Hi, i’m trying my hand at this new project but need some software advise.
I’ve used basic stamp before and that was straightforward 'cos they had a software for all the uploads to the chip.
This time round, i’m intending on getting the Qik 2s9v1 and a sparkful usb/serial breakout board (since the company i’m getting the qik from don’t have the pololu one.
But, after i connect everything up and the usb to my computer, what do i use to send commands to the controller?
C/C++? visual studio? short of hyperterminalling, ya. what software can be used?
If you just want a quick way to send commands to the qik, you can use our serial transmitter program, which is similar to using hyperterm but much more convenient for sending packets of bytes. Just type the byte values in the text boxes and click Send.
If you want to write your own custom software, .NET makes it pretty easy with its SerialPort object. Take a look at Colin Karpfinger’s tutorial on using the Pololu Servo Controller in .NET, which shows you how to write a C# program that sends serial byte packets.
Finally, you might want to check out our sample C# program for communicating with the TReX and TReX Jr, which provides C# code that sends and receives serial data (this last part might be useful since the qik returns data in response to some commands). Note that the TReX can potentially have a serial echo due to its RS-232 circuit, so this program has extra code to identify and discard this echo. The qik has no such serial echo, so you can ignore/remove all parts of the code that have to do with the serialEcho variable.
Hopefully these resources will be enough to get you started, but please ask if you have any questions or need something explained in more detail.
