Hi Guys,

I'm new to the whole world of NXT programming. I did a bit with an RCX using BrickOS but now I need to upgrade.

What I need for my undergraduate dissertation project is to create a robot controlled by Matlab. Originally I saw that RobotC can use events, and I thought that I could generate these events from the PC, transmitted over BT or USB, and have the NXT react to them. Unfortunately I can't find much info on how to do this...

Alternatively, if its possible to send messages over USB/BT from the PC to the NXT then I could simply poll the message "inbox" and react to them. Is this possible?

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Tim

Have you taken a look at the Microsoft Robotics Studio. This is a free development environment for writing high level robotic behavioral code. In this type of environment, all of the hard work is really done on the PC and the NXT would act like a remote extension of the PC to interact with the environment. MRS has support for communication with the NXT via Bluetooth. I am not trying to steer you one way or the other, just giving you one option to look into.

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/robotics/default.aspx

Download the NXT Software Development Kit from the LEGO site. Read about the Fantom protocol and DLL. You'll need to make calls to this DLL from within MATLAB.

ROBOTC supports the Fantom.dll messaging protcol. This is the same communications protocol that is used by NXT-G and Microsoft Robotics Studio.

Try cross-posting on the nxtasy.org forum asking for someone who is already using MATLAB and is willing to share the DLL function calls with you.

Also do a similar post on the www.lugnet.org robotics newsgroups.