I’m using an external program called Boardmaker to control an AL5D arm and I’m having trouble with multiple instances of the program being launched. After the first time RIOS can’t detect the card anymore.
The user can click a button in Boardmaker to launch the program and play a particular project (I used the arguments play “Project Name” play). Is there a way to tell the program to close after playing a project? Or will I need to use a programming language to control the arm?
I don’t have RIOS, but I looked at the commandline section of the user guide. It looks like actions described are for opening RIOS and running a script. There appears to be no feature to auto close RIOS after the script is completed, and per your comments, it appears that RIOS does not check to see if an instance of RIOS is already running to perform the commandline actions prior to opening another instance of RIOS. If there is another update in the future maybe these considerations will be addressed to broaden the range of situations where RIOS can be used. Perhaps a simple console version can be developed just for interacting with other programs. Till then you may be able to generate the desired actions in RIOS and then develop an alternative method of executing the developed scripts.
As I recall RIOS has a socket layer now where you can send it commands to do stuff from another application. As a potential interim solution is there a command line tool available that would open a socket to RIOS, send a command, and then exit?
OT question to gokugirl, is the boardmaker application you are using the same one used to make adaptive touch screen menus for disabled people or something else called the same name?
It’s the same one. Boardmaker is set up for scanning access in this case. The arm is acting as a “robotic playmate” by interacting with a toy. It’s a summer research project.
I’ve considered using a programming language like C++ but I’m not 100% sure that I understand how commands would be sent. I’m not responsible for the programming, actually, just the interface.
Thanks for the suggestion. I’m only going to do that if it’s absolutely necessary, though. We’re almost done with the project and we only have about five more weeks. I was hoping for a relatively simple solution since we still have a paper to write, but I should have known better.
If you post the specific details of your project (ie, what functions does the arm have to perform, and how are these functions to be controlled from the touch screen) you may get suggestions that would save time and effort.
