Using Player Serial Driver to connect to Arduino/Raspberry Pi

[Alinator]

Hello Everyone! I wanted to post this project as I start it so we might work together to figure out the hiccups and possibilities.

I intend to experiment with the Player Serial Driver (which must be enabled by your Tulip CS rep.) to connect to an Arduino and/or RasPi.

My end goal for the Arduino is to use the serial monitor to send and receive signals between the Tulip Player and the Arduino.

Inspiration: One of the units we produce has a functional test to verify a fan is wired correctly to a three-speed switch, the fan has a built-in tachometer. I have already worked out how to connect the fan’s tachometer to the Arduino, but I have been struggling with how to connect the Arduino to Tulip without the gateway. I think this method has a lot of potential.

[Alinator]

So I’ve hit my first hiccup: I’m getting a failure error:

@Kailey do you think this is a driver error or a user error?

[Alinator]

Ok, it was a user error. I had connected then restarted the app without disconnecting.
I realized this because Arduing IDE wouldn’t launch the Serial Monitor on COM5 because it was busy.
I fixed it by closing and re-opening the player. So now I am fairly certain it have connected correctly, but I am not getting the expected response messages…

[Alinator]

Just ignore me. I used /n in the connect trigger. It should have been \n.

[Kailey]

Hey Alistair,

First off, this is awesome!!

I’m glad you worked out those initial hiccups. I’ve actually never connected an Arduino to Tulip using the Serial Driver, as I don’t have a Windows computer, but that’s certainly the right path to take.

Let us know if another roadblock popups, and I can bring in someone who has more experience with connecting arduino/rpi with this driver.

-Kailey

[Alinator]

K, so everything seems to be working as expected: now to develop the fan test sketch and app.
Please forgive the terrible gif, Snagit won’t do the webcam and player at the same time and I don’t have Camtasia.