This is Part 2 of programming the Lego NXT using Linux. Part 1 covers the Lego-Linux bluetooth connection.
If you're like me, you've used the graphical NXT programming environment for about twenty minutes before wrist pain and frustration sets in. I did not enjoy the graphical programming at all, and the fact that it did not work on Linux was another factor. Well, there is a very nice alternative, which is John Hansen's NXC language. It is a C-like language which you can program the NXT in. You'll hear a lot of references to BrixCC, which is an IDE for NBC and NXC. It doesn't exist for Linux, but any text editor works quite well. All features are supported, and you can write code that is more compact and faster than the graphical tool. Also, you can use NXC to allow your robot to communicate with your Linux computer over bluetooth! This is what you need to do to start using NXC.
If you're like me, you've used the graphical NXT programming environment for about twenty minutes before wrist pain and frustration sets in. I did not enjoy the graphical programming at all, and the fact that it did not work on Linux was another factor. Well, there is a very nice alternative, which is John Hansen's NXC language. It is a C-like language which you can program the NXT in. You'll hear a lot of references to BrixCC, which is an IDE for NBC and NXC. It doesn't exist for Linux, but any text editor works quite well. All features are supported, and you can write code that is more compact and faster than the graphical tool. Also, you can use NXC to allow your robot to communicate with your Linux computer over bluetooth! This is what you need to do to start using NXC.
- Visit the excellent NXC beta release page . There is no stable release as of March 2009, but the beta is pretty rock solid. Forget the source code, it is made in Delphi and there is little documentation on how to compile it under Linux. Get the binary distribution. It consists of some very spare documentation and the nbc executable. Despite its name, it is also the NXC compiler. This will only work on x86 Linux.
- Run nbc -help to learn the options. Really, this program needs a man page!
- Visit the NXC documentation page and get the lovely NXC_Guide.pdf, a guide on how to program using NXC. Download it but don't look at it yet. It is a reference, not an introduction.
- The real document you're looking for is Danny Benedettelli's NXC tutorial, which is far more useful than the guide. Download it, print it out, read it through and through.
- To set up the USB communication, download setupNxtUSB.sh: shell script to perform USB settings for Linux communication with NXT.
- Run it by itself as follows
$ chmod +x ./setupNxtUSB.sh; $ ./setupNxtUSB.sh
This will prompt you for the root password when required. The file follows instructions from the page about Linux USB setup with NXT, so all credit to them. Feel free to edit the file if you suspect something went wrong. The script will prompt you with any errors that it encountered. - In case you aren't certain if the setup worked, plug in your NXT. You should see the word "USB" in the top left of the NXT display, and the output of the command ls -l /dev/lego* should show at least one device. My output is given as a reference
$ ls -l /dev/lego* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 2009-04-19 17:45 /dev/legonxt-2-1 -> bus/usb/002/042
- Write a sample program using Danny's guide.
- Compile your program with nbc your_program.nxc -d -S=usb, where your_program.nxc is the name of your program.
- Now the program has been compiled and loaded on to the NXT. It should appear in the "My Files" -> "Software Files" area of the NXT, from where you can run it!
- There, that wasn't so hard! As you learn NXC, you'll realize that it is feature complete, and is a much more elegant way of programming the NXT.