Using Basic Atom Pro with PING Ultrasonic Sensor

I've actually found a lot of information on using the PING ultrasonic sensor. There is even a forum topic in the Lynxmotion forums that goes through the whole process of developing code to get the Basic Atom Pro to work with the PING sensor located at http://www.lynxmotion.net/viewtopic.php?t=1819&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=pro+ping+code&start=0

This code is posted here just to document what is used in the Midnight Prowlerbot. Here is the code that I used:

'Ultrasonic module - PING available from Lynxmotion or Parallax
Sonar_Pulse_Dat con P10

GetDistance

Low Sonar_Pulse_Dat
pulsout Sonar_Pulse_Dat, 10
RCTIME Sonar_Pulse_Dat, 1,rawDist
if rawDist > 65000 then
goto ErrorDist
endif
RCTIME Sonar_Pulse_Dat, 0, rawDist
PING_Scale.highword = 0
PING_Scale.lowword= 2260
cms = (rawDist */ PING_Scale ) / 2
goto GetDistanceExit
ErrorDist
cms = 0
GetDistanceExit

return

Please forgive the lack of proper indentation in the above code listing and previous code listings. I couldn't get the posting tool to cooperate enough to do proper indentations and I didn't want to take snapshots because I wanted people to be able to copy-and-paste the listings. The measurement result will be in the cms variable in centimeters.

The most significant difference between the code listed above for the PING and the code that is often listed on other websites for the Basic Atom non-Pro is the use of the rctime command instead of using pulsin. This is done because pulsin seems to be buggy on the Basic Atom Pro whereas rctime works fine. The pulsin bug is mentioned in several places on the Lynxmotion and Basic Micro forums.

The other difference in the above code and code that would be used on a non-Pro Basic Atom is that pulsout uses 10 for the time instead of 5. This is because the time is in 0.5 microsecond increments on the Basic Atom Pro compared to 1.0 microsecond increments on the Basic Atom.

This post is the last of three code listings for the different sensors currently used on the Midnight Prowlerbot. I still have a Memsic 2125 accelerometer that I could connect, but I can't see a real use for it at the moment on the Midnight Prowlerbot and I have my hands full with projects for the CMUCam2+. Posts from this point forward will be mostly about different projects with the CMUCam2+ and related code unless I decide to reconfigure the robot or add another sensor.