CSC231 Connecting the Arduino to a Mac

Arduino / Mac

--D. Thiebaut 18:48, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

• get the Arduino development system (www.arduino.cc/) and install it on your Mac (on the Desktop, for example) following the directions.
• Make sure to install the USB drivers.
• Record the name of the USB driver. You can get it by opening a Terminal and typing

 ls /dev  | grep tty | grep usb

which yields for me:

 tty.usbserial-A6004osu

• Load the blink example from the example sketchbook (in the digital section). You will have to set the type of board and the type of driver needed.
• Compile and upload your program. Verify that the LED blinks
• Get the Simple Message System [1] and follow the directions to install it as a library in the Arduino library folder (on my system, the library path is ~/Desktop/ARDUINO/arduino-0011/hardware/libraries).
• Load the SimpleMessageSystem_Example_1 program, compile it, and upload it to the Arduino.
• Open the Serial Monitor. For some reason, failure to open the serial monitor will prevent the test from working...
• Open a new Terminal window and type the following commands, one after the other:

 echo -e -n "w d 13 1 \r" > /dev/tty.usbserial-A6004osu 
 echo -e -n "w d 13 0 \r" > /dev/tty.usbserial-A6004osu 

(Make sure you replace /dev/tty.usbserial-A6004osu by the name of your USB driver)

The commands instruct the Mac to echo the string "w d 13 1 \r" to the device with driver /dev/tty.usbserial-A6004osu. w means write, d means to a digital pin, 13 means Pin 13, and 1 means the value 1. Digital Pin 13 is connected to an LED on the board, so writing 1 or 0 will turn the LED On and Off.

I am giving up on writing an assembly program that talks to the Arduino and that runs on the Mac. The BSD-style of system calls is so poorly documented, that writing a string to the Arduino from an assembly program is just impossible at this point :-(