Total newbie scripting question

Jeff Verive

I'm using the Omega to illuminate LEDs, and for this purpose software PWM works great. For example, the command-line command

fast-gpio pwm 14 200 25

lights a (red) LED connected to GPIO 14 at 25% duty cycle with a frequency of 200 Hz.

I have created a simple sh script ("red.sh) containing just a single line:

fast-gpio pwm 14 200 $1

so I can just type

red 25

at the command line to obtain the same results. Everything is working fine, but I'd like to do some range checking on the argument $1 to ensure that it is between 0 and 100 (duty cycle between 0% and 100%). I've tried things like

if [$1 < 0] then echo "value is under-range"
else if [$1 > 100] then echo "value is over-range"
else fast-gpio pwm 14 200 $1

but I keep getting errors. How do I accomplish this simple task? I've tried looking at various tutorials on "sh scripting" but nothing is working so far. I admit to being a total newbie at Linux and its variants, so I don't really know where to turn. I believe that the Omega is running a version of OpenWRT, but I haven't been able to uncover much about scripting in OpenWRT. Help!!

Lazar Demin

@Jeff-Verive sh is really picky about the syntax, try the following:

if [ $1 < 0 ]
then
   echo "value is under-range"
elif [ $1 > 100 ] 
then
   echo "value is over-range"
else
   fast-gpio pwm 14 200 $1
fi

A few things to note:

For the square brackets in your if statements, there needs to be a space after [ and a space before ]
To create an else if you need to use the keyword elif
The then after an if or elif needs to either be on the next line or have a semi-colon after the ]
The whole thing has to be closed with a fi

Luciano S.

@Jeff-Verive see my request about starting with markdown ...
https://community.onion.io/topic/707/markdown-how-to-start-with-it
this might help you to display correct code in the forum.

Jeff Verive

@Lazar-Demin

Thanks a bunch! Your code almost worked, but the syntax that actually worked (to control an LED connected to GPIO 14) was as follows:

#!/bin/sh
if [ $1 -gt "100" ]
then
   echo "value is over-range"
   echo "use a whole number from 0 to 100"
elif [ $1 -lt "0" ]
then
   echo "value is under-range"
   echo "use a whole number from 0 to 100"
elif [ $1 -eq "0" ]
then
   fast-gpio pwm 14 200 101
else
   fast-gpio pwm 14 200 $1
fi

Indeed, sh is extremely picky about syntax, but once I saw some working examples, I was able to develop working code. By the way, this code is stored as file called red, so the way it is used is as follows:

red value

where value is the duty-cycle percentage requested, from 0 for minimum brightness (OFF) to 100 (fully on). For example, to set the duty cycle to 40% we enter

red 40

which lights up the LED using a 50% duty cycle. One peculiar aspect of PWM using fast-gpio is that at 0% duty-cycle (which should theoretically have no ON time) the output still contains pulses (probably to satisfy servos), so an LED still illuminates - though dimly. Using a duty-cycle value greater than 100:

fast-gpio pwm 14 200 101

actually produces 0% duty cycle. Since this is not intuitive for the average intended user of my code, I substitute 101 for 0 in the code. Cheating? Maybe, but the user is none the wiser!