ping not working

[kelly]

I see that ping requires a special build of Firmata. Are there more details on where to find the special build?

[rwaldron]

I haven't had a chance to document it and it's definitely a work in progress, but if you're feeling adventurous :)

(note, I only know how to walk you through on a Mac)

If Arduino IDE is open, quit!

# Get yourself into this directory...
cd /Applications/Arduino.app/Contents/Resources/Java/libraries/

# make a backup of the existing Firmata
cp -r Firmata Firmata_stable

# rm Firmata
rm -r Firmata

# clone the experimental repo branch
git clone git://github.com/jgautier/arduino-1.git Firmata

# enter!
cd Firmata

# get the branch with pulseIn
git checkout -b pulseIn origin/pulseIn

Now open the Arduino IDE.

File > Examples > Firmata > Standard Firmata

Once that's loaded into the IDE, confirm it is the correct program by searching for "PULSE_IN"

Compile and upload!

If you receive an error about PULSE_IN not being in scope, then copy this:

#define PULSE_IN                0x74 // send a pulse in command

...and add it below this line:

#define REGISTER_NOT_SPECIFIED -1

Compile and upload to the Arduino. Close the IDE.

EDIT: (adding @korevec's additional instructions)

EDIT: March 2014, the steps below are no longer necessary, as the pulseIn branch ships in master

# Get into johnny-fives node module deps dir
cd johnny-five/node_modules

# copy the old firmata
cp -r firmata/ firmata-npm

# clone julian's upstream in place of the old firmata
git clone git://github.com/jgautier/firmata.git 

# enter the repo, create a pulseIn branch and pull julian's pulseIn branch
cd firmata && git checkout -b pulseIn && git pull origin pulseIn

Now you should be able to use Ping. Hopefully I haven't missed anything - let me know if I have :)

Also, I'm on IRC/freenode in #robotjs (nick: rwaldron)

[kelly]

Thanks for the quick response! It worked :) I added one more step. I had to checkout the pulseIn branch on https://github.com/jgautier/firmata/

[rwaldron]

The last git step didn't work for that? I should move these instructions to the read me

[kelly]

The last git step is for the arduino firmata pulseIn branch. It also needs the node firmata pulseIn branch. Or, am I confused? ;)

[rwaldron]

Haha -- yes, I totally missed that.

Can you help me update this with the missing steps? We'll add it to the repo for others to follow :)

[jgautier]

might as well merge the pulseIn branch into master node firmata. shouldnt hurt anything with it being there.

[Rolilink]

i got problems here:

cd firmata && git cob pulseIn && git pull origin pulseIn

Cant find command cob

[rwaldron]

Oh, ouch. my bad. Those are shortcuts that I have on my system. I had copy/pasted this. I'm sorry about that.

[rwaldron]

Should be:

cd firmata && git checkout -b pulseIn && git pull origin pulseIn

[Rolilink]

ok thanks :)!

[remy]

I just got this working on a 4 ping sensor ( HC-SR04 ) with directions from @nexxy. Basically, "bridge" the Trigger and the Echo pins. Simply put a jumper wire between these two pins as per (the bridge between 18 & 19) - then the values come through on both the Trigger & Echo, so you can pop either one in the digital out.

[rwaldron]

It was weird when I opened this and saw the picture... since the breadboard and HC-SR04 are still sitting on my desk exactly as shown here...

[remy]

@rwldrn and I had to screenshot your picture, because twitter screws with image urls, if you open them, it'll give you the full web page.

[LeventErkok]

Hi there.. I'm working on a Firmata based Arduino project and needed a PulseIn function like you implemented here. Great work. It'd be really nice if this was included in the Standard Firmata release. Any chance you might send them a pull request?

Also, it might be more flexible if trigger and echo lines can be separated; i.e., send echo on one line and read the trigger on a different one. (The user can of course use the same pin if so desired.)

[dwayn]

I merged the pulsein changes from https://github.com/jgautier/arduino-1/tree/pulseIn into AdvancedFirmata, so that hopefully we can get all custom functionality into a single place (steppers, pulsein, etc)
You can find it currently at: https://github.com/dwayn/AdvancedFirmata/tree/pulsein and I also have an outstanding pull request back to soundanalogous to get it merged into root repo.
Tested with eg/ping.js and all seems to be working correctly

[gillesruppert]

For people coming to this issue now (23/07/2013): the master branch of https://github.com/jgautier/firmata works fine, whereas the pulseIn branch does not work at this point in time, so you can ignore the last step of @rwldrn 's instructions (i.e. checking out the pulseIn branch on @jgautier 's firmata repo).

[rwaldron]

Thanks!!

Avoid this altogether with http://www.maxbotix.com/Ultrasonic_Sensors.htm#LV-EZ

[gillesruppert]

@rwldrn I will, but the HC-SR04 is really popular (and very cheap), so you see them used a lot. I thought I better let people know here to avoid the pain I've been through and for the trouble shooting guide. 😉

[rwaldron]

I know :) and I appreciate the update!

[awaterma]

Thanks for this fix! Nexxy helped me get this running this afternoon via IRC and pointing to this issue. So cool to run the Arduino from Node. ;)

[xhava]

hi, i really like johnny-five i think that it is amazing but, there is something like documentacion or some books in order to learn about this amazing library named johnny-five.

[felixsanz]

is this still working? cause here i don't get anything in console

[rwaldron]

@felixsanz have you loaded the the modified version of StandardFirmata onto the board? https://github.com/rwaldron/johnny-five/wiki/Ping#setup

[felixsanz]

Meh, sorry. I was using "gort" to upload firmata and i thought that i could checkout that pulse-in firmata to gort, so gort uploads that new one. Fail. I needed to push the firmata using arduino IDE as your link suggest. Thx

[rwaldron]

@felixsanz Glad you were able to make progress. Let me know if you have any other questions

[rwaldron]

@felixsanz Looks like gort ships pre-compiled .hex files to be uploaded. I'm sorry if that tool was misleading, I know how awful the feeling of temporary failure can be. Here's my pledge: to avoid this in the future, I'm going to try to find a better way to manage the pulseIn branch of StandardFirmata. Ideally we can do it as a module that can be installed via npm.

[rwaldron]

@felixsanz check this out: https://github.com/AdamMagaluk/leo there are a whole bunch of "ino" modules for this. I'm going to look into making a pulseIn-enabled StandardFirmata ino for this :)

[felixsanz]

Thats a great tool, thanks!