Page 179 - PDA Robotics Using Your Personal Digital Assistant to Control Your Robot

PDA 08 5/27/03 8:47 AM Page 155
8

PDA Robot

Palm OS

Software Using

Code Warrior 8.0

I chose CodeWarrior 8.0 for this project for a number of reasons.
Metrowerks provides a free evaluation copy that lets you become famil-
iar with the intuitive integrated design environment (IDE), and every-
thing (including the emulator) is bundled in a simple to install pack-
age. The help that it provides is excellent. Everything has compiled,
linked, and worked without any problems, spectacularly. The evalua-
tion version has some limitations, however, like a limited code size and
the inability to link with additional software development kit (SDK)
libraries. If you get great job writing code, buy a full-blown version.
The evaluation version can be found at the following URL:
http://www.metrowerks.com/MW/Secure/Eval/Palm/default.htm.
After filling out some information, the evaluation serial number to
unlock the installation is e-mailed to you.

The program name is PDA Robot and the executable program that is
installed on the PDA is PDARobot.prc. It creates an Infrared Data
Association (IrDA) link with the robotic system, also named PDA
Robot, sends, receives, and interprets commands. The code demon-
strates obstacle avoidance by checking the range finder data and mak-
ing a decision to turn, based on a predefined distance threshold. The
standard Palm infrared (IR) library and the code supplied here are
used to achieve the IrDA link with PDA Robot. The creator code
“PDAr” has been registered with the Palm OS site.

155

Copyright 2003 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. Click Here for Terms of Use.