Project: Programs to allow interactions between old Lego Control Interfaces (RCX, Lego Interface B, others?)

[Ashi Valkoinen]

@Bliss

About SBricks:

There were three different products. SBrick, SBrick+ and SBrick light.

SBrick was the first one, 4 by 4 block with 4 PF plug outputs. Could have been powered from any 9V LEGO source via PF-extension cable, both battery boxes and 9V train speed regulators can power them. I use them in trains with AA battery box, and trackside powered from speed regulator, which doesn't consume batteries since they are plugged into the wall.

SBrick+ was the same case with 4 PF plug putputs, but the PF plugs can also read sensor data - the WeDo 1.0 sensors. 

SBrick light was a 3 by 9 block, with 8 channels of 5V light outputs. Each channel could handle an RGB led output (of course, you could split more leds on the same channel), or each channel could have been splitted into 3 different white led outputs, so in total 24 single white leds OR 8 RGB leds could have been controlled independently. 

All units using BLE. SBrick and SBrick plus could have been used with SBrick app (now removed from official sources, but apkpure have the corresponding apk files), SBrick+ with inputs and SBrick light can be controlled from pro.sbrick.com. 

It is quite logical you cannot find any on sale, I bought my last 5 SBricks one year ago from a LEGO-themes spanish store and the last store I found any. Sometimes they pop up on ebay, but quite rare.

About my current program:

SBrick Pro uses the same "building blocks" for programming. Almost the same, like it has some "events", less math options, but you can also construct a graphic interface and add buttons and sliders on the screen. It would be the best if we can arrange a date and I will show it and its options to you via shared screen, on Discord or Facebook call, whatever you prefer. You blocky seems very promising for me, and if you don't mind it will be nice if I can ask some questions during a call. But my Interface B is still on its way, so nothing in hurry.

[djm]

@Bliss, I'm wondering if you are willing to add the NXT's to the supported devices. While there are other programming environments available (e.g. NXT-G, Brickx), it would be nice if support could be added. I'm willing to undertake testing as I have a few NXTs.

There are two ways to connect to an NXT:

• via a COM port using the LEGO USB cable
• using (classic) Bluetooth

It might be easier to start with the COM port connection as the first iteration, deferring the Bluetooth connection as the second iteration.

The plus side of doing this is that no additional hardware is required with the NXTs.

Let me know if you are willing/interested.

Regards,

David

Edited Wednesday at 08:13 AM by djm

[Bliss]

5 hours ago, djm said:

I'm wondering if you are willing to add the NXT's to the supported devices

Hello David,

One of Lego Blockly primary goal is to provide a common programming environment for all "Brainless" lego control bricks from the past to todays bricks...

This may include interacting (messaging) with Smart bricks or using Smart bricks as remote I/O hubs that would then act like brainless devices...

So Lego Blockly is not meant to build programs uploadable INTO smart bricks...

I know that PyBrick has a Blockly interface to do that (Uploadable programs) for recent smart bricks and hubs and also EV3 I think...
I don't know if they do NXT...

There is also the very good @maehw https://www.webpbrick.com/nqc/blocknqc/ that can do RCX programs using a blockly interface.

I don't know if a blockly interface has been done for NXT series...  Maybe it is missing ...

 

However, I do want to eventually add support for NXT and EV3 but only for messaging with their programs or use them as dummy remote I/O hubs...

 

Regards,

Yves

Edited Wednesday at 01:46 PM by Bliss

[djm]

Yes, I'm not looking for an uploadable program (that's what NXT-G provides). Simply the the ability to run Blockly programs as though the NXT were "brainless". The NXT-G IDE is notoriously unreliable.

David

[Bliss]

2 hours ago, djm said:

Simply the the ability to run Blockly programs as though the NXT were "brainless"

I just downloaded the publicly available Lego Mindstorms NXT BT Dev Kit...

I'm trying to find a Minstorm NXT set on Marketplace to test.

It should be too long after that to implement into blockly...

Stay tuned :-)

[Bliss]

@Toastie,

By the way, I found a "French" version of Legacy Lego Lines for MS-DOS on the Internet Achives.
I did not find an English version.

In the Zip files, there were a bunch of sample programs and two EXE file, LINES.EXE and LINES2.EXE.

Then I used the online hex editor https://hexed.it/ and opened the LINES2.EXE and search for "9D03" using the hex editor search box on the right pane.

It found 2 occurences not far away from each other.

I then typed "F8" over the "9D" byte of the two found location (To have the 03F8 Serial IO Address).

I saved the modified file as LINES2_S.EXE.

I started LINES2_S.EXE in Dosbox-x (With serial1 pointing to my ESP32 Com port in dosbox-x.conf) and it appears to work great...

So if you happen to have a legacy german or english version of MS-DOS lego lines, I assume you could do the same...

 

[Toastie]

2 hours ago, Bliss said:

I started LINES2_S.EXE in Dosbox-x (With serial1 pointing to my ESP32 Com port in dosbox-x.conf) and it appears to work great...

@Bliss

WOW again!!!

Now we can run the DOS versions of LINES in DOSBox-X!!! LINES and TCLogo are the core programs of the 4.5V TC Control era, beginning about 1986 - and used in schools in so many countries. 

And now the ESP32 board may become even more famous! No, it is not the board, it is your software of course!!!

Congratulations 

Equally cool is "Hexed.it" - I am always struggling when a want to simply change individual bytes in exe or com files. Debug is not that straight forward to use. Thank you again for that link! (You certainly know that "Hexe in German is "witch" in English - "hexed.it" sound like a German-English term translating to "I bewitched it" - I am sure, the authors did that intentionally ). Just went to the website - and I am blasted away again. So easy to use - another dream comes true ...  

All the best
Thorsten

[Bliss]

5 hours ago, Toastie said:

Equally cool is "Hexed.it"

Well, I saw that @alexGS was using hexed.it on his bricksafe Interface A, TC-LOGO page: https://bricksafe.com/pages/alexGSofNZ/interface-a-tc-logo.

Indeed this is a great online tool!

So I did the same for patching LINES2.EXE as he did for TCLogo.com...

Thanks to him for giving all the needed information to patch a legacy software ...  (He gave the IO address 0x039D (decimal 925) in the first page of your Lego Interface A thread already).

Edited 18 hours ago by Bliss

[Toastie]

2 hours ago, Bliss said:

Thanks to him for giving all the needed information to patch a legacy software ...  (He gave the IO address 0x039D (decimal 925) in the first page of your Lego Interface A thread already)

You are right: Here is to Alex!