Subject:
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Modular advanced RCX - yes, it's called JCX
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Thu, 14 Nov 2002 19:10:58 GMT
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Original-From:
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Bruce Boyes <bboyes@^antispam^systronix.com>
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Viewed:
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1081 times
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At 06:05 PM 11/14/2002 +0000, Marco Correia wrote:
> Steve Baker wrote:
> > Marco Correia wrote:
> > > RCX was (is?) a good *START* (not a good *END*).
> > > RCX 3.0 should evolve to something even more capable and flexible.
> >
> > [...] It needs to be expandable in a bus-like structure.
>
> Yep.
>
> > [...] If the system were modular, the power supply could
> > be separate and you wouldn't have to design Lego-scale
> > robots around a honking great solid lump in the middle.
>
> Yep.
>
> At least, separate the CPU power supply from the motor output power supply.
> We already have those power supply boxes: the 6xAA or 1x9V batt box :)
>
> > 3) Communications to the outside world and between RCX's could have
> > been better.
>
> Yep again :)
>
> IR's ok for local, short range comms... but radio is a must.
> (I always though LEGO would make a super Cybermaster+RCX pBrick)
>
> > The technology of 2002 can do *MUCH* better.
Well, that's the idea behind JCX (http://www.jcx.systronix.com) which has
now been in beta test for over a year. We are nearing the final stretch and
hope to release early 2003. A student class at the University of Utah is
using them, here's a link to the team page:
http://www.cs.utah.edu/classes/cs4710/teams.html
Today we had team progress meetings and I saw one of the (team Cielguard)
Hockeybots (they use a foam ball, so you could also consider them
Soccerbots) find a ball, track to it, grab it, look for and find the goal,
move to it, and kick the ball through it. All autonomously -- including
vision sensor and image processing. We captured some video today and will
post some pictures next week.
And this week I made some progress on the link layer support for the RF
modems, so we hope to have that released to the students next week, and
commercially early 2003. At the moment I have real packets with CRC16 and
Manchester encoding getting transmitted and received, all written in pure
Java. Next is to write the receiver packet parser. We plan to support the
JXTA.org protocols.
This does not use the RCX controller, but it does use all the standard
Lego(tm) sensors and motors plus those from others such as Hitechnic (some
of the students are using those too). It supports graphical
LCD/touchscreens, sonar, etc, all in use by the students too.
We do have our high end JCX brain shipping now - www.jstik.com - which is
blazingly fast and has TCP/IP hardware built on. It's 4-5X the speed of JStamp.
Bruce
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Lego Technic: R.I.P. ?
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| (...) I think we all agree on that point - a more modular computer with as few limits on expandability as the technology can manage. RCX is OK - but you immediately run into three problems: 1) Not enough motor and sensor ports. No matter how many (...) (22 years ago, 14-Nov-02, to lugnet.robotics)
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