Monday, January 12, 2009

A new week begins...With new programming environments

This morning I began to download some different environments to program in for the RCX unit. I decided to start with using Not Quite C (NQC), which is described in good detail in Baum's book.

When I first tried to download NQC test code to the RCX unit, I once again received a dreaded IR error, of not being able to transmit. Having received these sort of errors in the Lego environment that came with the Lego set, I began to use the same techniques that I had used there. Starting with the classic trouble shooting technique of restarting the computer. That didn't work. Next up, can I get it to transmit a program to the RCX through the Lego environment. Nope. Check the cable, securely plugged in from what I could tell. Tried restarting the Lego environment with the RCX unit turned on. Once again got no where. And after all of this trouble shooting, what did I figure out? That some how when I am remoted into the computer, I can NOT get the IR transmitter to transmit the programs to the RCX. So that means that I have to go over to the actual server to be able to get it transmit. Hopefully this will be the last post with this problem....

I tried to jump into programming RCX for the current robot that is built, but in looking at the code in the book, I decided that I might need to go do the reading at the beginning of the book, so that I will have a better idea of how to modify it for the line follower design by Knudsen. The biggest difference from what I can tell, is that Knudsen used wheels and Baum used the treads. In many ways I am excited to be getting into NQC because it is putting me back into a good old command line programming interface, versus the Graphical User Interface, which I am having problems completing understanding what I am telling the Robot to do.

Time So far today: 2 hours
Overall: 20 hours 20 minutes (Cool Time!) :-D

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