Advice on getting started... Storing real time data to from Chromebook, to Google App Spreadsheet

Hi All!,

Any insight on how to get started either extending/writing new a web app that could run on a Chromebook/ChromeOS to take the serial data stream from the Espruino and save it to a Google Apps spread sheet.?

I'm at square one, and would like some advice on how to proceed. Tools, examples, resources and ideas would help immensely.

My Best all...

Best bet is probably to look at some of Chrome's own examples... They have one on turning a LED on and off on an Arduino:

https://github.com/GoogleChrome/chrome-a­pp-samples/tree/master/serial/ledtoggle

and reference on the serial API here:

http://developer.chrome.com/apps/serial.­html

Note that the examples are for the newer Chrome M33, not the version of Chrome that you may have by default on your chromebook (not sure).

On an Arduino their example requires you to compile a special program on the Arduino, and they just send the characters "y" and "n" to it. On Espruino, you should be able to just modify their code (at the bottom of main.js) to send "LED1.set()\n" and "LED1.reset()\n" instead.

From the other examples hopefully you can work out how to get character data back. In the Web IDE, we tend to just 'wrap' the data in something that's easy to pick out on the PC - for instance:

console.log("<<"+"<<"+mydata+">>"+">>")

And then when it executes it outputs <<<<mydata>>>> which is pretty easy to detect and extract with a simple bit of code.

Thank you Gordon!

I'm wondering if it would be possible to extend the WebIDE just so....

https://developers.google.com/apps-scrip­t/guides/sheets#basics

Make sense?

R.

It's possible, yes. @JumJum has implemented 'watches' and you could modify these to post the results online.

If I'm honest it'd probably be a lot less trouble to modify one of the Chrome examples though - and I think it could be more useful. I guess people will want to store data in Google Apps in many different ways (different fields, ways of timestamping, etc) so a very small example that doesn't have all the complexity of the Web IDE is probably best.

Is there any way to create a user interface (GUI) for my servo project? I would like to create a user interface full of buttons and text box to control individual servo. Please let me know the way to create a user interface.

Well, what programming languages are you used to using?

If you want to use Chrome (so JavaScript and HTML), you could try looking at this code: https://github.com/GoogleChrome/chrome-a­pp-samples/tree/master/servo

It's an example project for Arduino, but it shows how to create a project which sends data down Serial, so all you have to do is change what data it sends.

Otherwise, just look for examples on how to send Serial data in whatever programming language you want to use... Most languages have a relatively easy to use Serial API.