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

[kinian]

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.

[kinian]

bump

[HeavenAgain]

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

code:

0000 00 00      LL RR 0000 00 00      FB FB

where 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)

[kinian]

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" :

code:

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

[richcash]

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

[kinian]

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!

code:

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