Best Pololu product for analog input

[DavidEGrayson]

I’m glad you like the Maestro so much!

We don’t have a USB SDK for the Wixel because none of the apps have a native USB interface like the Maestro’s. Most of them emulate a virtual COM port. This virtual COM port is just like the Maestro’s Command Port and TTL Port, which are probably /dev/ttyACM0 and /dev/ttyACM1 on your computer. There is no need for an SDK because almost every programming language has a way of sending and receiving bytes from a serial port. To see how to do it with C in Linux, check out this post:

How to read the command Get Moving Status

Okay, I think I have a linux solution for you. You need to put the terminal into “raw mode” using the tcsetattr() function so that it does not wait for a newline character before actually sending the bytes. Here is a complete program that works for me: #include <fcntl.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <termios.h> int main() { int fd = open("/dev/ttyACM0", O_RDWR | O_NOCTTY); char message[] = {161}; unsigned char buf[2]; struct termios options; if (fd == -1) { …

That code was written for the Maestro, but the methods shown for opening a serial port and sending and receiving bytes on it are general.

If you try the thing I suggested about having dummy inputs tied to ground, let me know how well it works!

–David