Programming

No big announcement from the LEGO side, but it seems that the source code for the 1.29 firmware is now available at the LEGO website.  You can download it right here: [LINK].  As per usual, the naming standard of LEGO’s downloadable files will make identifying the file super easy. In order to compile this, you will need a copy of ...

This NXC driver for the HiTechnic Sensor MUX has SMUX-equivalents of all the standard NXC functions for the supported sensors.  For example, to read the HiTechnic Colour Sensor without the SMUX, you’d use ReadSensorHTColor().  The SMUX version is called smuxReadSensorHTColor() and has pretty much the same arguments. I’ve also added some Doxygen-generated documentation to go with it and two examples, ...

Copied from The Robotics Academy: ROBOTC 2.0.2 is available for both NXT and VEX versions. Go here for the links: Download ROBOTC for NXT |   Download ROBOTC for VEX NEW FEATURE: Deactivate Licenses! See image below on how to deactivate a license. Changelog for ROBOTC for Mindstorms 2.0.2: ROBOTC for MINDSTORMS 2.0.2 is a maintenance release for bug fixes and ...

I’ve been meaning to build something cool with the NXTCamV3 for a while now but never got around to it. I tried making the Omniwheel suitable for the NXTCam but unfortunately the wheels cause way too much vibration when the robot moves.  Oh well, in the not so distant future I hope to pick up a few of these babies: ...

Yet another new version (1.3) of the ROBOTC driver suite awaits your download from the usual source. Changes for this version include: New additions: Codatex RFID sensor driver + 2 test programs (thanks Sylvain + Oliver) Lego Temp sensor + 2 test programs (thanks Sylvain) Firgelli Linear Actuator + test program Mindsensors Power Meter + test program Fixes: drivers/common.h: Added ...

Mindsensors was kind of enough to send me one of their prototype sensors, the Power Meter, to play with.  It’s a sensor that allows you to measure, among other things, the current and voltage of anything you care to connect to it (within limits, of course).  The first thing that came to mind was building something that would log the ...

I received my copy of John Hansen’s “Power Programming – Robotics in C”, second edition, a few weeks ago and I’ve read the whole thing. It’s a big book, a little over 540 pages, so it took me some time.  One of the coolest thing I like about this book is that almost all of the models can be built ...

A new version (1.2) of the ROBOTC driver suite awaits your download from the usual source. Lots of internal changes in this version.  I’ve been working on removing all the work-arounds that were necessary for ROBOTC pre-2.0 when there was no unsigned byte type.  Only ROBOTC 2.00 or higher is supported by this version.  The upgrade is free, so there ...

The HiTechnic Sensor Multiplexer (SMUX) is a complex sensor that requires a fair amount of intimate knowledge of its operation in order to use it.  The tutorial has both ROBOTC and NXC examples.  Please note that error checking for all the I2C calls is outside the scope of this tutorial.  This was done so as to not clutter the code ...

ROBOTC 2.0 is out!  After many months of development, testing and bug fixing, the folks at Robotics Academy have given birth to a 27MB baby.  This latest release is a major improvement over ROBOTC 1.x.  I was lucky enough to be part of the debugging and testing of the internal builds as Dick and Tim hacked away to squash the ...