Page 146 - Build Your Own Quadcopter_ Power Up Your Designs with the Parallax Elev-8

Chapter 5: Quadcopter Propulsors 125

A Brief Introduction to the C Language

You should probably appreciate a simpler alternative to creating fast code after going
through the above assembly language discussion. Well, you are in luck, as Parallax has
recently made available a C language development environment for the Prop chip. The C
language has been around for many years, originating in 1969 thru 1973. It has evolved and
transformed to the point where it now supports many different types of computing platforms
ranging from high-end servers to the minimalist embedded microprocessor. The Prop C
development software is named SimpleIDE and is available free of charge from the Parallax
"learn" website http://learn.parallax.com/.
It is a fairly simple download-extract-and-install process. My only caution is that you
must be sure that the compiler, library, and workspace locations are properly identified. You
do this by clicking on Tools in the SimpleIDE menu bar and then on the Properties selection.
A dialog box, as shown in Figure 5.29, will appear. You should see locations similar to the
one in this figure if you installed the IDE using the default settings.
I elected to load one of the example programs to test out my SimpleIDE installation.
Feeling somewhat confident, I loaded the program named Standard Servo Position.c that is
included in an Examples library that may be downloaded from the Parallax "learn" website.
My computer’s location for the directory holding this program was: c:/Program Files (x86)/
SimpleIDE/Workspace/Learn/Examples/Devices/Motor/Servo.
I included the above path only to indicate that it is relatively easy to lose track of where
all your project, source, library, and include files are located. Losing track of the location of
these files may easily be a source of great frustration when you start getting compile-time
errors that a given file could not be found. I suggest you follow all the good guidelines
provided in the Parallax "learn" website http://learn.parallax.com/ regarding how to setup
the SimpleIDE.
I guess I was a bit lucky in that it took only two attempts to successfully compile and
download the example servo-control program into the BOE. Figure 5.30 is a screenshot of the
SimpleIDE with the source code as well as most of the compiler and loader reports, which
are shown below the source code editor pane.
The example program is very simple in that it directs a standard Hitec servo to move to
several positions and then pause for three seconds at each position. The servo was connected

Figure 5.29 SimpleIDE properties dialog.