[Bf-committers] GSoC - BGE Particle System or Arduino API

[Stephen Swaney]

On Tue, Apr 23, 2013 at 06:55:20PM +0200, Jeroen Bakker wrote:
> Hi Trevor,
> 
> Arduino in Blender seems nice, but we have some questions.
> 
> The Arduino API seems to depend on Java (JRE) and GCC. These libraries 
> are not installed with Blender userbase. Having Arduino as part of 
> Blender core would also make Blender depending on these components.
> What are your ideas about that?

Blender and Arduino can connect easily via the Python pyserial module.
Serial communication is already on board the Arduino.

With add-on circuit boards, the Arduino can also connect via Ethernet.
Python includes socket libraries for TCP and UDP sockets.

> Secondly, where in Blender do you want to make the Arduino data 
> available? and how would this work?

Reading/writing to various sensors and effectors is low-level
programming and very device specific.

Just thinking out loud, I would do this as a BPy add-on and write
methods to create and move or modify Blender objects in response to
the incoming data.  The device specific nature of the data suggests
these methods would be very general purpose and would need an
application-specific layer to talk with the device. (think ISO layered
networking model)

S.
-- 
Stephen Swaney		sswaney at centurytel.net