Peter Gammie, like myself, is blogging about Lego Mindstorms and in particular, brickOS and Mac OS X.
Of particular interest is that he took the OS X USB support from leJOS and hacked it into brickOS’s mangled dll (dynamic linker and loader), so that you can download brickOS programs from the Mac to the RCX.
His tools are here.
When I was trying to build leJOS on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.3 with gcc4 (from Xcode 2.2):
$ gcc_select Current default compiler: gcc version 4.0.1 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 5247)
I was getting this error:
====> Making leJOS Unix binaries (lejos, for emulation) cd unix_impl; make OSTYPE=darwin gcc -I../vmsrc -I. -Wall -Wno-unused -c ../vmsrc/threads.c ../vmsrc/threads.c: In function 'switch_thread': ../vmsrc/threads.c:326: error: label at end of compound statement make[1]: *** [threads.o] Error 1 make: *** [tinyvm_emul] Error 2
This is simple to fix by applying this patch:
--- threads.c.orig 2006-01-07 08:37:40.000000000 -0800
+++ threads.c 2006-01-07 08:37:48.000000000 -0800
@@ -321,6 +321,7 @@
}
}
done_pi:
+ ;
#endif // PI_AVOIDANCE
}
Here’s what I did (based on a combination of info at http://h8300-hms.sourceforge.net/ and The legOS HOWTO installation page) to build GNU binutils, gcc, and brickOS and associated tools on Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.3 with Xcode 2.2:
Wouldn’t you know that right after I bought a Mindstorms IR tower off eBay, Lego announces at CES that they are releasing a next-generation Mindstorms product? Well, I can take consolation in the fact that it won’t be out until August.
From the press release:
LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT highlights include:
LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT will be available at most toy and discount merchandise retailers,
select consumer electronics retailers or online at www.LEGOshop.com in August 2006
and will have a suggested retail price of $249.99 (USD) and $ 379.99 (CAD).
A special version for school and institutional use is also releasing later this year.
In related news, LEGO Group also announced the launch of www.nxtbot.com,
a blog written by writer, gamer and robotics enthusiast Jeff James, focused
on the growing and fascinating world of consumer robotics. The company
also announced details for a Developer Program. Information can be found at www.mindstorms.com
Wow. I think this is the coolest Mindstorms robot that I’ve seen:
Having built a simple Mindstorms robot, but not having the ability to program it, I bought a Lego Mindstorms USB IR tower on eBay.
I can’t wait for it to arrive so I can start messing around with RCX Code, NQC, brickOS (formerly known as “legOS”), Pylnp, etc.
