From: Rob Lewis <rob-AT-whidbey.com>
Date: 16 May 2008 05:35:28 UTC   (11:35:28 PM in author's locale)
To: xtensionlist-AT-shed.com

This is mentioned in the Macworld article:
<http://tinker.it/now/2007/04/26/control-your-mac-from-arduino-the-
easy-way/>

It's a simple Mac app that listens to the Arduino for single-
character messages. Each different character can trigger the
execution of a different AppleScript.

Maybe not bad for quick & dirty applications?

On May 15, 2008, at 9:33 AM, James Sentman wrote:

>
> On May 15, 2008, at 11:45 AM, Rob Lewis wrote:
>
>> OK, let me take a shot at decoding this (James, you may have been
>> spending too much time around Unix geeks :-)
>>
>> --Somebody (such as, for example, me) writes code to execute on
>> the Arduino. This code looks for events on its sensors and reports >> them over the USB bus.
>>
>> --Somebody else (such as, for example, you) writes code to run on
>> the Mac. This code receives the reports from the Arduino and …
>> what, exactly?
>>
>> Aargh, I'm lost again.
>> --Where exactly does your "conduit" run? Is it part of XTension?
>> --Where does the Arduino API run? In the Arduino microcontroller
>> itself?
>> --Is this a 2-way interface?
>> --What does "in our arduino work" mean exactly?
>> --Where does the proposed command "XTTurnOn" occur? In unit
>> scripts? Why is it needed over standard XTension verbs?
>> --It sounds like you are proposing mapping X10 unit addresses to
>> inputs and outputs on the Arduino board. Am I close?
>>
>> Waaah! Maybe a block diagram would help :-{
>>
>> (Want to continue this offline?)
>
>
> I think you're making this too complex ;)
>
>
> i thought it would be interesting to provide a way to easily get
> information about units from XTension to the arduino board, and get > information out of the arduino board back into XTension.
>
> THink about how you would do that now. Say you wanted to have a
> unit in XTension turn on an LED connected to the arduino board.
> Well, you'd make a pseudo in XTension with an applescript that told > some scriptable serial port device to write something to the serial > port that the arduino was connected to, then you'd write some code
> on the arduino that read that serial data, parsed it out into
> useful bits and figured out what to do with it. To go the opposite
> direction you'd have to do something similar. a contact closure
> connected to the arduino causes a bit of your code on the chip to
> run, that would write some data up the serial port which would be
> read by the scriptable app that was connected to it, which would
> read it, parse it out for useful bits and applescript the pseudo in > XTension again? This gets all very complicated in a hurry ;)
>
> What of instead of just raw "write some series of bits to the
> serial port" on the arduino, it actually had a command that you
> could just call that said "set the value of XTension unit B1 to
> 175" and that took care of talking up the serial port and
> communicating with XTension. Thats all I'm suggesting. Almost
> anybody here could write enough arduino code to do that! But it
> would take quite a bit more in the way of chops and patience to
> design your own serial protocol to handle that and then write both
> the arduino portion and the applescript portion on the host to do
> it, plus then yo'uve got lots of programs and bits and pieces in
> the middle and it gets complex and easy to get hosed up.
>
> I think it should be possible to provide an interface in XTension
> that interfaced to some starter code that we could provide as a
> starting place for arduino work. So that if a unit is controlled in > XTension a very simple method is run in the arduino automagically
> by this code allowing you to turn on and off something with just a
> line of code or 2. The opposide direction would be just as easy.
>
> So we provide the "verbs" in the arduino itself for controlling
> XTension and being controlled by XTension and then YOU customize
> those in any way you like.
>
> So now instead of designing a serial protocol and writing a bunch
> of complex bit parsing code on the pic chip in there, you're
> writing something much more similar to what you do in XTension. Oh, > I got an ON for A1, so I want to turn on digital IO pin 3 or
> something like that.
>
> We could even do a basic setup out of the box which provided some
> basic simple input/output control... I'll have to re-read the
> documentation now to see what is possible. But perhaps it begins to > make sense? I'ts like just a data capture system, but it could be
> so much more if you wanted it to be.
>
> -J
>
>
> Thanks,
> James
>
>
> James Sentman sentman.com http://
> MacHomeAutomation.com
>
>
>