Nuts and Volts - April 2014

primary reason was to show how you use it to view the data and instructions coming from your micro into MakerPlot, mainly to debug your code. When you use the Logs(Debug) Immediate window with the plotted data alongside of it, you can acquire a more quantified idea of what’s happening on the micro’s side in order to find a coding error. The other reason we introduced you to the Logs(Debug) Immediate window is to form a basis for the next couple of articles on customizing MakerPlot; this is where we’ll show you how to build your own Interface screen from scratch (or nearly so).

We’d like you to think of MakerPlot as the software equivalent to a hardware front panel. If you were to build a hardware panel for your micro’s application, your “kit” would include pushbuttons, switches, meters, and maybe a graphic display. All of this is time-consuming, difficult to implement, and probably expensive — not to mention cast in stone once it’s all done.

The name MakerPlot came into existence once it dawned on us that what it really does is act like a software kit where you can graphically assemble any kind of front panel you want in order to display and control your data. That’s the real power within MakerPlot; that is, you can customize it to your own needs, and that’s what we’ll get into next time.