[Upcycle It] Interactive Race Car Driver - Indicators - Offline testing with node and mraaStub

16 May 2017

For my indicators, I wanted a simple function that would blink them 5 times then stop. I found a suitable piece of code on Stack Overflow which did the same thing for some flashing text and ported it across to node. However, I did not have the Edison to hand so pondered how I would test it. A quick google found mraaStub a mock version of mraa that you can use on platforms that don't have mraa hardware. I installed this and discovered that it needs a logging package called "winston" which I also installed. I also had to tweak the mraaStub library so that it would log by default. My version can be found at https://github.com/Workshopshed/UpcyclingDesignChallenge/tree/master/mraaStub

//Simple function to test the indicator

var platform = require('os').platform();
var m;

if (platform === 'win32') {
    m = require('mraaStub'); //also needs winston
} else {
    m = require('mraa');
}

var myLed = new m.Gpio(13); //LED hooked up to digital pin 13 (or built in pin on Galileo Gen1 & Gen2)
myLed.dir(m.DIR_OUT); //set the gpio direction to output

function indicate() {
    var count = 1;
    var ledState = true;
    var intervalId = setInterval(function() {
        myLed.write(ledState?1:0);
        ledState = !ledState;
                if (count++ >= 10) {
                clearInterval(intervalId);
            }
    }, 500);
};

indicate();

Here's how it looks in Visual Studio Code when it is running.