To all, especially Dave, Oscar and Ramit, thanks for the discussion and help. Tino, as soon as I have something to put up, I will gladly put it up on Github. At the moment I only have a few snippets I've written in trying to learn the various bits everyone has been helping me with.
Just for the record, I did use subprocess quite successfully in one of my preliminary programs earlier this summer as I started to learn python, used it to send out the text from the old chatbot to Festival TTS, so I am comfortable with the idea of running multiple processes from python to the command line. I'm not quite sure that's the way to go with the sensors and other bits though. I'm wondering if I'm asking the wrong question. I have read and re-read your posts, and have read and re-read the documentation on multi-processing and threading. I have also read several tutorials on both. I feel that I understand the concepts a wee bit better, though not enough to come up with some workable processing or threading code. I have, however, still not figured out an answer to my question, which leads me to believe I have not asked the question properly. The alternative is that I'm just too damned dense to wrap my arms around this and I both think and hope that is not the case, so I will try to do a better job of articulating what I'm looking for. (Again, I suspect its in multiprocessing and threading, but I can't quite put my finger on a good approach). SO... while the bot program is running, I would like it to be continuously cognizant of the sensor data and any changes in that data. Let's distill it down to a single sensor to simplify the discussion. If I have a temperature sensor feeding data to the arduino, which feeds that data through serial to the Python program (let's call that pyBrain) that "is" the bot, (here's the meat of the question:) how do I make the pyBrain constantly aware of the temperature while doing other stuff? I think what's tripping me up is that Python is sequential, yes? So line 1 executes, then we go to line 2, then line 3, etc. So if pyBrain is off doing some facial recognition or having a chat (or both?), and Temp1 suddenly rises above a preset threshold of 78 degrees F how does pyBrain know that? Because python is sequential does there not have to be some specific code that tells it to periodically poll Temp1? Or, barring periodic or even continuous polling, is there some "event alert" function that would tell the pyBrain program to execute the "Temp1High" function? And if there is an event alert function such that you all are going to tell me (in your best Frank Morgan voice) "Well, wny didn't you say so?" then can pyBrain keep chatting etc and just update "state", aware that it's environment has changed, keeping that information for future reference, but continue on with it's running tasks/processes unless that new state requires some action? Or even better, add the action to the task(s) it is performing as one more concurrent task/action? My initial thought was to run concurrent processes, or threads (still working that bit out). I have considered having Arduino write the sensor data to a table or dictionary or even file, just constantly overwriting previous values, and pyBrain could pull values out of that table/dictionary/file as needed. That doesn't seem terribly elegant to me though, and certainly doesn't get me passed the "parameter just crossed a preset threshold" alert issue either. Befuddled and bewildered while learning at an alarming rate, Richard -- quando omni flunkus moritati
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