Page 393 - Hacking Roomba

374 Part III — More Complex Interfacing

FIGURE 16-10: Sensor handling with Roomba Terminal and RoombaFX

If you program primarily on Windows, Visual Basic is a great way to create Windows programs
quickly. You can create buttons, controls, and windows with code not much more complex than
PBASIC. Check out the source code to the SCI Tester to see how easy it is to make a Windows
program with it. You’ll find that the source doesn’t try to be a complex Roomba API, but is
rather more like the roombacmd tools you created in Chapters 14 and 15. Microsoft Visual
Studio, the program you use to create Visual Basic programs, normally costs several hundred
dollars, but Microsoft has recently released an Express version for free that can create simple
programs.

FIGURE 16-11: SCI Tester running