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#1
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rigel: yet another program loader!
Well, you're probably all going to roll your eyes at yet another program loader for the FRC, but I hope mine stands out a bit, so please give it a chance
![]() Over the last two months, I've been writing and extensively testing my program loader, which is called rigel. Actually, I'm quite sick of the name (which was temporary in the first place), so if any of you have a better one, I'd be happy to rename it. The loader and corresponding library is free software, licensed under the GPL. It (hopefully) is worth your time because:
At the moment, it is currently command-line only (although very simple to use). I have delegated the task of writing an ncurses front-end to one of our programmers, and I am writing a wxWidgets GUI for it to make life easier for those who don't like the command line. The only issue is that it probably doesn't yet work on big-endian architectures, but that should be very easy to fix. Just compile it with make and it should be fine on any platform with gcc (mingw32 works fine for windows). I'll build a Windows executable tomorrow and upload it; for now, here is the source and the readme: http://lights2dx.net/source/other/rigel-0.12.tar.bz2 http://lights2dx.net/source/other/rigel/README My team has been using it with no issues on slackware/i486 and I've tested it on Fedora 6/x86_64, but if you find any problems with it (or if you hate it), please post them here. |
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#2
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
Would you be willing to help integrate this into FusionEdit (www.sourceforge.net/projects/fusionedit)?
Edit: Have you tested it for VEX, EDU, 2005 RC? Last edited by EHaskins : 28-01-2007 at 12:20. Reason: url error. Another question. |
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#3
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
Quote:
And I'd be happy to help integrate it. How easy is it to integrate C and C#? |
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#4
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
Vex and Edu are both 18f8720.
I believe the easiest way to integrate your code may be to create a windows command line app then run it from the C# app. It should be possible to use a C DLL in C#, but I haven't had to do that before. |
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#5
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
It would be easier indeed to just use a system()/execve() call to run my program directly, but you might want to integrate it more cleanly into your program. Do you intend to make your program multiplatform (i.e. with Mono)? In either case I don't mind helping you build shared objects/DLLs to integrate it. It should be fairly simple in any case
![]() Just give me a PM with all the details. |
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#6
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
The 2004-2005 RC, Vex, and EDUbot all use the PIC18F8520.
I would be interested in this as well. I haven't even gotten to loading master code, yet. (Although I suspect it's pretty easy.) |
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#7
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
This may be a little bit unrelated, but do you know the format of the serial console that the "printf" statements go to?
Is it as simple as "cat /dev/ttyS0"? (though I'm wondering what happens to all the bytes when the robot serial interface is not outputting anything... are they just null characters?) Also, how does this compare to the JIFI program in here: http://chiefdelphi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=52546 (though afaik JIFI doesn't seem to be open source) Anyway, It would be nice to have a GUInterface... I might write a GTK one if I have some free time... (actually I might try using wxWidgets...I heard it's good) |
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#8
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
This could be interesting!
I have been trying for some time to get the IFI loader to download code to my Vex controller through my homemade programming cable. Since I know exactly where the programming sequence is getting "hung up", maybe I could modify your loader to support a homemade programming cable? (This would have to be dome some time after build season--I'm kind of busy right now. Something about a robot... ) |
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#9
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
Thanks a ton for this! I was just looking for a command line loader I could integrate with a project I'm working on, so this works out nicely. (I know about the other ones out there, but they were either possibly out of date or difficult to make work with my needs.)
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#10
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
Quote:
).Quote:
I haven't tried JIFI yet because I don't use the Sun JRE, which is (currently) required, but it seems like his is a little earlier in development. His has a GUI, however, which may be more appealing for your purposes. Or, if you'd like to help write one for my library, that'd be fantastic Quote:
) |
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#11
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
Cool on Linux!!!! I have a question though.
Short form: How do I rebuild it on windows? Long form: I had enhanced the picloader application into a client/server socket application so that an old processor with wifi running on the robot could "push" the reset and programming buttons through the parallel port. Then I ported the hex file processing code to windows (we have those who don't want to leave windows). Anyway, it all worked except the picloader code made no effort to read the handshake messages, and if the serial cable was not connected, the interface would lie about the download completing. I looked into enhancing the picloader when I stumbled upon this thread. (BTW, This is an example of why I fully support your Open-Source FIRST post http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=52633) I'd like to adapt rigel to the same client server methodology. However, I got hung up in the building of the rigel code on windows. I'd first tried to use MSdev, but figured I was wasting time as you already had it working on windows. I then tried cygwin (it was already loaded). It built, but ran aground with the "cannot execute binary file" error. I then looked up MinGW as you'd alluded to, but really didn't want to go down the path of loading up yet another *nix on windows toolkit. If you can help me build it once on windows, I can take it from there. Naturally, if you or anyone else is interested, I'd gladly provide, and perhaps you could incorporate, the client/server work into the library (my first Open-Source FIRST contribution)? Could you consider posting (or adding to 0.14) a quick HOWTO for building the code on windows (preferably, in my case, using MSDev or CygWin)? Great work! Thanks! |
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#12
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
Hey, thanks for your interest
I'd love to see what you've been doing in relation to the client/server idea, that sounds very interesting. I'd definitely consider adding it to librigel, or at the very least include it in utils/. Today I worked a little bit on the Win32 port of the latest code base for rigel, and with a small tweak (check for __CYGWIN__, which will make it use the same default port as linux) it compiled fine for me under Cygwin. I believe I accidentally packaged the binary for linux-x86_64 in the above tarball, which would explain why the binary wasn't loading on Windows (if you did ./rigel in cygwin's bash). Sorry about that Make sure you're running "rigel.exe".Tomorrow I will upload the latest version of rigel and include a windows executable. |
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#13
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Re: rigel: yet another program loader!
I have updated rigel to version 0.13, with some nifty new features and some bugfixes.
Get the source and Win32 executable here (you must have Cygwin installed for now): rigel 0.13 source From the ChangeLog: New features -
Bugfixes -
By the way, I have tested updating the master firmware, and successfully updated the 2005 controller to the beta version 14 ![]() |
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