ctrl-alt-Development
Your hotkey to alternative software development
Essential Reading
There are many nice books out there, but a few of them contain such wisdom that I just must mention them here:
Feb '06
23
iRcxCtrl
Originally I wrote iRcxCtrl as an API to for controlling the RXC using the infrared tower. That was back in 1998. Recently I revived the code for doing a Robot with a webcam prototype.
iRcxCtrl contains useful abstractions for the controllable parts in your Mindstorms kit such as the Brick itself, the Engines and Sensors, but also a SteerDrive component (two engines combined), Position Guesser, GUI components, a FirmWare uploader (Written because the original CD didn't run on Windows XP...) and a Video capture component. Everything you need :-)
Have a look at the code for a robot that can move, see and guess where it is:
vcr=new VideoCapture(captureDeviceName,resolution,encoding);
//
LegoIRPort i = new LegoIRPort(rcxTowerCommPort);
PacketFactory pf = new PacketFactory(i);
PacketStreamer ps = new PacketStreamer(i);
//
engineArray=new MultiModeEngineArray(pf,ps);
drive=new SteerDrive(engineArray,0,2);
//
guesser=new PositionGuesser(0,2,30);
engineArray.addLegoEventListener(guesser);
//
vcr.initialise();
iRcxCtrl is published under the GPL and can be downloaded as Java source code.
| Requirements : | Lego Mindstorms 1.5 kit, J2SE 1.4.2 or better, Java Communications API 2.0 and the Java Media Framework 2.1.1e |
| Technologies : | J2SE 1.4.2, Eclipse IDE, Lego Mindstorms |