Bot Bench I'd Rather Be Building Robots
A new release of the 3rd Party ROBOTC Driver Suite is out! Version 1.4 includes quite a number of changes and new drivers:
Newly added drivers:
- Holit Data Systems Motor MUX
- Mindsensors Motor MUX
- Mindsensors Touch MUX
- Philips PCF8574 driver for Mindsensors Magic Wand and PCF8574 prototyping board
- HiTechnic IR Seeker 2 driver (HTIRS2), replaces HTDIR
- Lots of extra examples for the HT Protoboard (all of the programs from the Experimenter’s Kit A)
- Examples of using the HT ProtoBoard with the Sensor MUX
Changes:
common.h:
- Added HTSMUXreadPowerStatus(tSensors link)
- Added int round(float fl)
- Added motor mux types and data structs
NXTCam-driver:
- Added NXTCAMgetCenter() to calculate the center of a single blob
- Added size filter to NXTCAMgetAverageCenter()
Others:
- HTMC-driver.h: simplified relative heading calculations – Thanks Gus!
- Replaced: HTDIR is now HTIRS2, API renamed, too
- HTTMUX-test1.c: Fixed silly typo in comments
- MSDIST-test1.c: Fixed a typo in the code
The "html" directory has been renamed to "Documentation" to make it more obvious that it’s where all the help files live. You can download it from the usual spot: [LINK].
Released: 3rd Party ROBOTC Driver Suite V1.4…
If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!v1.4 of the RobotC Driver Suite has been released. You can download it here: RobotC Driver Suite v1.4 I’m in the processing of trying it out, and working my way th…
That sounds awesome. What is the license on the work? Would it be acceptable to port or adapt it to other systems (so it would work with, say, LeJOS or NXTalk, or maybe so that I2C devices could be used from the Arduino)?
Clinton,
You can port it to whatever platform you’d like, as long as you give credit. I would encourage you to release your modified code so that others can learn from it but it’s not something I force people to do. The license is somewhat BSD-like. I like my software to be truly free without forcing people to do anything with their derivatives other than give credit to the original author(s).
What did you have in mind? Are you a developer for NXTalk or Lejos?
– Xander
I’ve not a dev for either of those projects, but I’m certainly considering helping out. I really like LeJOS, but third-party sensor support is incomplete. I am intrigued by NXTalk, and know that it is lacking in third-party sensor support, too.
Lastly, I’m really excited about the idea of using some NXT sensors with an Arduino. Pure I2C sensors should work fairly easily … I just need some time to try it and a library to control it would help, too!
I’ll have to let you know if I actually do anything with this.
Clinton,
One thing you must keep in mind when using the I2C sensors made for the NXT platform with some other platform is to not exceed the 10kHz clock speed. Some of them can go as high as 30kHz, but you get errors with others at this speed. If you are using the ArduinoMega and want to connect it to the NXT brick, make sure you read this http://mightor.wordpress.com/2009/08/04/connecting-the-nxt-to-an-arduinomega/
– Xander
Xander,
Sweet! Thanks for the tip.
Clinton
Xander,
well, I see that you’ve now released the 3rd party driver suite version 1.5! Congratulations.
I did want to tell you that I’ve started a project to make NXT devices usable with the Arduino. (Well, specifically, the NXTMMX.) I did look into porting your driver, and, in the end, ported the NXC API for the NXTMMX.
Take a look: http://robotclub.ab.ca/articles/33/arduino-nxtmmx-lego-motors
I saw the video featured on Make: magazine as well. Congratulations 🙂