|
Home
| pfodApps/pfodDevices
| WebStringTemplates
| Java/J2EE
| Unix
| Torches
| Superannuation
|
| About
Us
|
|
|
pfodDesignerV2™
|
by Matthew Ford 4th June 2016 (originally
posted 28th August 2014)
© Forward Computing and
Control Pty. Ltd. NSW Australia
All rights reserved.
The example project shown here is suitable for complete beginners. No coding experience is required. Part 1 of this tutorial does not require any soldering. Once you have finished this tutorial you will be able to design whatever menus you need to switch Arduino outputs on and off. When you have completed the second part of this tutorial, Simple Home Automation for Beginners, you will be able to switch real things on and off from your Android mobile, via relays connected to Arduino's digital outputs.
The first part of this two part tutorial that shows you how to use the free pfodDesignerV2 available on GooglePlay to design Android menus to switch Ardunio outputs on and off from your Android mobile, without you having to write any program code at all.
The menus are completely customizable. You can change the text, color and font size as well as selecting the Arduino output to be controlled. All using the pfodDesignerV2 running on your Android mobile. The pfodDesignerV2 gives you an exact preview of how your menu will display when you connect using pfodApp . No Android Programming is required.
When you have finished designing your menu, the pfodDesignerV2 generates a complete, well commented, Arduino sketch that will implement your menu and allow you to turn the outputs on and off via your mobile using the pfodApp (via bluetooth or wifi). No Arduino Programming is required.
As part of the design you specify which digital output each On/Off Toggle button is connected to. Arduino digital pins can be configured as either inputs or outputs. The code generated by the pfodDesignerV2 configures the selected pins as outputs. When configured as an output, an Arduino digital pin can be either High or Low. On an Uno, when it is High, the pin supplies +5V (Vcc) and less than 40mA. On Arduino boards Vcc is either +5V or +3.3V depending on board. When the output pin is set to Low, it grounds anything you connect to the pin and can drain away less than 40mA. These outputs have enough power to drive a led or a reed relay, but not enough to directly drive the 5V relay coil of a power relay so in Part 2 of this tutorial will look at connecting a relay board to the outputs to switch real things on and off.
On/Off
Toggle buttons switch the Arduino output between +Vcc and GND each
time they are clicked or you can slide the slider left or right. When
the toggle button's slide is on the left side, the output is Low
(GND), when it is to the right the output is High (+Vcc). The
pfodDesignerV2 also lets you add plain buttons. See Android
menu buttons for Arduino made Simple for a tutorial on using
plain menu buttons.
This project is suitable for complete beginners but you need complete a few tasks before you start. You need to first set up the Arduino IDE, install pfodDesignerV2 and make sure you can transfer the final sketch (code file), that pfodDesignerV2 produces, from your mobile to your computer.
a) Install the Arduino IDE for your computer's operating system from Getting Started with Arduino and work through the example of compiling and running the Blink example.
b) Install the free pfodDesignerV2 app on your Android mobile.
c) Check that you are able to transfer files from your mobile to your computer either via a USB cable or a file transfer app such as WiFi File Transfer. See pfodAppForAndroidGettingStarted.pdf for more details.
The pfodDesignerV2 is free so you
can do most of this tutorial with just that pfodDesignerV2 on your
Android mobile. But if you want to actually switch something on or
off you will need some hardware and the pfodApp.
Here is a complete parts
list for Part 1.
You need an Arduino board. The tutorial
uses an Arduino Uno.
You need a wifi or bluetooth shield,
connected via a serial connection, so your Android mobile can connect
to the Uno. This tutorial uses iteadstudio
BT Shield (Slave) which connects via Serial at 9600
baud.
Finally to test your design, you need to download
pfodApp
from GooglePlay
to connect your Android mobile to the Uno via the bluetooth (or wifi)
shield and display the menu you have designed for you to control the
Arduino outputs. See pfodAppForAndroidGettingStarted.pdf
for how to set up a bluetooth connection in pfodApp.
In Part 2 you will be adding relays to actually switch things on and off.
This tutorial will design a custom menu on an Android phone to control the low voltage light and pump of a fish tank. Here is what the final menu will look like, but you can choose your own text and colors and font sizes using the pfodDesignerV2.
Download and install pfodDesignerV2 from GooglePlay.
On opening pfodDesignerV2 you will be presented with the Start new Menu button. Each screen also has a Help button.
or
if you have already started a menu you will also see an option to
Edit existing Menu
Clicking
the Start new Menu
button displays a list of operations available for the new menu. A
new menu is created with no buttons and a default menu name,
Menu_1
Click
Preview Menu
to see what the current design looks like. No buttons yet, just some
default prompt text at the bottom.
Use the mobile's back button to go back to the Editing screen to edit the default prompt to something more useful.
Click on Edit Prompt to open the Editing Menu Prompt screen. The prompt is the text displayed to the user at the bottom of the scrollable list of menu buttons. In the Editing Menu Prompt screen a preview of the prompt is shown at the bottom of the screen.
Click
Edit prompt text
and set the text to “Fish Tank Control” with a newline
between 'Tank' and 'Control'.
Click
the tick box to accept these changes and re-display the Editing
Menu Prompt screen with the updated
prompt text.
Then
set the font size to <+7>, font colour to Aqua, background
colour to Navy and set Bold.
Use the mobile's back button to go
back to the Editing
screen and click Add Menu Item
to add the first button to this menu. This will display the following
choices:-
There
are a number of different types of menu items. In this tutorial we
are using Output On/Off or Pulse menu item that switches a digital
output pin on an Arduino board, so select the Output On/Off or Pulse
item. See Android
menu buttons for Arduino made Simple for a tutorial on using
plain menu buttons. See Design
a Custom Menu System for a tutorial that uses the Sub-menu
item.
Selecting the
Output On/Off or Pulse option opens the Editing
Menu Item screen for the item just
added.
The “Low” state sets the Arduino output to zero Volts, while the “High” state sets the output to the Arduino +Vcc, usually +5 or +3.3V depending on the Arduino board. Uno boards are +5V.
The
text displayed on the button consists of the Leading Text followed by
the current state followed by the Trailing text. So for the default
leading text of “Output is” and a current setting of Low
and the default empty Trailing text, the button will display “Output
is Low”. You can edit all these texts to suit your own use.
You can move the preview's slider left or right to change the current setting in the preview, but it is easier to just click anywhere in the button to see how it toggles.
This On/Off toggle button controls a particular Arduino digital output pin. Click the Not connected to an I/O pin. button to set the pin you want to control. You can click on that button to change the pin. In this tutorial, the Pump button will be connected to D4 and the Light button will be connected to D5. So click on the connected to .. to open the following screen.
Select
D4 from this list and the screen will close and re display the
Editing Menu Item
screen
with the updated pin.
You
can also change the initial state the output starts in when the power
is applied to the board or after the reset is pressed. Leave this
setting as Low for now.
You can scroll down to see more options for changing this menu item.
Now
finish designing this menu item by editing the leading text to “Pump
is ” and edit the Low text to “Stopped” and edit
the High text to “Running”. Note the space at the end of
“Pump is “. Set the font size to <+4> and the
background to Green.
This
completes the first button. You can click on the Pump button to see
how it will look when it toggles between Stopped and Running.
Use the mobile's back button to go back to the Editing Menu screen and select Preview Menu to see what the menu looks like with this button.
If
you don't like the way it looks you can click on the “Pump is”
button to open its Editing Menu Item
screen and modify it. If you want to change the prompt you need to go
back to the Editing Menu
screen and choose the Change Prompt option.
When you are satisfied go back to the Editing Menu screen and choose Add Menu Item to add another Output On/Off or Pulse button to control the aquarium light.
Change the Connected to pin.. to D5. Edit the leading text to “Light is “. Edit Low text to “Off” and the High text to “On”. Set the font size to <+4> and the background colour to Green.
Now
when you go back to Editing Menu
and choose Preview Menu
you can see how the final menu will look on pfodApp.
From the Editing Menu screen you can also change the order of the buttons in the menu and delete unneeded buttons as well as changing the menu name. The menu name is for your use only. It is shown in the list of Existing Menus. It is not displayed to the user.
Now that you have finished the design you can click Generate Code to open the Generate Code Menu.
From
this menu you can change which hardware the generated code will
target and for serial connections what baud rate it will run at. You
need to set these depending on the Arduino board/shield you are using
and which pins the bluetooth or wifi shield is connected to. Clicking
Change Target gives these options
For
the Uno board used in this tutorial with the Itead
Studio BT Shield (Slave) the defaults of Serial and 9600 are
correct.
When you have set
the serial and baud rate click the Write Code to file
button to generate the complete
Arduino sketch. This button writes the sketch to the file,
/pfodAppRawData/pfodDesignerV2.txt on
your mobile and displays the last 4k bytes in a screen.
You can exit pfodDesignerV2 now, your design has been
saved and is available under “Edit existing Menu”.
You
MUST exit the pfodDesignerV2 to ensure the last block of code is
written to the file.
Connect your mobile to your computer and turn on the USB Storage, or use a Wifi File Transfer App to access your mobile's storage from your computer. (See pfodAppForAndroidGettingStarted.pdf for more details) Note: pfodDesignerV2 cannot access the SD card to save the generated code while it is being accessed by the computer as USB Storage, so turn of USB Storage before running the pfodDesignerV2 again.
Navigate to /pfodAppRawData and open the pfodDesignerV2.txt in a text editor (such as WordPad). The pfodDesignerV2.txt file is over written each time you click “Generate Code”, so it always contains the most recently generated code.
Open
the Arduino IDE and make a new sketch, delete any code from the
sketch window and then copy and past the generated code into the
Arduino IDE.
A copy of the
generated code is here.
The
generated code is a complete sketch which includes a copy of the
pfodParser
library code so you don't need to install any extra libraries.
All the code need to turn the Arduino output pins on and off when you
click the button in the pfodApp on your mobile is included in the
generated sketch.
Compile and Upload the sketch to your Uno board. Remember to remove the bluetooth shield first as it is connected the the same pins (D0 and D1) as the USB.
Set the switches on the Itead Studio bluetooth shield. Set the 3.3V/5V switch to 5V and set the To FT232/To Board switch to To Board.
and
plug it into the Uno.
Install
pfodApp
from GooglePlay
and set up a bluetooth connection to the itead bluetooth shield, as
described in pfodAppForAndroidGettingStarted.pdf.
On connecting to the Uno + Bluetooth Shield, pfodApp will display your designed menu. To test the menu take the longest leg of one of the Red Leds and bend it up and twist one end of a 330ohm resistor around it. Then plug the remaining (shortest) leg of the Led into one of the GND pins and plug the other end of the resistor into D4. Do the same for D5 with another Led and resistor.
Now as you click the On/Off toggle buttons on your mobile the leds will turn on and off.
This completes the tutorial. Simple Home Automation for Beginners will look at attaching relays to these outputs so that you can switch real things on and off, but pfodApp can do much more than this.
The pfod protocol is a rich but simple one and contains much more then just simple menus. Check out the full pfodSpecification.pdf for all the details and examples. Also see www.pfod.com.au for numerous example projects. All the screens used by the pfodDesignerV2 are standard pfod screens. The pfodDesignerV2 is just a pfodApp connected to a back-end that keeps track of your selections and serves up the requested screens. From the pfodDesignerV2 you can use the mobile's menu button to open the Debug View to see what pfod messages are being sent to generate the pfodDesignerV2 screens and what commands are sent back by your actions.
AndroidTM is a trademark of Google Inc. For use of the Arduino name see http://arduino.cc/en/Main/FAQ
The General Purpose Android/Arduino Control App.
pfodDevice™ and pfodApp™ are trade marks of Forward Computing and Control Pty. Ltd.
Contact Forward Computing and Control by
©Copyright 1996-2020 Forward Computing and Control Pty. Ltd.
ACN 003 669 994
