Home / Programming

Programming

Resolving reset/flash issues with ODROID GO on macOS

I recently bought an ODROID GO to do some development on, and learn more about FreeRTOS. The ODROID GO is a small, handheld, Gameboy sized ESP32-WROVER based device. It is super cheap, about €45 or so, and packs a real punch. The screen is a lovely 320×240 TFT LCD. I first started playing with it, using the Arduino development environment, ...

Read More »

New EdBlocks Editor Released

I wrote about the Edison Kickstarter campaign a few years back, in 2014, in fact. The company is still going strong and are onto version 2.0 of their Edison robot. Recently, I was contacted by them to take a peek at what they were working on next. The new web-based programming environment, called EdBlocks, is a complete redesign of the ...

Read More »

Self-hosted Blockly for PiStorms

The fine folks at Mindsensors have done something pretty cool! You’ve probably heard of Blockly, a very popular graphical programming language. In most cases, you had to run it on a remote website or on your own computer and download whatever code you created to your robot. Well, with the PiStorms you no longer have to! Because it’s based on ...

Read More »

Review: The Art of LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Programming

There are many books out there for the budding robotics fan who wants to hone his or her programming skills.  This is a book that fills that need very nicely.  Terry Griffin’s “The Art of LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Programming” is a great No Starch Press publication.  While some books focus on building, others and both building and programming, this one has deep ...

Read More »

Released: ROBOTC 4.32

  ROBOTC 4.32 is here and it includes a few new features and plenty of bug fixes and enhancements. Please note that if you use LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3, you must update the Linux Kernel to 1.07X, after which you must update the ROBOTC VM as well, of course. Links for downloading files: ROBOTC 4.32 for MINDSTORMS EV3 and NXT: [LINK] ...

Read More »

Robot Virtual Worlds on iPad

If you like programming but don’t have a robot, or you just can’t get enough of programming robots, then go check out the latest version of the Robot Virtual Worlds iPad app.  It was updated yesterday and comes with a massive slew of new features: New control structures: RepeatUntil loops If-Else statements WaitUntil New Sensors: Distance (sonar) Touch Gyro Additional motor commands ...

Read More »

Released: ROBOTC 4.30 / 3.65

This update is mostly a “bug fix” release to take care of a few issues + inclusion of the recently released VEX Cortex Master Firmware Update (4.25).  If you’re still using 4.27, you can see the changelog from 4.27 to 4.29 here.  The 3.65 version is for teams that still using ROBOTC 3.x for their robots. For those of you ...

Read More »

CoderDojo-Metis: More fun than a bag of clowns!

I was invited by Hakan, a Computer Science teacher at the Metis Montessori Lyceum (a secondary level school), to be a guest speaker at the Metis CoderDojo in Amsterdam last weekend and it was so much fun!  The theme for the day was line following robots with LEGO MINDSTORMS.  I was a little intimidated at first, nothing is scarier than ...

Read More »

Released: ROBOTC 4.29

So you think you can Changelog?  Grab a cup of coffee and something to eat, because this is a LONG list.  ROBOTC 4.29 is out we’ve made a lot of changes to all platforms.  Many bugs were squashed and some new features were added  Please note that the Changelog is split up into changes from 4.27 (previous release) to 4.28 ...

Read More »

Stay up-to-date on Driver Suite Developments

I’ve been working hard to make changes to the Driver Suite, to make it more EV3 compatible and to change the API to a more struct oriented approach.  You can now stay up-to-date on the latest changes I’ve made by following me on Twitter: [LINK].  Updates will look something like this: ROBOTC Driver Suite Update [http://t.co/C972pEKMsc] : Additional EV3 compatibility ...

Read More »