Last year I wrote a VB program to control the mini-RC from a PC. A summary of it and our dashboard program (in CD whitepapers) is
here. I can't upload the setup program to the whitepapers area because its too big. The application provides 4 "virtual" joysticks and 8 switches as inputs to the RC, and allows the RC to send back 8 bytes, 6 integers, and 16 bits of feedback.
Last year we worked on a gyro/encoder based positioning system. The robot at all times was aware of its cartesian coordinates and heading. There is an optional workspace view that plots the robot on a 20' x 20' grid based on the coordinates and heading provided by the robot. We mapped one of the PCInterface joysticks to the drive motors and could see the robot move within the workspace in realtime.
The last feature is a data logger that allows you to save and plot any of the values shown in the interface. It only saves them as bitmaps, but you can resample them to reduce the size.
The C headers and source files will be installed in the application folder when you run the setup program. The readme.txt file explains how to use the PCInterface library. The C code is pretty straight forward, just bear in mind that you cannot use printf at all while you're using PCInterface. The input and feedback data are defined as macros in pc_interface.h. Please do not download the setup package more than once.
http://members.cox.net/seanwitte
Sean Witte
Team 116