June 3, 2009

So, as it turns out, I did in fact find out how to list all available serial ports on a linux computer. There's a file buried that has a list. But, as of right now, my auto-search function doesn't quite work, and as this project is very doable without it, I'm going to get the more important things done first.

Speaking of more important things, yesterday I was having problems getting communication over the usb to serial port adapter working. At one point I had it working, then it just stopped working and I couldn't fix it or figure out why (very, very aggravating). Stoytchev suggested that I use the serial port code already created by Barret, as they went a lot more in depth than I did. I tried that out and it worked just fine.

So this morning I went to the lab and coded the three classes we're going to need to control the head. At the moment I am in the process of troubleshooting them because, well, like everything in programming, they don't work yet. I was able to move one eye back and forth just fine, but when I tried to move both eyes it only moved one of them. My theory is that since I'm sending the move commands for they eyes all at once that the first eye's move commands are getting overwritten. I'm going to try putting a delay between them and see if that helps.

Taylor says he finished the head tracking algorithm already, so I'm going to see if he can't help out Ugonna and I as working with serial ports in linux is very frustrating.