Been working on getting what to me is a major step. Right now, Arduino is sweeping the a servo with a Ping ))) mounted on it. Got that working and feeding back readings in in millimeters. Those are currently being fed into a simple graphing setup in Processing. It's right nice.
Major thanks to Myc for help.
Named inspired because someone said it resembled Beaker (muppet)
Current Results: Those curves are scan and rescan of a cup that was in the way.
Report distance in mm every 5° in a 180° sweep by graph in Processing
Actuators / output devices: Parallax standard servo
Control method: Arduino Duemilanove via USB currently
Under the ping is a laser diode (extracted from a laser pointer or laser gunsite, can’t remember which one that is). It fit almost perfectly in the grommet supplied for the ping wires to go through.
Ping upside down because the wire/header/connectors were so long that they obscured the laser
I agree, the way i took the picture kinda made the wires look like hair, and the laser like a mouth…I kinda like it.
Anyone know how to do the polar type display? I have seen a few, but they’re for programs I either don’t have or am exceptionally clueless how to use. I have MS visual studio pro available, but thats the clueless part. I have processing too. With processing and the arduino IDE I’m at about a 3/100 proficiency, really at the tweeking existing code very slightly.
In your Arduino program you have to send the readings using Serial functions. For example serial.println(angle) and then serial.printl(sensor_reading).
And on the PC side you need to program a loop reading serial messages and painting the dots, as explained in the previous link.
Polar Display I’m actually using a simple serial input graph, linear graph(bar graph actually) to display the values. I’m doing it in processing. It’s ok, but it’s a linear scan and not very realistic in terms of the shape of the room and the line of sight as scanned.
Part of the problem on it is that I don’t know enough about coding to start from scratch. I’ve been able to learn what i have so far by adapting code that i’ve found, having to figure out what it’s doing where to be able to change it. Backwards approach, I know.
I’ve gotta check that instructable linked earlier. Right now my biggest problem is why the movement of the servo is inconsistent when doing sweep and ping.
