(BAUD);

Serial.println("Init...");

Serial.println("Stretching...");

sofar=0;

Serial.println("** AWAKE **");

}

void loop() {

// listen for serial commands

while(Serial.available() > 0) {

  buffer[sofar++]=Serial.read();

if(buffer[sofar-1]==';') break; // in case there ar

}

// if we hit a semi-colon, assume end of instruction.

if(sofar>0 && buffer[sofar-1]==';') {

// what if message fails/garbled?

// echo confirmation

buffer[sofar]=0;

Serial.println(buffer);

// do something with the command

processCommand();

// reset the buffer

sofar=0;

// echo completion

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Linear Stewart Platform testvideo #2

Hypocycloid reduction drives  

  Serial.println("Done.");

}

}

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