#Lego rcx programming manuals#
#Lego rcx programming serial#

These libraries come as Dynamic Loadable Libraries (DLLs), and may be used from most programming languages. The RCX SDK includes the GhostAPI, a set of libraries which may be used by application developers to control the Lego RCX brick from their applications.

#Lego rcx programming serial#

Since serial Lego IR transceivers are quite old, and mostly USB transceivers are in use, the description of the serial communication protocol does not make a lot of use for us. In the case that you have a serial IR tower, you may find the details of the serial protocol on the RCX Internals website, where you may also find a description of all the commands to manipulate the device. The IR tower comes in two variants - early versions were connected through a serial interface to the PC, but the latest versions are connected using an USB interface to the PC. To communicate with the PC, the Lego RCX brick uses an infrared communication interface, which requires Lego's IR transceiver to be connected to the PC. There, it is possible to find information about RCX's hardware, about its communication protocol, and other stuff. One of the most helpful resources online about RCX is called RCX Internals, and was put together by Kekoa Proudfoot. So now, all the knowledge may be gathered only from the different websites and projects which still support this device. A few months ago, it was still possible to find the Lego RCX SDK on the official website (which was quite helpful), but it has gone. It looks like Lego has dropped support for its Lego RCX brick already, so it is getting harder and harder to find any documentation about it. The article is going to be dedicated to the topic of manipulating a Lego robot from C# applications using the AForge.NET Framework.

#Lego rcx programming manuals#

Д«efore we start, I would like to note that this article is not related to the topic of robots building using Lego's kits - there are enough manuals and instructions provided by Lego and available on the Internet. The RCX kit was Lego's first robotics kit, and now it does not look to be available in Lego's stores (but still may be found and ordered on eBay or somewhere else), and NXT is the latest kit, which is available in Lego's stores. Lego has two robotics kits, which are known as RCX and NXT. We'll start with the simplest kits, I guess, existing today - Lego Mindstorms Robotics Kits.

Some of them are simple, some of them are more sophisticated and require more knowledge. Of course, robots existing today are getting very complex rapidly, and require a lot of research work to teach them to do some useful work, but if you would like to start in this area, you may want to start with something simple.ДЇortunately, there are many different robotics kits available to hobbyists and researchers, which could be used to start quickly in the robotics area. Nowadays, robots are getting closer and closer to us, migrating from regular industrial robots, which drive production lines, to robots which interact with people and assist them in their daily routines. Robotics topics were always interesting to me, and I always wanted to do something in this area.