Subject:
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Re: Mindstorms NXT programming languages
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Fri, 13 Jan 2006 16:07:51 GMT
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Original-From:
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steve <SJBAKER1@avoidspamAIRMAIL.NET>
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Viewed:
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2018 times
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Dick Swan wrote:
> For reference, a simple line following robot is 5 LOC and 50
> code bytes. [I know this is 10 bytes per LOC but there's
> some startup overhead in this]. A very complicated line
> following robot - using a PID algorithm - takes about 70
> lines of code and uses 500 code bytes. Anybody got any
> applications that they plan that are 1000 times more
> complicated that this?
Yes! Easily.
I want to load images from a camera and process them in
realtime. To do that, I'd like to take a pre-existing
image processing library and compile it for the NXT.
That could EASILY consume all 256Kb of flash - and the
image itself would need vastly more RAM than the NXT
has. That's not in any way an unreasonable thing to
expect to be able to do in an era of $8, 64Mb thumb drives
and teeny-tiny cameras that fit into a cellphone and cost
$20. It's something that robots need to be able to do.
You can buy a 16MB CompactFlash card for your camera for $6,
a 32MB card for $7 and a Kodak 64MB card for $8. Memorex
make a 128MB card for $11. And we're going to spend $250
and be stuck with ONE QUARTER OF A MEG. Can you really
tell me that you wouldn't have preferred to spend $261 and
had a thousand times more memory than you're going to get?
Really, take a look at some real applications - not toys
like line followers. Real applications take MEGABYTES of
code and tens of megabytes of data.
Suppose I want my robot to play music as it drives along.
A single MP3 file for 5 minutes of music is gonna eat
100% of the NXT's memory - even when saved with low
quality options.
With enough flash memory, we could dump a compiler
and simple operating system onto the NXT and using
a bluetooth keyboard and the NXT's LCD display, we
could type small programs right into the NXT and
compile and run them without a PC. Think how that
would be useful in competitions for fixing last
minute bugs.
I can EASILY imagine things I've been wanting to do
with my RCX (and couldn't - only because of lack of
memory) that I *still* can't do with the NXT - even
though the technology is trivially easy - and the
price would not have been more than a few extra
dollars to make that possible.
Yes, there are things you can usefully do in less
memory - even less than the RCX for example. Yes,
some people will find that the NXT is a huge
improvement.
I'm just frustrated that for the want of a few
bucks worth of Flash memory, the NXT is still
not capable of the sorts of things that real
robots need to do.
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Mindstorms NXT programming languages
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| (...) Steve, What you need to do is to make a dongle for your laptop PC with 8G DRAM, a 1 terabyte hard disk, that gives you an infinite number of LEGO NXT compatible motor ports and sensor ports. You will probably have to drill a few technic pin (...) (18 years ago, 13-Jan-06, to lugnet.robotics)
| | | Re: Mindstorms NXT programming languages
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| (...) Er ... Is there an apples and oranges problem here? You are referring to serial memory devices used for data storage versus broad side FLASH which permits the CPU to execute from it. If the CPU were to be crippled by executing from a SD memory (...) (18 years ago, 13-Jan-06, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | RE: Mindstorms NXT programming languages
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| (...) pathetic. On the contrary, the NXT brick has an enormous amount of memory! On the RCX, there's 6K of memory for user programs and datalog in the standard firmware. I can't recall ever seeing a post with a complaint that a NQC program doesn't (...) (18 years ago, 13-Jan-06, to lugnet.robotics)
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