Making Things Talk

198 MAKING THINGS TALK

An XBee Serial Terminal

Because the GNU screen program in Mac OS X, Unix, and Linux doesn’t print newlines

when the XBees send only a return character, it can be difficult to read the results.

/*

XBee terminal

language: processing

This program is a basic serial terminal program.

It replaces newline characters from the keyboard

with return characters. It's designed for use with

Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X in combination with XBee radios,

because the XBees don't send newline characters back.

*/

import processing.serial.*;

Serial myPort; // the serial port you're using

String portnum; // name of the serial port

String outString = ""; // the string being sent out the serial port

String inString = ""; // the string coming in from the serial port

int receivedLines = 0; // how many lines have been received

int bufferedLines = 10; // number of incoming lines to keep

void setup() {

size(400, 300); // window size

// create a font with the third font available to the system:

PFont myFont = createFont(PFont.list()[2], 14);

textFont(myFont);

// list all the serial ports:

println(Serial.list());

// based on the list of serial ports printed from the

// previous command, change the 0 to your port's number:

portnum = Serial.list()[0];

// initialize the serial port:

myPort = new Serial(this, portnum, 9600);

}

void draw() {