Installing Processing :: Video #1 :: Arduino Serial Communication Series

hello I hope you're well I'm glad you're joining me for this tutorial on why use processing as an intermediate program and also on how to install processing so previously we talked about the need for having some type of intermediate program that was going to grab information from the serial port that the Arduino is sending to the computer and then take that information and send it to some type of API on a web application that we're interested in so the intermediate program that I've chosen to use is processing now the reason I've chosen processing is twofold the first reason is is that it is it's got a very familiar feel to what the Arduino IDE has so you know the integrated development environment that we create sketches in with yard we know processing looks almost the exact same so hey that's a bonus it looks and feels the same now that happens to be because Arduino the people who design that based it on the IDE the processing was so there's a great correlation there so that's helpful the next reason I chose it was because there is a relatively sizable user group that messes around with processing and also messes around with Arduino so when you have questions you can get on the web you can search around and generally speaking you can find some answers for questions you might have so those are the two big reasons another good reason so I guess maybe this is a trifold reason is it's completely free it's open source which is great it doesn't hurt to support it but hey just letting you know ok so let's go ahead and talk about down now you know about why we chose it now let's go ahead and download it so you go to wpri.com got download processing so we click on that link and it takes us to a page where we can donate now I have donated to processing before I've also bought books before that when you buy the book they will donate part of their part of the book to processing but so in this case I'm going to select no donation if you feel so inclined feel free to donate and then click the download link and then all you have to do is choose your operating system I'm running Mac but if you're running Windows or Linux it's going to run and install just fine and they keep processing very up-to-date so I'm just going to go ahead and click on this link it's going to initiate a download again it really doesn't matter where you want to save the program I just going to save it in my downloads file here so it's going to download as a zip file and it's kind of big might take a couple minutes to download so once processing is finished downloading it's going to be a zip file again so we can go ahead and unzip the file and it's going to create a folder wherever you downloaded it or it's going to create a file and then for Mac users all you need to do is drag that folder to your Applications folder and you'll be up and running and if you are a PC user which I know many of you are I also am at times is all you have to do is take that processing icon you can either put it in your Applications folder or you can really put it wherever you want on your hard drive so that's it that's it's really that simple not not too many crazy things going on so if you double click the icon it's going to open up processing and here we are in a sketch so they call processing program sketches to just like an Arduino and you'll notice the IDE looks very similar now they've got some cool you know like skin I guess skin things up here and but you know a lot of the buttons look the same and so what we're going to do is just kind of talk through this real quick again our job is not to master processing at all but you do kind of want to be familiar with with how it works so up at the top you've got file menus just like the Arduino you know file you've got sketchbook where you've got different programs in there it's going to list your recent programs there's examples so this is kind of interesting you know how we work through the Arduino examples well processing has the same thing you click on those examples and it opens up a little window and here are all types of examples in here and actually the next tutorial we'll be working in one of these examples okay so you know you can save your sketches just all that normal stuff you would expect again look at this help tab ooh reference reference happens to be my favorite page on the processing website it's really handy okay so this button that play button is called run and that runs your sketch for you this stops the sketch you know you can make a new sketch open a new sketch you can save it and then you can export the application really not too worried about you know we just need to know how to run it basically and if we make any changes we'll obviously want to save it okay so the sketch name is just the date same deal with Arduino you got to name the sketch without any spaces or kind of funky crazy characters you can add new tabs if you want we're not going to be messing with that and down at the bottom is where error messages will show up descriptions of them and you know the error highlighted error message shows up here and then this number says what line of code you're on so if I make a couple spaces down here you can see that number changes so that's a that's pretty much it now you'll notice there's this little Java up here you have to have an updated version of Java on your computer and processing will prompt you if you keep running if you're trying to run programs and your Java is not set up correctly so it'll do that for you so hey that's really it that's it so we've downloaded the processing we've installed it and there's really no preferences in here you want it we need to set unless let's see a preferences are right here you this might be important to know basically the location of your sketchbook where all these programs that's going to be here you can change that if you want by browsing I like to increase the font size so I have mine set at 14 the rest of these are the rest of these are pretty good to go though don't really need to mess with them so okay that's our introduction again if you have any questions about how the install works you know there might be something particular to your machine just go to that processing website and it'll walk you right through the setup so hey that's it thank you so much for listening I can't wait to see you at the next tutorial bye you

Channel: Programming Electronics Academy

Views: 19,069

Rating: 4.7948718 out of 5

Keywords: Serial Communication, ardui, Processing (Programming Language)

Id: EwJgRnrnKcg

Length: 7min 48sec (468 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 19 2014