Subject:
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Re: NXT firmware to be open source
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Wed, 3 May 2006 00:36:14 GMT
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Viewed:
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3458 times
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In lugnet.robotics, Ross Crawford wrote:
> I'd be interested to know if the MUPs or MDPs have any further info on these
> developer kits, or have any further info they can share? I assume the dev
> environment is Windows based, it would be interesting to know what it's
> written in, and if it looks like it can easily be ported?
The LEGO Mindstorms Driver SDK is dual platform (PC and Mac). It is built upon
the National Instruments NI-VISA interface. The main driver component is called
Fantom. It exposes a set of C functions and C++ classes which let you
communicate with the brick in ways that are analogous to the Spirit and Ghost
components that LEGO provided for the RCX. It isn't clear whether the source
code for the Fantom component is going to be released as well. Since it is
based on the NI-VISA interface if that interface is available for Linux then it
probably will be possible to port Fantom to Linux if NI doesn't do it for us. I
have written a Pascal unit which exposes the C functions exported by Fantom.
It isn't clear what they mean by the bluetooth SDK but it may not be a lot more
than two word documents which describe the system command protocol and the
direct commands which use the same protocol. The underlying brick communication
class in BricxCC (defined in FakeSpirit.pas) implements all the system and
direct commands. I have another version of the class which is built on top of
the Fantom SDK from NI.
When you say "development environment" are you talking about the Mindstorms NXT
software which is used to write programs using NXTGL (the NXT graphical
programming language)? It is written in Labview. It is available for Windows
and Macintosh. The Mac version is destined to run on both PowerPC and Intel
boxes. While LabView is available for Linux I am not sure that it would be easy
to get the NXT software up and running on a Linux box. My guess is that it
would take a lot of work but I could be mistaken. The NXT software is not going
to be open source so it will require NI doing the port to Linux.
Thankfully there will be alternative development environments for the standard
NXT firmware which will run on multiple platforms, generate far more efficient
executables, and expose the full power of the NXT firmware.
John Hansen
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: NXT firmware to be open source
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| (...) I'd be interested to know if the MUPs or MDPs have any further info on these developer kits, or have any further info they can share? I assume the dev environment is Windows based, it would be interesting to know what it's written in, and if (...) (19 years ago, 2-May-06, to lugnet.robotics, FTX)
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