[Sugar-devel] TurtleBlocks driving lego NXT 2.0 -

[Walter Bender]

On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 5:34 PM, Martin Langhoff
<martin.langhoff at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hi Walter, list,
>
> [ disclaimer: this is a hobby project, likely to proceed at very slow
> pace, given insane amounts of real work around XOs ;-) ]
>
> I got a lego nxt 2.0 for xmas! Looking around for how to use it from
> Linux, I found NXC (a variant on NQC -- 'not quite C' that compiles to
> NXT bytecode). It looks like a really pleasant programming language.
>
> It's the most compelling env for various reasons -- but the
> interesting thing is that there is no GUI for Linux, and that the
> MacOSX/Windows GUI looks a lot like Turtle Blocks (but doesn't seem to
> be as good ;-) ).
>
> Here's a good visual summary, put together by a teacher:
> http://www.nebomusic.net/rosettastone.html
>
> What I am wondering is what is the smartest path to a TB "mode" or a
> friendly fork of TB that exports NXC code?
>
> After browsing the TB src (looking at master), my observations are
>
>  - I'm very pleased there's a turtleart.py that runs w/o Sugar! Very nice!
>
>  - talogo.py could be an inspiration
>
>  - NXT has very different actions, and fairly specific sensors -- it'd
> make sense to have a very different set of blocks available. Also some
> blocks have many options. Not sure how to handle these issues.
>
> Ideas?
>
> = Notes on languages and NXT tools =
>
> Notes for anyone else looking into NXT... from most interesting to least
>
>  - NBC/NXC is the most popular tool by all accounts, actively
> maintained, and jspaleta is planning to get it into F15. NBC/NXC
> creates programs that download to the NXT CPU and run there -- it's a
> nice ARM CPU. Fully features, well documented (free online docs). The
> author of NBC/NXC has also published an apparently good book.
>
>  http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/
>  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0973864974/
>
>  Found this tutorial best outline of NXC usage
>  http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/nxcdoc/NXC_tutorial.pdf
>
>  - There is a python module for it, but it's for Python 2.4, looks
> unmaintained, seems very limited in features and it's not clear
> whether it creates programs that will execute on the NXT CPU, or just
> controls it remotely. Others have reused it and extended it for file
> transfers, but it all looks dated; if the NBC/NXC toolchain handles
> the actions we need, better.
>
>   http://www.danbbs.dk/~kibria/nxt/nxtsh.py<http://www.danbbs.dk/%7Ekibria/nxt/nxtsh.py>
>
> http://chromiteblue.com/archive/projects/nxt/nxt_pull-a-companion-program-for-nxt_push/
>
>  - Big chart of options
>   http://www.teamhassenplug.org/NXT/NXTSoftware.html
>
> cheers,
>
>
>
> m
> --
>  martin.langhoff at gmail.com
>  martin at laptop.org -- School Server Architect
>  - ask interesting questions
>  - don't get distracted with shiny stuff  - working code first
>  - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff
>


I had a similar conversation with the Arduino team in .uy last month. We
discussed how I might make a palette class that made it easier to extend
Turtle Blocks without having to modify the taconstants.py file. I'll keep
you in the loop on that one.

I would recommend as a place to start simply adding a set of blocks to
control the motors and access the sensor data. And leave the programming
logic to the Sugar Activity.

Happy to help any way I can. (BTW, v106, not yet released, but in git, has
support for the XO camera as an additional sensor... a request from a
teacher in .uy.)

Happy 2011

-walter

-- 
Walter Bender
Sugar Labs
http://www.sugarlabs.org
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