Programming

Just uploaded a quick video of the initial test done with the Dexter Industries NXTBee. It’s the same program Dexter Industries used in their flag waving video. It’s really cool to have the wireless connection without all the stupid hoops you have to jump through to do a bidirectional connection in BT. Much more to come soon; I have a ...

I’ve been hacking away at all of the drivers, making them meaner, leaner and easier to use. To go back to the HTAC (HiTechnic Accelerator Sensor) driver as an example, check this out:   HTAC-test1.c (in suite v 1.8.1) HTAC-test1.c (1st round) HTAC-test1.c (now) Total code bytes 4598 1643 (-64%) 1,387 (-70%) Memory locations 716 420 (-41%) 200 (-72%) Procedures ...

If there are certain features you would like to have added to the 2.0 version of the suite, you can leave a comment at the end of this post.  If it’s something that will be of use to others as well than I will consider implementing it.  Now is a good chance to change parts of the API because I ...

I am currently working on rewriting the driver suite to make them leaner.  They won’t be backwards compatible with the old ones. Some of the changes will include: HiTechnic Sensor MUX support separated out from common.h.  If you want to use it, you will need to include a a file for it.  All subsequently included driver files will automatically have ...

Sometimes even the greatest leaders need a little help.  This is also true of the Mindsensors LineLeader sensor. I’ve been working on maze solving robot and noticed that the robot’s state engine would sometimes be triggered by transient readings from the sensor. It would suddenly think that a crossing was detected and swerve to the right or left. Rather than ...

A new release of the Driver Suite has been uploaded to Source Forge. Changes: common.h: added check for sensor type for all I2C calls.  To disable this check, please refer to the source code. Dexter Industries dGPS: added missing DGPSreadDistToDestination() function HT Angle Sensor: added Sensor MUX support HT Compass: enhanced HTMCreadRelativeHeading() function Lego US: Added lots of new functions: ...

Among all of the cool presents I got for Christmas this year were two new shields for my Arduino. I got a L298N Shield and a DFRobot LCD Keypad Shield. I wanted some new shields so I could write drivers for the Arduino port of ROBOTC. I found the original C++ driver for the LCD shield and quickly ported it ...

This is Apollo, the smallest NXT based line follower I’ve ever made.  It’s loosely based on A-Maze-Ing, which I designed and built quite a while ago. Apollo is equipped some pretty cool stuff: The new Mindsensors Numpad A Mindsensors LineLeader sensor Two Rotacaster wheels The program in this robot is based on the same one I wrote for the Mean ...

I made a port of the ROBOTC driver to NXC.  The function calls are pretty much identical. The zip file includes the driver and a test program. You can download it here: [LINK].  Enjoy!

Part Lego, part Arduino, part BoeBot, this is Frankenfollower. This robot was programmed in ROBOTC for Arduino, a port that is still in alpha stage of development but can be used quite nicely for programming the Arduino Duemilenova.  Other Arduino variants will be supported very soon. The Arduino port of ROBOTC has some really cool features: Easy to use sensor ...