Wir wünschen uns ein Tool, das im CLI pipe die Zeichen, die nicht unterstütz werden, durch äquivalente Zeichen ersetzt, sodass ASCII-Art etc nicht kaputt geht.

Auf diese Art muss nicht jede Anwendung angepasst werden.

What works currently:

• A user of the interface can generate an ASCII art image by themselves like so:

convert ubuntu-logo32.png jpg:- | jp2a - --width=80 --height=80 > ascii_art.txt

• With the output saved to a file, they can reference the file in the erika CLI like so:

./erika.sh render_ascii_art_file -p "COM3" -f ascii_art.txt

What I want:

• The user should be able to pipe the output to the CLI directly like so:

convert ubuntu-logo32.png jpg:- | jp2a - --width=80 --height=80 | ./erika.sh render_ascii_art_file -p "COM3"

Some early prototype code made it into the main branch of development.

Let's remove it for now, and add it in a clean way later on.

Postponed, not given up!

See #22 for follow-up.

The CLI could be used to fire up the new twitter listener bot in a convenient way, such as

./erika.sh twitter-bot -p "/dev/ttyACM0" --key-words berlin potsdam erika maker

Depends on: Twitter Bot being finished

Based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code

The following escape codes are defined:

    self.csi_codes = {
        "A": self._cursor_up
        , "B": self._cursor_down
        , "C": self._cursor_forward
        , "D": self._cursor_back
        , "E": self._cursor_next_line
        , "F": self._cursor_previous_line
        , "G": self._cursor_horizontal_absolute
        , "H": self._cursor_position
        , "J": self._erase_in_display
        , "K": self._erase_in_line
        , "S": self._scroll_up
        , "T": self._scroll_down
        , "f": self._cursor_position  # Horizontal Vertical Position: same as Cursor Position
        , "m": self._select_graphic_rendition
        , "i": self._decode_aux_port
        , "n": self._device_status_report
        , "s": self._save_cursor_position
        , "u": self._restore_cursor_position
    }

They should map to the following erika hex codes (where n is an int parameter):

I suggest using the following codes in addition

Idea by @cyroxx

Erika 3004's controls allow to move in micro steps (instead of space-wide steps and line feeds).

So, for rendering images, ASCII art is not the only option.

An easy first step could be to just use a monochrome image as input + render it (potentially using the "." character).

Control characters:

• See docs/Erika-IF2014_AnwenderHandbuch.pdf in the repo:
  ** 0x81 - microstep down
  ** 0x82 - microstep up
  ** 0xA5 [Byte] - [Byte] many microsteps horizontally (two's complement)

Does the ESP support RTS/CTS, can we use it to control the erika? -- Yes it does!

ESP32 has three UART interfaces, i.e., UART0, UART1 and UART2, which provide asynchronous communication(RS232 and RS485) and IrDA support, communicating at a speed of up to 5 Mbps. UART provides hardwaremanagement of the CTS and RTS signals and software flow control (XON and XOFF). All of the interfaces can beaccessed by the DMA controller or directly by the CPU.

From: https://www.espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/esp32_datasheet_en.pdf

$4. Peripheral Interface Data transfers to/from UART interfaces can be implemented via hardware. The data transmission speed via UART interfaces reaches 115200 x 40 (4.5 Mbps). UART0 can be used for communication. It supports flow control. Since UART1 features only data transmit signal (TX), it is usually used for printing log.

By default, UART0 outputs some printed information when the device is powered on and booting up. The baud rate of the printed information is relevant to the frequency of the external crystal oscillator. If the frequency of the crystal oscillator is 40 MHz, then the baud rate for printing is 115200; if the frequency of the crystal oscillator is 26 MHz, then the baud rate for printing is 74880. If the printed information exerts any influence on the functionality of the device, it is suggested to block the printing during the power-on period by changing (U0TXD, U0RXD) to (MTDO, MTCK).

From: https://www.espressif.com/sites/default/files/documentation/0a-esp8266ex_datasheet_en.pdf Page 21

At least a simple shell script that sets up cts/rts on a pi would be nice.

@cyroxx, would you mind getting your changes into the main repo? :)

cyroxx@6ab1683

Fix a pen to the printhead to convert the erika into a slow and probably shitty penplotter

The integration test just connects, moves the cursor a bit,... it seems not to be working properly :/

See run_integrationtests.sh and its triggered scripts.

CharacterBasedErikaMock is working well + smooth, way better than the old implementation that dumped the whole internal array to the commandline.

MicrostepBasedErikaMock still uses this old implementation, and should also be refactored.
It is used as part of run_manual_tests.sh and spams the output quite a bit.

In addition, this is a good opportunity to get rid of redundancy among AbstractErikaMock, MicrostepBasedErikaMock, CharacterBasedErikaMock.

SHOULD be done after #52 is merged, or based on the feature/deletebranch to avoid merge issues / future rework

Scope

• Do not yet remove the whole internal representation of the rendered content as two-dimensional array
  • meaning CharacterBasedErikaMock.canvas resp MicrostepBasedErikaMock.canvas
  • even though I just discovered the curses instr(y, x [,n]) method.

We currently enforce a line-wrap after 65 characters, whatever the characters are. So if somebody sends us lines of 65 characters + newline, we actually get 2 newlines: the one that is enforced and the one from the incoming request.

We should skip enforcing line wrap in that case since the client already sends us the newline.

Let's open source our driver!

Precondition:

• Working driver
• fast
• other awesome features

Dunno how to do it actually, but would be a useful feature.
Maybe using the state of the serial port or something.

See #23

Some early prototype code made it into the main branch of development.

Let's remove it for now, and add it in a clean way later on.

Postponed, not given up!

While #54 is quite focused, this issue aims at general thoughts - comments from all requested!

Choose a license :)

• Free - Apache, BSD, MIT, LGPL...
• License with copy-left: GPL,...

We need to support the correction tape, e.g. for #29 (Tetris).

It seems one control character is there to switch from correction to normal tape, one to switch back.
The actual deletion requires the implementer to keep track of what letter was there before - and overwrite it with with itself using the correction tape.

See #29:

Correction tape controls are not yet wrapped by our software - the website linked to by the main README.md provides some insights here, though:

8BH	Zeichen löschen OFF	Status: Drucken (die nachfolgenden Zeichen werden gedruckt)
8CH	Zeichen löschen ON	Status: Korrigieren (die nachfolgenden Zeichen werden mit Korrekturband gelöscht)

http://hc-ddr.hucki.net/wiki/doku.php/z9001/erweiterungen/s3004

Concrete requirements:

In Erika and the CharacterBasedErikaMock...

• ... a delete_character(self, letter) function exists
  • switches on correction tape, prints the letter, switches back
• ... switch_to_correction_tape(self) and switchToNormalTape(self) should be implemented for more fine-grained control

Discussion:

• Do we need a "delete_pixel"?

Some users try to open the URL in the web browser. In order to optimize their experience, we should respond with a static HTML page explaining "You're doing it wrong" in nice terms and give some help on how to use the service.

setup.sh is a simple script to setup a Raspberry PI for communicating with an Erika machine (configure RTS/CTS etc).

The current script in the repository is outdated and may no longer work.

@sknebel has some ideas :)

The Olivetti 900X in this video prints in both directions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpOyk6n5WTw
Obviously this needs to be done in software, but if more than one line are to be printed and are buffered somewhere or passed to the print function, it could do just a new line , no carriage return and print the next line in reverse.

Implementing different rendering strategies will be a great thing to have - input an ASCII art image, have Erika print it.

With varying rendering strategies, we'll have something interesting to show at Camp / Congress.

Robert (that's me!) would like to implement this

Let's add information about
https://github.com/Chaostreff-Potsdam/erika3004/blob/master/erika/tcp_server.py
to the main README.md

turn keyboard off with 0x91

TODO: Test on Mini, Nano

make ServiceManual load in Neuland

"Microstep image rendering - monochrome" must be completed first.

To support grayscale images, we could implement some kind of dithering.

Cf. wikipedia or this nice youtube video that actually gave me the idea.

Support playing Tic Tac Toe against Erika

Easy mode:

Erika prints a labyrinth structure (x marks the goal, current position at cursor), user navigates the labyrinth.
Controls could be WASD
Moving against a wall, the cursor will not move until the user is out of the labyrinth.

Hard mode:
Erika will no longer print the labyrinth structure

@sirexeclp had the idea to implement Tetris on the Erika.

The implementation will make extensive use of both the normal ink tape and correction tape.

Correction tape controls are not yet wrapped by our software - the website linked to by the main README.md provides some insights here, though:

8BH	Zeichen löschen OFF	Status: Drucken (die nachfolgenden Zeichen werden gedruckt)
8CH	Zeichen löschen ON	Status: Korrigieren (die nachfolgenden Zeichen werden mit Korrekturband gelöscht)

http://hc-ddr.hucki.net/wiki/doku.php/z9001/erweiterungen/s3004

How can we track the current cursor position of erika, if we need absolute values?
e.g. every method that moves / writes has to update an internal cursor position value
Or can we get the cursor position from erika?
Or can we use some kind of enstop to "home" before making absolute cursor moves.
For columns this could be done using carriage return, for lines this might be difficult.

Any ideas ?

would hold up better and no more filing on connectors