'''
Created on Oct 2, 2010

@author: michael
'''
import serial, time, os

#set up the serial connection
ser = serial.Serial(
    port='/dev/ttyUSB0',
    baudrate=19200,
    parity=serial.PARITY_NONE,
    stopbits=serial.STOPBITS_TWO,
    bytesize=serial.EIGHTBITS,
    timeout=1
)

#start the main loop
while True:
    #basic error handling, occasionally the device fails to respond. This keeps the 
    #loop running.
    try:
        #send the 5 byte command to start a ranging ping.
        #The 1st byte 0x55 is the start command for the USB-I2C module. 2nd byte 0xE0
        #is the address of the SRF02 on the I2C bus. 3rd byte 0x00 is the address 
        #register of the SRF02 that we are writing the command to. 4th byte 0x01 is 
        #the number of bytes in the command we are about to send. 5th byte 0x51 is 
        #the command to tell the SRF02 to initiate a range in cm.
        ser.write(chr(0x55)+chr(0xE0)+chr(0x00)+chr(0x01)+chr(0x51))
        
        #wait for the range to finish
        time.sleep(.1)
        
        #this 4byte command tells the SRF02 to send the result to the I2C bus for 
        #reading. The first byte 0x55 is the start command for the USB-I2C module. 
        #2nd byte 0xE1 is the SRF02s address plus one, this tells it that we are 
        #reading. 3rd byte 0x02 is 
        #the register thats holds the data we want to start reading from. 4th byte 
        #0x02 is the number of bytes to read. In this case we want 2bytes, the range 
        #high byte and the range low byte.
        ser.write(chr(0x55)+chr(0xE1)+chr(0x02)+chr(0x02))
        
        #read 3 bytes. Why 3 when we only requested 2? The USB-I2C device returns a 
        #byte first to tell of success or fail
        s = ser.read(3)
        
        #clear the screen so we are not repeating up the screen
        os.system('clear')
        
        #first check for a successful read response, first byte will be 1 if successful. 
        #Then print the second byte which is the range high followed byte the 3rd which 
        #is range low. Combine to get the actual range, we do this because each register 
        #is one byte of 8 bits, this only allows numbers to go to 255, this would give 
        #255cm on the low byte. But suppose we are measuring a range of 280cm, the low 
        #register maxes out at 255. We put a 1 in the high byte register to represent 
        #256 and the low byte starts again and counts to 24. So we can simply combine 
        #the high and the low bye h*256+l to get the range so in the example 1*256+24=280
        if ord(s[0]) == 1:
            print ord(s[1]), 'high'
            print ord(s[2]), 'low'
            print ord(s[1]) * 256 + ord(s[2]), 'range in cm'
        else:
            print 'error reading device'
        
        #slow the loop down a bit to give our eyes a chance to read the response
        time.sleep(1)
    
    #handle errors, the second "except" here takes all errors in it's stride and allows
    #the loop to continue. I did this because every now and again the USB-I2C device 
    #fails to respond and breaks the loop. By having a blanket error handling rule you 
    #could no longer interrupt the loop with a keyboard interrupt so I had to add an 
    #"except KeyboardInterrupt" rule to allow this to break the loop.  
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        print ' Exiting...Keyboard interrupt'
        break
    
    except:
        print 'unexpected error'