BrickRC
BB-Zone
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- What it is...
brickRC is a simple Gnome application
to remotely control the LEGO Mindstorms
RCX brick. Lego provides a similar application as part of it's Windows development
environment. But this only works with Windows and doesn't support brickOS and Linux which is my
development environment.
I wanted to get some practice and understand LNP (LegOS
Network Protocol) and thought a little app like this would get me started
and may usefull to other people as well.
brickRC allows you to control the three motor ports
of the RCX and at the same time monitor the three seonsor inputs. Currently
only touch, light (active) and rotation sensors are supported. I definetly
want to support Mindsensors input
mutliplexer as well. If you have other sensor you want to see supported,
you either have to do it yourself, or give one of those sensors to me...
Check the screenshot to
see how it looks like.
- What you need...
First you need brickOS. Follow
the link to get it if you don't use it already and follow the instructions
there to install it. I use brickos-0.2.6.09.newConf2, don't know
how it works with older versions, if at all.
Next you need the LNP package. You can get it here. Note that you have to
patch it to make it work with the current brickOS version. This mail explains
what need to be done.
- How you build it...
Get the latest tar file from the download
area and do the usual configure/make thing:
./configure
make
make install
This should install the Gnome part into your system. Note that lnp.h
and liblnp.so need to be in some place where your toolchain can
find them. configure takes the usual arguments.
Next copy the contents of the directory rcx
into your brickOS environment, build the RCX application and load it onto
your brick.
Now power up lnpd, start the app on your RCX
and call brickrc on your desktop.
You should be all set. If there is any trouble or if
you know how this can be made easier, please let me know.
- What needs to be done...
Well, the usual stuff. Better docs (a README...?!), a nicer Web site,
some code cleanup on the RCX side, nicer graphics for the desktop app, a
setup dialog to allow to connect to remote LNPds, an option to use the light
sensor in passive mode, more sensors in general, you name it. If you want
to help, please send mail. Either
with ideas, or even better with patches.... :)
- Who to blame...
If you can't get it to work, if you have ideas on how to improve it or
if you just wanna tell me how much you love it, send email to brickrc@bb-zone.com. I'll try to
stay on top of things, fix bugs and improve brickRC as much as I can. But
as I have a daytime job as well, I can't promise too much. Ich you want
to know more about me, check my home
page.
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