Subject:
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Re: Got my NXT on Wednesday
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.us.smart
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Date:
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Mon, 10 Jul 2006 14:56:52 GMT
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Viewed:
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11114 times
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On Sun, 9 Jul 2006 02:09:03 GMT, Brian Davis wrote:
> > Arrays of bits would be handy, too.
>
> Bit-level operations are something I'd dearly love to have, but when was the
> last time a 12-year-old or FLL team ended up working at those levels*? Hopefully
> we can get hooks under the hood to this stuff, but putting them in plain sight
> of a world of kids is... asking for a world of trouble.
Well, they already have a boolean data type. If we have arrays, arrays of
booleans doesn't seem like much of a stretch. I'm not asking for bit-wise Ands
and Ors, Shirts or Rolls here ;).
(but isn't something like 50% of their mindstorms customers adults? - of course
not all of those are programmers, but still...)
> > if you can't edit the [MyBlock] I/O, it could be awkward.
>
> You can always reselect and remake the MyBlock. Add a output block to an
> existing MyBlock, highlight everything in the MyBlock except the plugs and the
> new "external" connection, and make a new MyBlock. Not perfect, but not too
> tough.
I played around with it briefly and found that once you had a myblock with I/O,
you can copy and past the little I/O symbols to make more of them. It is crude,
but you can edit the I/O.
The main problem at this point for me is how MyBlocks are shared across all
programs. Sometimes that is just what you want - the ability to make a handy
library of custom blocks, but so far, I want them most just so I can decrease
the clutter of the main screen. For example, I has a mildly complex operation
for the photo-copier robot I assembled for the next SMART mini-challenge that
needed to step the scanning motor slowly in small degree increments from left to
right and then again from right to left. I was able to reduce my code by
paramaterizing a MyBlock to scan with a direction as the input. The thing is
this block is specific to my copier. I can see the MyBlock palette quickly
becoming a clutter of one-off functions.
I haven't tested yet, but I'm also worried about editing one of these MyBlocks
after the fact and accidentally messing up the program that originally needed
it... Do you know if a copy of the MyBlock is stored with the file that uses it?
I doubt it...
> > all my-blocks you ever made for every program show up in the
> > list (?).
>
> Yes, but in the help it's mentioned that you can hack the folder structure to
> produce sort of a custom MyBlock pallet system, grouped as you like. And it
> really does read like a hack, not something you'd want in there for a
> 12-year-old, but it's wonderful to see that level exposed in the on-line help.
I'll have to take a look at it.
> > For the purpose of manually operating the motors, I've succeeded
> > in writing a nice little program that lets you use the square button
> > to select a motor and the arrows to run the motor forward or backward.
>
> Nice. Posting a screenshot would likely get across a lot of it, and it would
> be neat to see. I'm tossing examples into my BS folder.
LOL. I think it is pretty funny that a screen-shot of the program is 1/8th (100k
vs 800k) the size of the save-file of that program.
I'll post it in a second...
-S
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Got my NXT on Wednesday
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| (...) A copy of the MyBlock is not stored with the file that uses it. I've had several programs in NXT-G wind up broken because of changes to the MyBlock VIs they used. You definitely need to be very careful with MyBlocks. John Hansen (20 years ago, 10-Jul-06, to lugnet.org.us.smart)
| | | Re: Got my NXT on Wednesday
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| (...) Yeah, well,*I* am. There's already a Logical block that starts getting at this, but bit-wise opertations would be very nice to have sometimes. I agree, if we have arrays they should be arrays of anything (number, boolean, or string), but (...) (20 years ago, 10-Jul-06, to lugnet.org.us.smart)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Got my NXT on Wednesday
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| (...) Yep, I agree. It why one of the first things I did was write a MyBlock that would use file memory to hold and manage a 1-d array. Worked quite well, but it was slow, and I'm not sure what the ultimate read-write limits are on the flash memory (...) (20 years ago, 9-Jul-06, to lugnet.org.us.smart)
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