Subject:
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Re: Drive R/C Servos with the RCX and pbForth (long)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Mon, 14 Feb 2000 03:58:04 GMT
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Original-From:
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John A. Donaldson <jdonalds@roanoke.infi#NoSpam#.net>
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Viewed:
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880 times
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Ralph,
What about the new QC. Since it does not use the Lego Firmware and allows
you to use pure C. Could your asm code be used under it. I am interested in
using Servos but like John I too do not want to learn another language. I am a
Sr Software Engineer and very familiar with C. That is why I use NQC and now
QC for my RCX.
John A. Donaldson
Ralph Hempel wrote:
> > Ralph - I'm interested in the use of servos with the RCX, but I have
> > no interest in learning the quirks of another computer language. I'm
> > already a bit familiar with Visual Basic,and control the RCX with it.
> > Can your pbForth solution be duplicated with VB? Also, Have you ever
> > thought about doing up a small batch of PC boards for your interface?
> > Thanks --- John.
>
> I hear you, John. Learning a new language can be a bit tricky, and I
> won't go into the details of why I think it's a good idea to learn
> different languages to get the benefit of different ways of thinking
> about problems...oops, don't get me started :-)
>
> When you use Visual Basic to control the RCX, you are really just sending
> opcodes to the RCX via the IR link. The RCX executes them for you and then
> waits for more input. Without changing the basic firmware on the RCX
> there is no way to get the benefits of servo control with Visual Basic.
>
> Even if you use NQC, you are still just executing the base firmware that
> LEGO ships with the product. Now, the good news is that by swapping
> out the firmware (like with pbForth or legOS) you have way more control
> over the RCX, and can do stuff like control servos.
>
> Here's the neat part. If LEGO wanted to, they could release new firmware
> with new opcodes for servo control. There is nothing in the hardware that
> prevents them from doing this.
>
> That being said, it's not a trivial matter to distribute the new firmware
> to the many users of their product. Do they put out a new CD, do they do
> it over the net? The also have to update the docs, do really good
> testing, and then they have to develop their own special servo housings.
> If they started on this right now, the very best we could ever hope for
> official LEGO servos would be about 1 year (in my opinion). This would
> make a fun Christmas present for the LUGNUT with everything though...
>
> Cheers,
>
> Ralph Hempel - P.Eng
>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Check out pbFORTH for LEGO Mindstorms at:
> <http://www.hempeldesigngroup.com/lego/pbFORTH>
> --------------------------------------------------------
> Reply to: rhempel at bmts dot com
> --------------------------------------------------------
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | RE: Drive R/C Servos with the RCX and pbForth (long)
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| (...) John, you are not the first person to ask if I could release the code for the driver under QC. Give me a week or two to see if I can bludgeon the code into something that will compile (assemble) for you. I AM using the GNU tools to do the (...) (25 years ago, 14-Feb-00, to lugnet.robotics)
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