Monday, January 12, 2009

Working NQC Code...With Caleb Tricycle

So exciting news...okay maybe not so exciting...same robot doing same things...but once again with different code.

To code Caleb Tricycle this time, I used the NQC code that was mentioned in the last post. What I enjoy about this code is that it is taking me back to the good old writing of code, not the "dragging and placing" of code. Being able to comment what I was doing, writing the code in Notepad++ :-D



So believe it or not, he was running just fine before I got my camera out...apparently he is camera shy. What I noticed though, when he couldn't find the line was that he just kept going back and forth, then into doing circles. So if I can come up with some brilliant way to get him to realize that he is in the middle of the circle, when he is...then I might add it to the code. But as I have limited time this J-term and more to do, I will probably go on and continue learning, coming back to it if time/or a brilliant idea jumps into my head.

Time Since Last Post: 1 hour 20 minutes
Time for today: 3 hours 20 minutes
Time overall: 21 hours 40 minutes

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

Blogger Templates by OurBlogTemplates.com 2007