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kinian

Mon May 19, 2008 10:32 am


Controlling a robot with the arrow keys through the paralleput function?

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I have been assigned a project to control a robot with two motors which are connected to the computer with the parallel port cable.

I must find a way to control the robot with the arrow keys, (so forward, back, left, right, and a combination of those).

I need some help corresponding the parallelput function with user-input arrow keys (this would be implemented into the GUI) . How would I go about creating something like this? 

Thank you for your help in advance.


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kinian

Wed May 21, 2008 5:10 pm


Re: Controlling a robot with the arrow keys through the paralleput function?

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bump


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HeavenAgain

Wed May 21, 2008 5:27 pm


RE:Controlling a robot with the arrow keys through the paralleput function?

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i am assuming you would use 4 pins from your cable to set this up

that being said, you need to understand how does parallelput work in binary, which i think is 8 bits of info (for 8 pins) and you will need 4 of those, you could set it up like
0000 00 00
     LL RR
0000 00 00
     FB FBwhere L is left, R is right, F is forward and B is backward

the rest all comes down to your coding, with loop and ifs, just like how you normally make a game (if you've never made a game with arrow keys, look up on the submission or tutorial to help you out)


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kinian

Sat May 24, 2008 8:24 pm


Re: Controlling a robot with the arrow keys through the paralleput function?

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I don't really understand what you meant by your code, could you elaborate a bit?

This is what I have so far, I've decided to use the Input.KeyDown (key) command, but I can't seem to correspond it to the "KEY_UP_ARROW" :

setscreen ("graphics:max;max;title:The Robot Vehicle Controller")
setscreen ("nocursor")

var key : array char of boolean
var answer : string
var font : int

font := Font.New ("serif:42")
Draw.Text ("Welcome to the Turing Robot Controller Program", 100, 800, font, magenta)
delay (700)
font := Font.New ("serif:30")
Draw.Text ("Use the arrow keys of the keyboard to control the Robot", 200, 750, font, magenta)

Input.KeyDown (key)

if key (KEY_UP_ARROW) then



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richcash

Sun May 25, 2008 3:28 pm


Re: Controlling a robot with the arrow keys through the paralleput function?

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Is your Input.KeyDown inside a loop? If you want it to continuously check for input it has to be in a loop.


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kinian

Sun May 25, 2008 6:18 pm


Re: Controlling a robot with the arrow keys through the paralleput function?

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Yes, thanks I just realized that, also, I would be using pins 2,3,4,5  for the two motors, which parallelput (X) corresponds to these pins? I'm kind of lost there. I'll post the code I have so far, there are many errors regarding the parallelput function I'm sure. Thanks for your help!

setscreen ("graphics:max;max;title:The Robot Vehicle Controller")
setscreen ("nocursor")

var chars : array char of boolean
var answer : string
var font : int

font := Font.New ("serif:42")
Draw.Text ("Welcome to the Turing Robot Controller Program", 100, 800, font, magenta)
delay (700)
font := Font.New ("serif:30")
Draw.Text ("Use the arrow keys of the keyboard to control the Robot", 200, 750, font, magenta)

loop
    Input.KeyDown (chars)
    locate (25, 25)
    if chars (KEY_UP_ARROW) then
        parallelput (1) 
        put "Up Arrow Pressed  " ..
    else
        parallelput (0)
        put "                  " ..
    end if
    if chars (KEY_RIGHT_ARROW) then
        parallelput (2)
        put "Right Arrow Pressed  " ..
    else
        parallelput (0)
        put "                     " ..
    end if
    if chars (KEY_LEFT_ARROW) then
        parallelput (4)
        put "Left Arrow Pressed  " ..
    else
        parallelput (0)
        put "                    " ..
    end if
    if chars (KEY_DOWN_ARROW) then
        parallelput (8)
        put "Down Arrow Pressed  " ..
    else
        parallelput (0)
        put "                  " ..
    end if
end loop


