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  • Author Author: ntewinkel
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Gobetwino

ntewinkel

I was watching a conversation on the forum about questions regarding Arduino, which involved connecting Arduino to a Windows-based program named "Gobetwino", and it caught my interest.

 

In a nutshell, Gobetwino is a program that runs on your Windows machine, and waits for commands via the serial port.

You can use your Arduino (or any other micro-controller, or even another computer) to send commands to Gobetwino via the serial port.

 

So I set it up and after a bit of fiddling got it to open NotePad and had it type "Hello World!" into the new NotePad file image

 

Attached are the complete step by step instructions for both sides of the equation, in case anyone is interested.

 

ps, I did this on a WindowsXP machine (in a VirtualBox on Mac actually). The Gobetwino author also recommends XP, so it may not work the same way, or at all, on Vista or 7.

 

Cheers,

-Nico

Attachments:
Gobetwino.rtf
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  • Nico - many thanks for that; I've been meaning to play with Gobetwino for a while now and you gave me the impetus I needed! Now I need to make it do what I want it to do !!

  • in reply to neilk

    You're very welcome, Neil! What is it you are wanting it to do?

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    Hi Nico

     

    I've developed a 2 channel temperature logger which writes  data to an SD card - you may have seen my posts about problems getting the SD card to work, but that's all sorted.

     

    I'm using this to monitor temp inside and outside my greenhouse and, ultimately, to control heating and cooling, but for the moment, just keen to learn how the temperature varies overnight - a maximum/minimum thermometer doesn't really help: It was -2  for how long? 10 mins is not so bad but 2 hours could be!

     

    It's a bit tedious going out to collect the SD card in the mornining, to plug into my PC & view the data in Excel. At the moment I feel that investment in a second Arduino and radio transceivers is a bit over the top....... so I had this idea:

     

    I could run my arduino with gobetwino on my netbook, in the green house, with the netbook on my home network via WiFi, but be opening an Excel file over the network on my desktop in my office and writing the data to it.......it ought to work.

     

    My netbook runs Windows 7. I was intending to see if I could get Gobetwino and your demo to work on the netbook, as a first step.

     

    Does it sound feasible?

     

    I'd appreciate your comments

     

    Neil

  • in reply to neilk

    Hi Neil,

     

    That sounds like a great project! I've been thinking of automating the watering in my greenhouse, but now I'm curious about the temperatures too - you make a good point about the length of the minimum temp.

     

    I think your idea will totally work - let the netbook do the heavy lifting of long distance wireless. And it would be relatively simple to do. It didn't take much for me to open Notepad and write to it, so once you figure out what keystrokes to make for excel (or OpenOffice equivalent) the rest should be just a lather-rinse-repeat process.

    You would have to add the occasional "save" keystroke in there too.

     

    If your greenhouse is really close to the house, you could even use bluetooth to make the serial connection to the gobetwino computer. They sell them on ebay for about $12. They all seem to be class 2 (from what I've seen), which goes max 30 meters, but according to Sir Google it's usually about 10 meters. I bought one not too long ago, and it is very easy to use to set up a serial connection to my Mac (which has built-in bluetooth), and even to my Android. I'll have to try if it will work from the closest window in the house to my greenhouse.

     

    I agree with you on the pricing of adding extra arduinos at about $30 a pop, which is why I've been thinking of porting some of these simple sketches to the TI MSP430, which is only $4.30 (includes shipping even). I bought 2 before element14 sent me an Arduino nano and got me hooked. Two wireless transceivers would be about $5 on eBay. The difficult part would be getting the libraries ported though. I don't own wireless transceivers yet either, so I have no idea how hard or easy they would be to use.

    The MSP430's are nice though, and from what I can tell they will do pretty much everything people tend to do with Arduinos. It even has a built-in temperature sensor, so for the greenhouse project that's one less sensor to hook up. The Eclipse IDE is much more complicated though - thankfully I use the same IDE for much of my other work, but I can see that being a struggle for non-programmers. I'm hoping the community will port the whole Arduino software set to work with those, because they sure are a lot more accessible for people on a budget!

     

    So after all that rambling... yes, I think you have the easiest solution! image

     

    ps, I just noticed that there's a couple of Arduinos on eBay going at just under $20 (after shipping) with no bids, ending in 6 hrs... I'm tempted to buy one, as that would make the wifi easy to test, but how many dev boards can I have before I need an intervention? image  but then again, under $20 means I don't have to deal with customs...

     

    Cheers,

    -Nico

  • in reply to ntewinkel

    Hi Nico

    Thanks for the encouragement!

     

    I'm intending to test Gobetwino on Windows 7 later today. I'll let you know.

     

    The idea of using bluetooth is amazing, especially as my netbook includes a bluetooth component, but I have never used it and, indeed, have no idea how to use it. I've looked on eBay & I will have to pay about £10 GBP - a little more than you - but since they all originate from the far-east, I'm a little hesitant after I got my fingers burnt with a very cheap SD card module.

     

    I guess I will also have to commit to another arduino soon - whilst the one I have is logging data, I can't do any more development work....image

     

    All the best

     

    Neil

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  • in reply to ntewinkel

    Hi Nico

    Thanks for the encouragement!

     

    I'm intending to test Gobetwino on Windows 7 later today. I'll let you know.

     

    The idea of using bluetooth is amazing, especially as my netbook includes a bluetooth component, but I have never used it and, indeed, have no idea how to use it. I've looked on eBay & I will have to pay about £10 GBP - a little more than you - but since they all originate from the far-east, I'm a little hesitant after I got my fingers burnt with a very cheap SD card module.

     

    I guess I will also have to commit to another arduino soon - whilst the one I have is logging data, I can't do any more development work....image

     

    All the best

     

    Neil

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