Page 18 - Hacking Roomba

Introduction xvii

If you’d like to learn about microcontroller programming, a good starting resource is Parallax’s
What Is a Microcontroller? book available as a free PDF download from their website (http://
parallax.com/) in their Documents/Tutorials section. It’s focused on the Basic Stamp
microcontroller, but the techniques and concepts are universal. A good repository for other
microcontroller info is NYU’s ITP program tutorial website (http://itp.nyu.edu/
physcomp/Tutorials/Tutorials) and Tom Igoe’s Physical Computing Site (http://
tigoe.net/pcomp/).

Conventions Used in This Book

In this book, you’ll find several notification icons — Note, Caution,Tip, and Cross-Reference —
that point out important information. Here’s what the three types of icons look like:
Notes provide you with additional information or resources.

A caution indicates that you should use extreme care to avoid a potential disaster.

A tip is advice that can save you time and energy.

A cross-reference directs you to more information elsewhere in the book.

Code lines are often longer than what will fit across a page. The symbol i indicates that the
following code line is actually a continuation of the current line. For example,
root@OpenWrt:~# wget http://roombahacking.com/software/openwrt/ i
roombacmd_1.0-1_mipsel.ipk

is really one line of code when you type it into your editor.
Code, functions, URLs, and so forth within the text of this book appear in a monospaced
font, while content you will type appears either bold or monospaced.