Communicate Arduino and Max with simple serial

Hi,
check out these good tutorials here http://cskonopka.github.io/arduivis/maxmodels

m

Hi
if you are using the latest version of the Arduino IDE, try replacing the Serial.println with the following: Serial.write random(0, 250); this is as basic as it gets

then this patch should work. If not, then the problem lies elsewhere (COM port). I never liked messing about with all that ASCII conversion stuff ;)

Brendan

It might be the com port, yes. Did you try [serial c 9600] and [serial b 9600] ??

Good luck!

Hey try this, it should work just change the port to whatever port you are using, i used it to pick up light levels, obviously change the scaling too. here is the adjoining arduino code

/* Simple test of the functionality of the photo resistor

Connect the photoresistor one leg to pin 0, and pin to +5V
Connect a resistor (around 10k is a good value, higher
values gives higher readings) from pin 0 to GND. (see appendix of arduino notebook page 37 for schematics).

----------------------------------------------------

PhotoR 10K
+5 o---/\/\/--.--/\/\/---o GND
|
Pin 0 o-----------

----------------------------------------------------
*/

int lightPin = 0; //define a pin for Photo resistor
int ledPin=11; //define a pin for LED

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600); //Begin serial communcation
pinMode( ledPin, OUTPUT );
}

void loop()
{
Serial.println(analogRead(lightPin)); //Write the value of the photoresistor to the serial monitor.
analogWrite(ledPin, analogRead(lightPin)/4); //send the value to the ledPin. Depending on value of resistor
//you have to divide the value. for example,
//with a 10k resistor divide the value by 2, for 100k resistor divide by 4.
delay(10); //short delay for faster response to light.
}

the first patch works. so either wrong serial port or you didn't close arduino ide before starting your max patch (serial communication only possible to one application at a time)

That was the hint I needed.. Thanks

Thanks for the advice on this guys. I had this same issue and was able to solve the problem by using Serial.write in my Arduino code.

Brendan, do you (or anyone else) know why it needs to be Serial.write instead of Serial.println?

Thanks again :)

This code contains both the Max and Arduino code that you need in order to communicate between Arduino and Max.
I've tested this code and it works well. There are also a couple of trouble shooting tips that are written into the Max patch.

Hi Tori
thanks for sharing an annotated solution; so many people often forget to do this, well done.

The difference between .write and .print (afaik) is that .print can send a variety of 'formats' (scare quotes!): decimal, binary, octal etc, but commonly as a stream of ASCII-encoded numbers representing your sensor's numerical values; so no limit on the range of numbers to send/receive. Serial,write, however, sends the values as an 8-bit data byte, so no values larger than 255 - unless you use bitshifting and byte manipulation in Max. It's eminently possible, and it was the method I used for greater resolution than 0~255, until I encountered Arduivis. Incidentally, Serial,print(x, BYTE) is now deprecated in the Arduino IDE, having been replaced with Serial.write.

HTH
Brendan

ps, on this and similar threads I noticed how I said that I don't like to use .print from Arduino, because it involved manipulation of ASCII and Unicode formats; and now I wouldn't use anything else in Max.

Tomayto, tomahto . . .