Thursday, 31 May 2012

Movin' Out

Moving upwards and outwards by installing the IDE on my iMac and (I hope) getting the files all on my dropbox account so I can see them from wherever. This gives me a chance to document the process.

Go to http://arduino.cc/en/Main/Software and download the Mac OS X software (v1.01 today). Open the zip file and move Arduino.app to the applications folder. Run it.

Open preferences and set the sketchbook location to ...dropbox/Arduino.

Go to adafruit for the individual product shields (e.g. http://www.adafruit.com/products/243) and get the relevant libraries (e.g. today I got SD, RTClib, AFMotor, and AccelStepper). Download the zip from the github site, then copy the unzipped directory into the ...dropbox/Arduino/libraries directory. Rename the copied library to its base name, e.g. ...dropbox/Arduino/libraries/SD/.

Restart the Arduino App so it can find the libraries. This would be a good time to add it to the launch bar, or wherever.

Make sure to set Tools/Board to the Arduino UNO (or as appropriate) and Tools/Serial to /dev/tty.usbmodemfd141 (or as appropriate).

Once that was done the new installation appears to be working like a charm and the screen real estate available makes the environment much more usable!

Now for the question of how to turn a PWM output into a fairly stable voltage output. I seem to remember something about RC circuits being involved, a load resistor and an adequate capacitor to smooth it. I'll puzzle it out.

http://arduino-info.wikispaces.com/Arduino-PWM-Frequency has something to say about PWM, but it looks like the suggestions mess up other timekeeping functions on the board.

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