LiveCode Forums.

Hi all,

I encountered this issue before when I tried to write a LiveCode app to interface to an Arduino. LiveCode constantly crashed, refused to open the driver, etc... I eventually solved the issue by downgrading to LiveCode 6.

Unfortunately, I'm now on a 64-bit GNU/Linux computer, and LiveCode 6 doesn't run on 64-bit GNU/Linux.

What I need to do is have read / write support for a simple serial device. I had hoped this would be easy. It's not.

The eventual program will be cross platform, but for now I'm just trying to get it to work in *both* LiveCode 7 and 8, on GNU/Linux. The serial device appears as '/dev/ttyACM0', and data can be transmitted received using a text editor! Open the text editor to see what was last received, save some text into the file to transmit. LiveCode does not work with this. It can write data, but it cannot read it. It just returns empty. Opening the /dev/ttyACM0 file in a text editor shows that the data has been sent (and subsequently clears the buffer that should have been cleared when LiveCode read the data).

Can anyone advise for a simple, cross-platform method of serial? Python can do this easily (I've tried it), but I do want to stay with LiveCode, even for a bit longer...
Thanks,
Andrew

Andrew.

I use a gadget (USB Service Plus, by Boenig and Kallenbach) to interface LC with the real world, but did not know there was a way to do so with Arduino. Is there a framework for this?

Craig Newman

Not a framework as such, just the Arduino serial printing data which can then be received from LiveCode through "open driver..." command.

I've found a solution. I don't particularly like it (and I'm not looking forward to working with an alternative for Windows), but I can just use the shell() command with 'cat' and 'echo' to read / write serial data.

It makes me think, though, that serial is one of the areas that LiveCode seriously underperforms. I'm dreaming I know, but once the LC team have some free time, a new serial library would be nice... (like the new socket / sound / vector libraries that are coming).

Hi,

andrewferguson wrote:Unfortunately, I'm now on a 64-bit GNU/Linux computer, and LiveCode 6 doesn't run on 64-bit GNU/Linux.

Oooops? I know it's off topic, but I got the latest 6.* STABLE running on 64-bit Solus. Only - it doesn't display any fonts yet, like shown here by Richmond.

Seems all that's lacking is 32-bit libpango, and it isn't available for Solus :/
Maybe your distribution has it, or you can make yourself a package?

Have fun!

You can do the same thing as your text editor does by using "open file" instead instead of "open driver". Then just treat the com port as a file, and read and write to it. See "open file" in the dictionary.

Hi Jacque,

Thanks for the advice, but for some reason that didn't work (no idea why, opening the file for write and writing data to the device worked fine...). Anyway, now the device is refusing to send any data to the /dev/ttyACM0 file - just my luck! I can still receive data through 'screen /dev/ttyACM0 115200', but not through the file!

But that's not a LiveCode issue, so I shouldn't go around moaning here...

All the best,
Andrew

6.7.10 runs superbly on Xubuntu 15.10 64 bit.

Mind you: why bother, when there's "7", and, in due course "8" ?

LC 6.7 does indeed run on 64-bit linux. You have to install the ia32lib libraries first (or later) in order to run any 32-bit binary.

FWIW this serial bug has been fixed in LC 9.5rc1:
https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=12315