Hi All
well its back on This Wednesday Evening we will start the new year with our first electronic Wednesday on the 11th of Jan 2017.
See you all there , and everybody is welcome 
2 Likes
Cool, see you there.
ok - I’ll come along as well.
As I said elsewhere - see you all this evening.
Ita now open 
Hi all,
Jack and I had a conversation re UI for arduino in the car park as we were leaving. I’ve blogged some stuff here.
Cheers,
Steve D
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Thanks Steve. I have been thinking a fair bit about this.
With the limited knowledge I have now, I feel this is not the way I want to go.
My reasoning is that I want the arduino to be just the data gatherer, and to be as simple as possible. I want the data processing, presentation, and archiving to be on the laptop.
This has more to do with personal development than making a one off device.
Possibly a better description of what I am seeking is to choose a programming language to become familiar with. It should allow me to handle and display data, and to communicate with an external hardware device in real time. I would like avoid learning multiple languages or wasting time going down any blind paths.
Jack.
Hi Jack,
fair enough. I’ll keep going with the project anyway. I’ve got it solved in my head, just need to get it down in words.
If you decide that Java is your language of choice let me know. I have an existing Java to FTDI UART library that I maintain. Makes it easy to add a USB serial port and control it.
Your next choice is probably OS. Do you want your client on Windows or Linux? Tridge and Stephen Dade would probably favour Linux. If you go the Windows path then one of the Microsoft languages like Visual Basic or perhaps C# might be more your style. Both are free, look for freebie Visual Studio.
Cheers,
Steve
Hi Steve
Last night jack and i got talking and i suggested python, jack asked if it could do graphics i asked steven dafe , he said it can do that and serial monitor also that thete are plenty of libraries aswell .
As to the OS, python works with both .
Crashman39
Just for completeness, these languages are to a large degree cross platform now, with the .net framework now open source and mono project making it run on linux.
My operating system is Windows 7. I have no experience with Linux.
Tridge works with Linux and does a lot of good stuff with Python.
Stephen, I think works in Windows, and also recommends Python. He says there are extensive libraries and lots of online support.
Since becoming proficient in a higher level language takes time, I hope that one language will do everything I need.
Jack.
Python has the advantage to working on both Linux and Windows with little-to-no modifications. I just happen to be more of a Windows person 