Sunday, July 29, 2012

Sneak Preview of Our Tape Reader

Can you afford one extra NXT motor? Then sometime this Fall you'll be able to build a dedicated paper tape reader to load programs directly from paper tape into an NXT robot! We're working on this prototype, and will open source it when it's done.

Not only does it feel great to hold a copy of your actual program, but it also enables you to program your robot with no computer at all! And many kids can write their paper tape programs at once, again without needing their own computers.

However, the programming language we're currently developing with these office supply stickers is not as complete as NXT-G. But it will be a fun, useful first paper-tape language. How will you use it? There's an "interpreter" program that goes in your brick. And a "loader" program that reads in the paper tape and stores the data (sticker colors) in a file. Then when you're ready, at any time you can run the interpreter to process your file, interpreting all the instructions in it.

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