Sensor reading back to usb

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1

Hello I’m trying to send sensor reading every 20 ms back to another application im running on my laptop. I’m using Fez Panda 2 (FEZ Ultimate Kit) . From what I understand i need to upload program to Panda and then connect Serial-to-USB E- Block(COM7 on my laptop) to start receving data…Taken from http://www.ghielectronics.com/downloads/FEZ/FEZ_Internet_of_Things_Book.pdf

SerialPort UART = new SerialPort(“COM7”, 115200);
int read_count = 0;
byte[] rx_byte = new byte[1];

        UART.Open();

public static void Main()
{
AnalogIn lightSensor = new AnalogIn((AnalogIn.Pin)FEZ_Pin.AnalogIn.An0);
double lightSensorReading = 0;

        while (true)
        {
            lightSensorReading = lightSensor.Read();
         string counter_string =lightSensorReading.ToString() ;
               
                byte[] buffer = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(counter_string);
                
                UART.Write(buffer, 0, buffer.Length);
            Thread.Sleep(20);
        }
    }

Is there something that I’m missing or can it be done diffrently? All im trying to do is to pass data like its passed with: Debug.Print(lightSensorReading.ToString());

2

@ primi - welcome to the forum.

first of all…

Using code tags will make your post more readable. This can be done in two ways:[ol]
Click the “101010” icon and paste your code between the

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Select the code within your post and click the "101010" icon.[/ol]

secondly...

what exactly is not working? you do not state this in your post.
3

Hey I have sensor connected on the board on analog pin. With the code bellow I get values of sensor to output window of debugger in Visual Studio.

Code:

public static void Main()
        {
            AnalogIn lightSensor = new AnalogIn((AnalogIn.Pin)FEZ_Pin.AnalogIn.An0);                                        
            double lightSensorReading = 0;

            while (true)
            {
                lightSensorReading = lightSensor.Read();
                Debug.Print(lightSensorReading.ToString());//I want this values that are printed in debug window in another application
                Thread.Sleep(20);
            }
        }

Output of debugger:

447
476
477
447
477
477
447
476
477
447
476
477

So what I’m actually trying to do is to use this values that i get on analog pin in another c# Windows Forms application (or Java etc)

So I understand that i can do that trough serial port connecting Serial Port E-block and send all readings I get on analog pin trough serial port so I can get values in anoter application with next code:

private void buttonStart_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
        {
            serialPort1.PortName = "COM7";
            serialPort1.BaudRate = 115200;

            serialPort1.Open();
            if (serialPort1.IsOpen)
            {
                buttonStart.Enabled = false;
                buttonStop.Enabled = true;
                textBox1.ReadOnly = false;
            }
        }

Please correct me if I’m missing anything.

4

your 20msec expectation is something you should ignore for now; it’s unlikely that your code will run in 20msec let alone send data in that timeframe (serial is SLOW, relatively speaking). So first thing I would suggest you do is change that thread.sleep to be 500; get the fundamentals working before you optimise and shrink the timing.

The next step is to get your PC communicating over serial port, back to a terminal program on a PC. Until you do that and prove that works, don’t worry about writing a PC application.

So first up, in your Fez program, you need to use the serial port. Here’s some code that might help get you started, GHI Electronics – Where Hardware Meets Software or there’s a recent thread about getting this working (update: http://www.tinyclr.com/forum/topic?id=8968 is the thread, or http://wiki.tinyclr.com/index.php?title=USB_Client might also be a good start)