Archive for the ‘ CG ’ Category
…and a happy new year, from my family to yours.
Arduino + Electronic Brick Chassis V1.1 + Electronic Brick LCD 16*2 + below code = above image.
// It's an Arduino LCD Christmas
// AK Eric - 2009-12-24
#include <LiquidCrystal.h>
LiquidCrystal lcd(10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16);
void setup(){
lcd.begin(16, 2);
lcd.clear();
lcd.print("MERRY CHRISTMAS!");
lcd.setCursor(0,1);
lcd.print(" www.AKEric.com");
}
void loop(){
}
The Electronic Brick Kit
Recently at the Maker Shed I found the ‘Electronic Brick‘ starter kit for Arduino.
The Electronic Brick kit is made by Seeed Studio, (yes, that’s three e’s) you can find it on their homepage here as well. Online docs (pdf) are available for it. In addition to the components in the kit, they sell many others that plug into it.
In a nutshell, it provides a shield for the Arduino, and a bunch of modular plug+play components allowing you to easily prototype simple electronics. The docs show how to integrate these components with Arduino’s programming language. Which is based on Wiring (implemented in C/C++), which in turn is very similar to Processing (Java).
I’d been looking for something like this for some time: I’ve been wanting to make some more interesting things with my Arduino, but trying to by hand solder all the required components takes more time and know-how than I want to currently invest. Plug+play = good. And a nice project over the Christmas break 
The Arduino!
Since I’m teaching myself Java, and recently installed Jython, I thought it would be interesting to compare the two for authoring swing UI’s. To aid in this development, I got the PyDev plugin for Eclipse installed, allowing for me to use Eclipse as an IDE for Jython and Python, nice. FYI, I am by no means an expert at swing, or Java. But the examples do work
Both examples display identical “Hello World!” window.
Here’s the Jython:
# texttest.py
from javax.swing import *
from java.awt import *
class TextTest(JFrame):
def __init__(self):
JFrame.__init__(self, "TextTest")
self.setSize(256, 128)
self.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE)
pane = HelloPane()
self.add(pane)
self.setVisible(True)
class HelloPane(JPanel):
def paintComponent(self, comp):
f = Font("Arial", Font.PLAIN, 32)
comp.setFont(f)
comp.drawString("Hello World!", 32, 64)
if __name__ == "__main__":
tt = TextTest()
And here’s the Java:
// TextTest.java
import javax.swing.*;
import java.awt.*;
public class TextTest extends JFrame {
public TextTest() {
super("TextTest");
setSize(256, 128);
setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
HelloPane pane = new HelloPane();
add(pane);
setVisible(true);
}
public static void main(String[] arguments) {
TextTest frame = new TextTest();
}
}
class HelloPane extends JPanel {
public void paintComponent(Graphics comp) {
Graphics2D comp2D = (Graphics2D)comp;
Font f = new Font("Arial", Font.PLAIN, 32);
comp2D.setFont(f);
comp2D.drawString("Hello World!", 32, 64);
}
}
As I delve deeper into my new ‘Learning Java Book‘, I continue to miss Python more and more. Not that I don’t find Java an impressive language; it’s amazing what us humans can come up with. But considering I learned Python first, Java (and every other languange I’ve ran into) seem… less desirable in comparison. I know them’s fightin’ words in some parts, but hey, this is my blog.
I’d known about Jython for some time, but it finally clicked in my head: Why not try it? It’s Java, but it acts like Python. After an easy download and installation, I fired up it’s ‘jython.bat’ file (on WinXP) and there before me was the Python (er… I mean Jython) prompt. It was an eerie feeling using an interactive Jython shell to import ‘javax.swing’ and make a simple UI, but it worked flawlessly. And so much easier than having to jump through all those Java hoops requiring you to make extraneous classes, etc.
From an online tutorial:
Thus creates:
I’m not sure where Jython will take me, but it sure makes me warm up to Java more Next step will be to get it running in Eclipse…
Got to make use of some 40% off coupons at Barnes & Nobel today:
