Arduino on Firmata

Its in the palette now.

Is it possible to change the Baud Rate? I’m running into issues when I go into the component and change the Baud Rate on the Serial Dat

Hey folks,

Would anyone be able to confirm whether or not the Firmata.tox (from the palette) will work with the Circuit Playground Express board running Firmata?

learn.adafruit.com/circuit-play … a/overview

Also, it appears that the Firmata main site is down, maybe has been for a while?
firmata.org/wiki/Main_Page

Any tips or pointers on how to get sensor data from this board into Touch would be appreciated. Thanks :slight_smile:

-Casey

I am having trouble with the firmata componant from the pallette manager. I am trying to simply switch a digital pin on and off. I have selected mode as output for the pin in the pin modes tab, and have connected to the correct serial port. I even see my little arduino blink when i toggle the serial connection. This seems to happen on multiple arduinos (tried on two micros and two megas) with different usb cords and with both the current and older versions of standard firmata.

Any ideas?



Has anyone had any luck with getting firmata->Report Digital Pins to work ? ‘Report Analog Pins’ is reporting the analog pin values correctly, but ‘Report Digital Pins’ doesn’t seem to update ever. The actual firmata functionality is working fine and I’m able to set the values of my output pins no problem. When I try and monitor ‘Output 2 (CHOP) Digital’ the values just remain at 0.

TD 099: Non-Commercial 64-Bit Build 2019.15230
I’m using the default firamta tox that comes in the palette menu.

Hey,

which Arduino Board are you using? I know there are problems with the Mega…

Cheers
Markus

An issue I’m encountering is that the serial DAT’s active parameter export is not working. When I disable/enable the export from null1 to serial1, everything works again. Also switching that export to a reference fixes it as well…

I’m on Mac OSX 10.14.5 and build 2019.15840

I also discovered another issue, it may be the reason that servo’s aren’t totally working…

on line 271 of the firmata extension, values are multiplied by 360. Typically, the arduino servo library expects 0-180.

Hi Lidphi,

Did you manage to solve this problem? I am experiencing similar issues, th leds on the Arduino board respond, but no response in the PinValues DAT.

Any help is much appreciated!
Rob R.

Hi Rob,

I’ve rebuild the firmata component - it will be published with an upcoming build but if you like give it a try:
firmata.tox (9.2 KB)

Best
Markus

1 Like

Wow hey Markus!

Good to hear from you, 'll give it a spin.

thnx!!

Rob

1 Like

Hi guys,

I did some testing and I run into a couple of things.

1 Both with the palette and the new tox file I can not store the pinmodes, they are initialised by the board when it connects tot TD isn’t it? Can this be avoided? (perhaps in the Arduino sketch?) it is a hassle when implemented in an installation.
2 I need to switch on and off both the "Report digital and analog pins"a couple of times before they start responding.
3 Once disconnected, the Uno does not respond anymore after reattaching and resetting or restarting TD, a full reboot is required.

I’ll do some more testing and come back later, any comments are welcome.

Rob R.

Hey @rot8ion,

thanks for checking through this a bit. The new component is suppose to save the pinmodes and upload them when a board connects - I’ll double check why this is not happening for you.

I’ll investigate your other issues but have not experienced them like this.
Can I ask what TouchDesigner version you are on atm?

Best
Markus

The build I am on is 2020.20625

Thnx for looking into it!

Hi Markus,

Any progress so far?

Best,

Rob

Hi @rot8ion,

hm - so I tested here with a Arduino Duemilanove. The Pin Modes and Pin States are saved in the component and on connection of a board are written to the board.
The Reporting works for me as well…
I remember having an UNO, will try to find it at the office next time i’m there.

Sorry for the long response time…
Cheers
Markus

Hi Markus,

Thanks for the reply. If another Arduino board does the trick I am more than happy to buy one. A little research shows that a Duemilanove is hard to get since they were produced in 2009. I am doing some research tot find out the difference with an Uno, and why pin states are not written to the board I have. Maybe another, more recent, Arduino will also work? Help with that is still more than welcome! :).

Best,
Rob

Hi @rot8ion,

same here - ordered an UNO to see why it’s behaving differently!
One thing I had to do for the Duemilanove was install a separate driver - also might hint to different behavior when disconnecting.

Best
Markus

Hi @rot8ion,

soooo - got a UNO today and phewww - lot’s of debugging and we are looking into issues connected to the Serial DAT. Please stay tuned…

The Duemilanove uses a different driver - so while some underlying issues are still present - it works for most cases hence I didn’t catch the error before.

Best
Markus

Hey everyone,

at the Berlin Roundtable I just said I would upload the latest firmata component - neglecting the need for the Serial DAT fix which will come with the next official release - but that should be pretty shortly.

cheers
Markus

1 Like