OK, where to start.
Buttons... You create buttons from code with the uicontrol function. A pushbutton could be made like this:
buttonHandle = uicontrol(f,'Style','Pushbutton','Position',[x,y,w,h],'Callback',{@ButtonCBF,var1});
This will create a button as a child object in figure f at the designated position in f with a callback function "ButtonCBF". Any time the button is pushed, it will call ButtonCBF as follows:
ButtonCBF(hObject,event,var1)
Where hObject is the button handle, event is empty, and your specified variable var1 is passed as the next parameter. In the callback, you can specify what you want the button to do in terms of code.
Updating the GUI:
I would strongly suggest not using a while loop. Use timers or a listening function to check the COM for data and update the GUI window. First thing, the pause function is blocking meaning you can't do anything else while paused. Second, pause is highly inaccurate at small time values and can't really time anything less than 0.01 seconds. Even at 0.01, I often get close to 0.02 seconds as the time actually elapsed during the pause.
Serial communication:
I would make a listener function for your serial connection that automatically receives and stores the data sent by the device. In fact, you should probably have the listener function update your GUI for you as well. You'll either need a global variable for it to check whether or not its supposed to update the GUI or instead of a Start and Stop pushbutton use a checkbox and check its value in the listener function.
You could use something like this:
cb = uicontrol(f,'Style','Checkbox','Position',[x,y,w,h],'Tag','MyCB');
function myListener(hObject,~)
input = [];
while hObject.BytesAvailable > 0
temp = fscanf(hObject);
input = [input,temp];
end
if get(findall(0,'Tag','MyCB'),'Value') == 1
% Update the GUI
end
Of course, you'll need to make a closing function for your figure so that it deletes the com object when you close the window or you'll have to do it manually.
When programming GUIs, you should design them so that most of the functionality is handled by listeners and callbacks. The function that creates the GUI should return once the figure is created and all uicontrols are setup.
