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Bots / The Ultimate Palm Robot/ Mukhar & Johnson / 222880-6 / Chapter 7

156 The Ultimate Palm Robot

T his is the chapter that all you hackers and computer geeks have been
waiting for. This is where we show you how to write programs for your
robot. Actually, we’ve divided this information into two chapters. In this
chapter, we show you how to write programs for the PPRK and the Pontech
SV203 controller. In the next chapter, we show you how to write programs for
the PPRK and the BrainStem controller.

We will explore two languages for writing programs for the Pontech con-
troller. We’ll start by looking at writing programs in BASIC. There are a couple
of BASIC interpreters that you can use. The first one we’ll look at is HotPaw
Basic, which runs on the Palm. BASIC programs are stored as memos on the
Palm OS device. We’ll also spend a little time with NS Basic. NS Basic is a
forms-based programming environment for the Palm. You create Palm pro-
grams on your desktop PC by creating forms and form controls such as but-
tons and fields. You then add code to the controls, and the code is executed
when the control is activated. Finally, we’ll look at writing C programs for the
Palm using PocketC. PocketC is similar to HotPaw Basic in that your C pro-
grams exist as memos on the PDA that are executed by the PocketC applica-
tion. We had also wanted to include a section on programming the PPRK in
Klingon, but our Klingon programmer was busy destro … that is to say, de-
bugging some other code.

The Robot Geek Says

In this chapter, we assume that you already know how to program
in at least one computer language. This chapter will not be a tutorial
on how to program, but rather how to use what you already know to
program for the SV203 or BrainStem controller. If you want to learn
how to program, there are many other books you can try:
✖ Teach Yourself C, and C++: A Beginner’s Guide, both by Herb Schildt,
from McGraw-Hill/Osborne
✖ C How to Program, by Harvey M. Deitel and Paul J. Deitel, from
Prentice Hall
✖ Learn to Program tlhIngan in 24 Hours, by Kev Martok, from Starfleet
Academy Press
✖ Robot Invasion, by Dave Johnson, from McGraw-Hill/Osborne (It has some
robot programming, but it’s not a programming book per se. We thought
that as long as we’re plugging other people’s books, we might as well plug
one of our own.)

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Monday, May 12, 2003 4:29:20 PM