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Bots / The Ultimate Palm Robot/ Mukhar & Johnson / 222880-6 / Chapter 8

224 The Ultimate Palm Robot

Getting the Java Communications API

As we wrote at the beginning of this chapter, we’re assuming that you already
know how to program. For this section, we’re also assuming that you know
how to program in Java, and that you already have a Java Software Develop-
ment Kit (SDK). So we won’t be showing you how to get a Java SDK or how to
program in Java. We’ll simply say that you need one of the Java 2 versions of
the SDK (we recommend the 1.4 version) to program for the BrainStem.
However, as we mentioned earlier, you do need to have a special Java library
to communicate over the serial port to the BrainStem. This library is the Java
Communications API. You can download the Java Communications API at
http://java.sun.com/products/javacomm/. At the time we wrote this, Sun
provided support only for Windows and Solaris platforms. There is third-
party support for Linux; see the FAQ at the Java Communications API web
page for a link to the Linux version.
Download and unzip the API to your computer. When you unpack the archive
to your computer, it will create a \commapi directory. So we recommend you
unpack the archive to your Java SDK directory. For example, if your SDK is
installed at C:\jdk1.4, you would unpack the API so that the API files are installed
at C:\jdk1.4\commapi.
The installation instructions for the API are contained in a file named
PlatformSpecific.html that is included with the installation. We’ll briefly repeat
the Windows directions here:

1. Copy win32com.dll to the \bin directory of your Java installation.
2. Copy comm.jar to the \lib directory of your Java installation.
3. Copy javax.comm.properties to the \lib directory of your Java
installation.
4. Add comm.jar to your classpath.

And here are the directions for Solaris:

1. Add libSolarisSerialParallel.so to the environment LD_LIBRARY_
PATH. Alternately, copy libSolarisSerialParallel.so to /usr/lib.
2. Copy comm.jar to the /lib directory of your Java installation.

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