I’d Rather Be Streaming Robots

The NXT webserver has been up for a few days now and it’s really cool to see so many people logging into it to make the motor move.  When I created it, I had no idea that it was going to be used as much as it has been.  I’ve had almost 1200 views on the UStream channel and blog hits were up by 75% on the first two days.

Since Monday when it first came online it has run a lot more stable than I had anticipated but I’ve had to do a couple of hard resets and restarts. I have plans to make this a more robust program that can actually be used for more than moving a motor. I’ve been working on a more stable way of reading and parsing the serial data, so stay tuned.

As with everything, all good things must come to an end. The server is taking up a fair bit of space on my desk and is stopping me from really playing with the Dexter Industries WiFi sensor.  So I’ll be taking it offline after Sunday 15 May. So if you haven’t played with it yet, head on over to the previous article for info on how to make it work and have a go.  If the NXT doesn’t seem to be responding, come back in a few minutes.  Also keep in mind there is a 5 second delay in the video feed. Sometimes it gets a little stuck when it receives too many requests at once.  I’ve added some code in various places to flush these “bad” connections every 5 minutes as well as a few other little error-recovery tricks.