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Bots / The Ultimate Palm Robot/ Mukhar & Johnson / 222880-6 / Chapter 1

12 The Ultimate Palm Robot

sensors attached to the robot are sent to the controller, which passes them over
the serial cable to the PDA; likewise, the PDA can determine which servos to
actuate and send the command to the controller, which routes the command
to the correct servo.

Figure 1-1
The Palm’s
serial
connector
is a logical
way for
the CPU to
interact with
the sensors
and actuators
on our robot.

Easy to Program
The programming for the Palm was originally done in the C language, though
there are now several less complex alternatives available, including a BASIC
interpreter and a Java Virtual Machine. Thus, you don’t need to learn a special
language to program the Palm. If you know C or C++, BASIC, or Java, you can
program the Palm PDA.
And, as we mentioned earlier, if you don’t know any of those languages,
this book will give you a tool that you can use to create programs without
needing to know how to program. The application is included on the CD for
this book (along with other programming tools if you want to program the
Palm directly). When you’re ready, be sure to flip over to Chapter 6 for all the
details on this.

Palm OS Devices from A to Z (or 1000 to VIIx)
The PPRK from Acroname can be run with almost any Palm OS PDAever cre-
ated. It’s possible that you may even have one of these devices hanging
around. The list of Palm PDAs that follows is by no means complete; primar-
ily we’ll look at the Palm OS PDAs that are compatible with the PPRK. So join
us as we take a trip down memory lane, looking at some Palm OS PDAs past
and present.

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Monday, May 12, 2003 10:09:08 AM