Hi all,
I was a lurker last year and unfortunately real life got it in the way and my Smalltalk interest waned while starting new work and whatnot. My
I bought some Smalltalk books off Amazon last year and it kindly informed me today about Stéphane Ducasse's new book "Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots. (http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/botsinc/ )" I read the reviews and searched the archives but it is not clear to me what exactly the book covers. I spent a lot of time with Lego Mindstorms and Brian Bagnall's book "Core LEGO MINDSTORMS Programming: Unleash the Power of the Java Platform" and it taught me a lot. I also spent some time with the PPRK (http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/palm_pilot_robot_kit_pprk_review). Both have taught me a lot and help me understand the Java and robots.
I'm still very interested in understanding Smalltalk. What was not clear to me was if Stephane's book has a real hardware platform to experiment with or whether is it all virtual. I also searched the archives and didn't see anything recent about Mindstorms or any actual hardware platform.
Questions:
1) Is the "Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots" tied (or easily tied) to a real robotics platform. Is it tied to hardware or is there interest in tying it to a experimental platform.
2) Is there anything recent with Squeak and a real hardware platform. I have Mindstorms and am interested in the new Vex Platform as well as doing something from scratch.
3) I read the "Seeking Squeak Mentor" thread - anyone interested in mentoring me in the robotics arena? (p.s. I'm in Albuquerque) and possibly tying the lessons to hardware?
Best regards, Paul
p.s. I just ordered Stephane's book from Amazon!
On Mon, 7 Nov 2005 20:47:07 -0700, "Paul Grunwald" pgrunwald@comcast.net wrote:
- Is there anything recent with Squeak and a real hardware platform. I
have Mindstorms and am interested in the new Vex Platform as well as doing something from scratch.
Paul,
I'm using Squeak for robotics - check out http://www.huv.com/uSeeker/smalltalk
I don't interface Squeak directly with hardware (other than the serial port), but it is running on a Dell Axim PDA. My brother and I are also working on another robot that will interface more directly with hardware, using an I2C bus on the Gumstix (www.gumstix.com). We have a version of the Squeak VM running on the Gumstix, and have successfully run headless images there.
Later, Jon
-------------------------------------------------------------- Jon Hylands Jon@huv.com http://www.huv.com/jon
Project: Micro Seeker (Micro Autonomous Underwater Vehicle) http://www.huv.com
Hi Paul
I bought some Smalltalk books off Amazon last year and it kindly informed me today about Stéphane Ducasse's new book "Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots. (http://smallwiki.unibe.ch/botsinc/ )" I read the reviews and searched the archives but it is not clear to me what exactly the book covers. I spent a lot of time with Lego Mindstorms and Brian Bagnall's book "Core LEGO MINDSTORMS Programming: Unleash the Power of the Java Platform" and it taught me a lot. I also spent some time with the PPRK (http://www.the-gadgeteer.com/review/ palm_pilot_robot_kit_pprk_review). Both have taught me a lot and help me understand the Java and robots.
I'm still very interested in understanding Smalltalk. What was not clear to me was if Stephane's book has a real hardware platform to experiment with or whether is it all virtual. I also searched the archives and didn't see anything recent about Mindstorms or any actual hardware platform.
Questions:
- Is the "Squeak: Learn Programming with Robots" tied (or easily
tied) to a real robotics platform. Is it tied to hardware or is there interest in tying it to a experimental platform.
no this is just a morph that looks like a robot to teach programming basics
- Is there anything recent with Squeak and a real hardware
platform. I have Mindstorms and am interested in the new Vex Platform as well as doing something from scratch.
Alex coded something to talk from squeak to Mindstorm.
- I read the "Seeking Squeak Mentor" thread - anyone interested in
mentoring me in the robotics arena? (p.s. I'm in Albuquerque) and possibly tying the lessons to hardware?
Best regards, Paul
p.s. I just ordered Stephane's book from Amazon!
I hope that you will not be disappointed and that you will have fun with it. Really, today I had a lab with people that never programmed in their life and I have to teach oo modeling so we started to have fun with the robot :) and they had fun!
Stef
squeak-dev@lists.squeakfoundation.org