ULTIMATE Robolab discussion topic

[COPERNICON]

ULTIMATE Robolab (UR) is a modification to robolab 2.5.4 (RL254). It was created by Claude Baumann in collaboration with the CEEO (Tufts University) from 2004 to 2007. UR adds many tools and functions to RL254. It flew all these years under the radar because it was mostly developed near the end of RCX mindstorms and mainly developed locally in Luxembourg. UR is sadly not compatible with RL29# because of mayor differences.

main benefits:

• every programs becomes its own RCX firmware => many more options, efficient and fast!
• more data types: 1D and 2D arrays, integers, (un)signed variables,...
• access to low level RCX functions, RCX opcodes
• better timers
• multitasking, subroutines
• ....

There are also many tools added to RL itself.

Resources:

There arent a lot of resources other then the official (now dead) website: https://web.archive.org/web/20090727214457/http://www.ultimaterobolab.com/ and some topics on good-old lugnet: https://news.lugnet.com/robotics/rcx/robolab/

Installation guide:

First you need to install RL254 (this one or this one). RL254 can still be installed on x64 win7 and win10 machines. I also had successfully installing it on Linux Mint using WINE (although i did not test the modification!). Then you download the latest version of UR (from here). To install the modification you can just follow the instructions on the UR website but you just need to drag the "INSTALL_ULTIMATE_ROBOLAB_150.vi" on the RL254.exe and follow the instructions, then optionally you can replace the default .ini file with the custom one....

Programming:

You really need to know RL before you can start with UR. RL is already quite incoherent and confusing to use but UR add many options and custom tools that it becomes somewhat confusing in how to use and more important where to find them. I sadly dont have much experience with both RL and UR (i was about 5 when RL released ;) ). There are also not many guides/resources on how to program using UR or even RL! On the UR website you can find some .pdf's under "intro" and "advanced".