Hi guys,
Firstly, i must admit i am no programmer! i am a graphics designer by trade and so am finding all this coding crazyness quite taxing.
i have one relatively simple question, which im sure one of you can answer…
Im looking to use Flash to create a user interface where someone on a different machine, using a joystick, can send commands over to my USB servo controller on a seperate machine. ill worry about all the flash stuff, but what im wondering, is there any way (either step by step tutorial, or a freely available bit of coding/programming i can bastardise) that i can read this data table with servo values, and then send this to the servo controller.
The whole process of reading the table, moving the servos, then looking back at the data table to see if any changes have occured needs to be as near real time as i can get, im trying to create something for a project to show how a low cost system could be deployed to investigate and possibly detonate IED’s and other potential risks.
Thanks very much to anyone who can help me out this bind!
Cheers,
Oliver : 
Hello.
You would need to do something like make a TCP server on the machine connected to the Maestro then connect to it via a Socket in Flash.
- Ryan
hi ryan,
cheers for the reply, im looking into using sockets to send the information now.
But im now wondering, once i have a system using sockets to send the information to the other machine, is there any pre-existing program that i can use to take that information and make the maestro move the servo’s, or will i have to produce that bit myself? with all the enthusiasts using these bits of kit, i would think there would be something like this already out there?
Hello.
Unfortunately, I do not know of any TCP-to-Maestro bridge like you would need, so you would probably have to produce that bit yourself. If you could find some generic TCP server that can run arbitrary commands on your computer, you would be most of the way there.
- Ryan
Have you seen the “Writing PC Software to Control the Maestro” section of the Maestro user’s guide?
pololu.com/docs/0J40/8
You could write a program in C# based on our example code in the Pololu USB SDK. The socket programming would be up to you, but there are libraries in the .NET framework that make it easy to use sockets.
Alternatively you could write a program (in any language) that runs UscCmd (the Maestro’s command-line utility) whenever it needs to set a servo target.
If Flash is capable of sending binary data on its sockets, you could probably use a pre-existing TCP-to-COM-port bridge program and avoid writing any software on the computer that controls the Maestro. Just be sure to set the Maestro’s Serial Mode to “USB Dual Port”.
–David
Hi guys,
Thanks very much for the responses, its helped me get a good idea of a direction to take this in!
i would like to stay operating within flash as much as i can, so ill see if i can investigate theability to send binary data through sockets, and report my findings back!
