{"id":1059,"date":"2012-10-24T00:42:12","date_gmt":"2012-10-24T04:42:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/?p=1059"},"modified":"2012-10-27T12:14:53","modified_gmt":"2012-10-27T16:14:53","slug":"alamode-web-controlled-train-example","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/alamode-web-controlled-train-example\/","title":{"rendered":"AlaMode: Web Controlled Train Example"},"content":{"rendered":"

Update!: You can now\u00a0buy AlaMode at Seeedstudios<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>Here’s an example of using the AlaMode with the Raspberry Pi.<\/p>\n

We had a great time demoing the AlaMode at MakerFaire. We got invited to demo in the MakerShed, because …. Surprise! MakerShed is going to carry AlaMode!<\/p>\n

For this demo, \u00a0I took an\u00a0adafruit motorshield<\/a>\u00a0and used it to modulate the power to a 9V Lego train track.<\/p>\n

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Photo by Brian Kronz<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

The Arduino code is pretty simple, using Serial.read to interpret single characters as commands for controlling the motor shield. “f” means forward, “b” means back, “s” means stop. 1-9 sets the speed. \u00a0You’ll also need to install the\u00a0AFMotor \u00a0library<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Program the aalegotrain.ino sketch from here:\u00a0https:\/\/github.com\/wyolum\/alamode\/tree\/master\/examples\/train_demo<\/a><\/p>\n

You can either do this with an FTDI cable on another computer, or directly with the\u00a0Arduino IDE on the Raspberry Pi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The ala-modey part of this is to use the AlaMode to do the controlling motor bit. The Raspberry Pi will control the train through a web interface.<\/p>\n

Install \u00a0lighttpd on the Pi (sudo apt-get install lighttpd) and put the web files from the example into \/var\/www.<\/p>\n

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photo by Drew Fustini<\/dd>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n

It’s a little slow because it’s a simple CGI script (spins up a whole process with each request.) A python script interprets button presses on the web page, and uses pyserial to send the characters to AlaMode.<\/p>\n

Drew Fustini of Element 14 did a\u00a0great blog post<\/a>\u00a0on our demo.<\/p>\n

Here’s a video he posted:<\/p>\n

[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?fv=y-9g_mfdFhc<\/a>[\/youtube]<\/p>\n

If you have any questions, join the conversation at the\u00a0Wyolum forums.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Update!: You can now\u00a0buy AlaMode at Seeedstudios Here’s an example of using the AlaMode with the Raspberry Pi. We had a great time demoing the AlaMode at MakerFaire. We got invited to demo in the MakerShed, because …. Surprise! MakerShed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alamode","category-a-la-mode-examples"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1059"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1077,"href":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1059\/revisions\/1077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wyolum.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}