<div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 5:34 PM, Martin Langhoff <<a href="mailto:martin.langhoff@gmail.com">martin.langhoff@gmail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); padding-left: 1ex;"> 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: <a href="http://www.nebomusic.net/rosettastone.html" target="_blank">http://www.nebomusic.net/rosettastone.html</a> 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. <a href="http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/" target="_blank">http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/</a> <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0973864974/" target="_blank">http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0973864974/</a> Found this tutorial best outline of NXC usage <a href="http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/nxcdoc/NXC_tutorial.pdf" target="_blank">http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/nxcdoc/NXC_tutorial.pdf</a> - 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. <a href="http://www.danbbs.dk/%7Ekibria/nxt/nxtsh.py" target="_blank">http://www.danbbs.dk/~kibria/nxt/nxtsh.py</a> <a href="http://chromiteblue.com/archive/projects/nxt/nxt_pull-a-companion-program-for-nxt_push/" target="_blank">http://chromiteblue.com/archive/projects/nxt/nxt_pull-a-companion-program-for-nxt_push/</a> - Big chart of options <a href="http://www.teamhassenplug.org/NXT/NXTSoftware.html" target="_blank">http://www.teamhassenplug.org/NXT/NXTSoftware.html</a> cheers, m -- <a href="mailto:martin.langhoff@gmail.com">martin.langhoff@gmail.com</a> <a href="mailto:martin@laptop.org">martin@laptop.org</a> -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - <a href="http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff" target="_blank">http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff</a> </blockquote></div> 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 <a href="http://www.sugarlabs.org">http://www.sugarlabs.org</a>