serial comms between Java app and MSP430

[G0XAR 19]

Hi everyone and a happy new year to you all,

 

I am pretty much a beginner at this so bare with me. I want to write a GUI user interface running on a host computer which will gather parameters, validate them and pass them to the MSP430 which will then use them to control a DDS chip. I'll be programming the MSP430 in Energia and I was hoping to use Java on the host computer, in this case a Mac Mini running OS/X and do the programming in the Netbeans IDE. The reason I chose Java is that it seems to be cross platform and it's not overly complex. 

 

However there does not seem to be a standard serial comms library in the Netbeans package. Most people seem to use a plug in called RXTX but I can't seem to find a way to install it that works. 

 

Now I am sure that other people must be doing this sort of thing every day. I am quite happy to abandon Java if there is something more suitable. Any suggestions...?

 

TIA,

 

Steve

[bluehash 1,581]

Could you work with QT? I think that is a much better package.

[G0XAR 19]

THanks Bluehash, I'll take a look. 

[RichardVowles 12]

If you are familiar with Java, I'd recommend that you use Griffon - it uses the JVM and Groovy to make a nice IDE development environment. If you use Jetbrain's free IDEA community edition, you get the latest Groovy support as well, Netbeans appears to have been back-burnered by Oracle. 

 

The libraries are easy to get and use - if you just download the Arduino IDE, install it, right click on the Arduino IDE and choose Show Package Contents, in Contents/Resources/Java you'll find the library you need - librxtxSerial.jnilib and the necessary JAR file - RXTXcomm.jar 

 

You can check the architectures supported under Mac OS by typing

 

file librxtxSerial.jnilib

 

into the terminal window when in that directory. 

 

The examples on how to actually use the RXTX library are here:

 

http://rxtx.qbang.org/wiki/index.php/Examples

[Lgbeno 189]

My other suggestion would be using python and QT. I'm a pretty novice software guy but found this to be very easy. I could even point you to some sample code that I have on github if interested.

[RobG 1,892]

I've used RXTX some time ago and one of the annoying things was port discovery.

[Lgbeno 189]

Here's my project directory,

 

C code for msp430:

https://github.com/lgbeno/BLDC-Booster/tree/master/firmware/src

See serial.c

 

Python code for GUI:

https://github.com/lgbeno/BLDC-Booster/tree/master/python

See bldc_booster_api.py for serial comms portion

See bldc_booster_app.py for the GUI code

 

The bldc_booster.ui file is the design file from QT designer which is the run through a script to automatically create bldc_booster_ui.py

 

[yyrkoon 250]

Possibly C# and Mono. I say possibly because since I do not use OSX, I am unsure of the support for mono on a Mac. Last I read however, Mono seemed to be very well supported in most (all?) Linux variants  Under windows however the .NET base class library has very easy to use communication classes. With all kinds of useful information all over the web.. There is no reason why mono should be any different( although I must admit to not having used mono).

[jpnorair 340]

OTcom is QT-based logger & commander that is particularly designed to use the NDEF data formatting, as well as OpenTag filesystem & logger messages.  You can download the code from sourceforge, if you want to try a QT-based tool.

 

Personally, I think QT is alright.  If you are familiar with C/C++ development, it's probably better than any of the other options mentioned here, although there is still some learning curve.  If you don't care about Windows, you can just use POSIX & Std C (or C++), and then make the GUI in QT.  That will cover Linux, Mac, and even many devices (e.g. iOS, Android).