current community

your communities

more stack exchange communities

Stack Exchange
tour help
Take the 2-minute tour ×
Arduino Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for developers of open-source hardware and software that is compatible with Arduino. It's 100% free, no registration required.
up vote 4 down vote favorite

new to arduino I'm struggling with what sounds like fairly n00b problem... I've wired up a adafruit GPS-board to my Arduino and it is working as it spits out GPS data to the serial port with Serial.print(GPS.latitude, DEC)

I Now want to concat a string which I can process (read: I want to sent it via an ethernet client.) This is what I got already:

......
String vnnt = "$VNNT,";

if (GPS.fix) {
   vnnt += "GPS,";

   //this works:
   vnnt.concat(GPS.fix);

   //but this not:
   vnnt.concat(GPS.latitude);

}else{
   vnnt += "INFO,Acquiring Sats";
}

Serial.println(vnnt);

The error message is: Call of overloaded 'concat(float&)' is ambiguous When I Serial.print(GPS.latitude, DEC) it results in: 4418.5937996050

So it is probably to big or something...

How can I concat the vars and create the long string?

share|improve this question
    
Aren't you missing a semicolon? –  TheDoctor Mar 20 at 22:43
    
and one says vnnt while another says vannut –  TheDoctor Mar 20 at 22:45
    
Sorry some typo's :) –  stUrb Mar 20 at 22:46
    
Do you know the datatype of GPS.latitude? E.g. is it a float, int, etc.? –  Peter R. Bloomfield♦ Mar 20 at 22:50
    
I think it's a float? It says float in the error-message. How can I find out? Is there a var_dump or something? –  stUrb Mar 20 at 22:52
show 2 more comments

1 Answer 1

up vote 5 down vote accepted

The concat function does not implement a float version, but some of char, int, unsigneds...

unsigned char String::concat(long unsigned int)
unsigned char String::concat(unsigned int)
unsigned char String::concat(int)
...

so the compiler does not know how to cast (truncating probably the float) to integer, as there are several options.

You have to convert first your float to string, use dtostrf() or sprintf() then concat to your string.

char outstr[25];
sprintf(outstr, "%f", GPS.latitude);

or

dtostrf(GPS.latitude, 6, 2, outstr);  //check docs for 6, 2 values, and set them for your needs

And then: 

vnnt.concat(outstr)

Also note that sprintf is very handy for compact creation of a (char) string:

char msg[80];
sprintf(msg, "$VNNT,GPS, %s %f", GPS.fix, GPS.latitude);
share|improve this answer
1  
+1 when in doubt, sprintf it out :) –  Madivad Mar 20 at 23:55
1  
One point of caution though: sprintf() is a complex function, hence it is rather slow and uses quite some memory. Generally, I would avoid it for "production" code (only keep for debug purposes). –  jfpoilpret Mar 22 at 7:13
    
That is a good point @jfpoilpret, I didnt take into account. Do you have some order of magnitude of efficiency vs a dtostrf+concat version? Does the same apply to sscanf()? (btw, I now doubt if sscanf() actually works fine in arduino) –  drodri Mar 23 at 22:31
    
I did not perform actual measurements to compare both calls, but I guess one could just take a look at the C code and possibly check the generated assembly. Regarding sscanf, IIRC it has some limitations (with floating point numbers I think). –  jfpoilpret Mar 23 at 23:14
add comment

Your Answer

 
discard

By posting your answer, you agree to the privacy policy and terms of service.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.