This API is being deprecated. Check out the new Sensel API.

Sensel C/C++ API

This API allows users to communicate with a Sensel device through C or C++. This API should be cross-platform, and work across Windows, Mac, and Linux. If you find any incompatibilities, please submit a bug report through Github.

Setup

Clone this Github project and move all of the sensel* files into your project to build against. Note: if you are on windows, you do not need sensel_serial_linux.c and if you are on Linux/Mac, you do not need sensel_serial_win.cpp.

Make sure to look at the sensel_example_read_contacts or sensel_example_read_frames project under the examples folder to see how to setup your project. On Linux/Mac, simply navigate to this project and type in "make" to build the executable. On Windows, you will want to open up the read_contacts_win.sln or read_frame_win.sln file in Visual Studio and build the project from there. Note: this project was created with Visual Studio 2013.

Usage

Here's a high-level view of how to use this API:

First, we need to import Sensel:

#include "sensel.h"

Next, we need to properly setup the sensor. We first call senselOpenConnection(), which returns true if we successfully connect to a Sensel device. If we connect to a sensor, we need to tell the sensor to send us contacts. We use the method senselSetFrameContentControl(), and pass in a frame content constant: SENSEL_FRAME_CONTACTS_FLAG SENSEL_FRAME_PRESSURE_FLAG and/or SENSEL_FRAME_LABELS_FLAG. To recieve multipe frame content, perform a bitwise or '|' of the frame content flags. After this, we tell the sensor to start scanning by calling senselStartScanning():

//Open Sensor
bool sensel_sensor_opened = senselOpenConnection(0);

if(!sensel_sensor_opened)
{
  printf("Unable to open Sensel sensor!\n");
  return -1; //exit
}

//Enable contact sending
senselSetFrameContentControl(SENSEL_FRAME_CONTACTS_FLAG);

//Enable scanning
senselStartScanning();

Next, you can read out frame content in your program's main event loop with senselReadFrame.

//Declare contacts array pointer and variable to hold number of valid contacts
contact_t *contacts;
int n_contacts = 0;
//Declare float array pointer for forces and uint8 array pointer for labels.
float *forces;
uint8 *labels;

while(true)
{
  senselReadFrame(&contacts, &n_contacts, &forces, &labels); 
  if(n_contacts != 0) //Check for contacts
    //USE CONTACT DATA HERE
}

Before the applciation exits, make sure to cleanly close the connection to the sensor by calling senselStopScanning() and senselCloseConnection()

printf("Done looping, exiting...\n")

if(sensel_sensor_opened)
{
  senselStopScanning();
  senselCloseConnection();
}

Examples

There is an example in this repository that you can use as a starting point for your project:

sensel_example_read_contacts