Python Serial Talkies, Interface Milestone 2

I tweaked the arduino dartboard interface sketch a little bit and wrote a test python script to talk to the dartboard.  I used PySerial to handle the USB port.  It was easy to implement and is working well so far.

I put a little handshake business in there, but otherwise really trust that everything will work just swell all the time.  It worked almost immediately, so I got to spend a long time fiddling with minutia.  

I let it sit for a couple days and then kept noticing the snipped wires from the dartboard's speaker dangling near the small breadboard that attaches to the dartboards ribbon connector.  So I found the Arduino tones example, wired the speaker to the breadboard, grounding one and sending the other to arduino digital pin 12, through a 100 Ohm resistor and added a generic playMelody procedure in the interface sketch.

// based on the arduino tones example, plays the given melody

void playMelody(int melody[], int noteDurations[], int notecount) {

  // don't even try to play nothin' if we don't got no speaker

  if (HAS_SPEAKER) {

    noTone(SPEAKER_PORT);

    

    // iterate over the notes of the melody:

    for (int thisNote = 0; thisNote < notecount; thisNote++) {

  

      // to calculate the note duration, take one second 

      // divided by the note type.

      //e.g. quarter note = 1000 / 4, eighth note = 1000/8, etc.

      int noteDuration = 1000/noteDurations[thisNote];

      tone(SPEAKER_PORT, melody[thisNote], noteDuration);

  

      // to distinguish the notes, set a minimum time between them.

      // the note's duration + 30% seems to work well:

      int pauseBetweenNotes = noteDuration * 1.30;

      delay(pauseBetweenNotes);

      

      // stop the tone playing:

      noTone(SPEAKER_PORT);

    }

  }

}

Then a playCharge procedure which is called when the interface changes to the play state.

void playCharge() {

  int notes[] = {NOTE_G3, NOTE_C4, NOTE_E4, NOTE_G4, NOTE_E4, NOTE_G4};

  int durations[] = {8, 8, 8, 4, 8, 2};

  int noteCount = 6;

  

  playMelody(notes, durations, noteCount);

}

...

      case IFACE_PLAY:

        if (gameState == IFACE_STOP) {

          gameState = IFACE_PLAY;

          Serial.write(IFACE_PLAY);

          playCharge();

        }

        break;

...

It's totally awesome.

I ordered me a raspberry pi and will be working on the pygame dartboard game engine.