Another idea to control Bicks and Brickets.

 

It would be a great help for those who are not familiar with electronics. But the programing is their second life.

 

 

The idea is to create a Brick (would be combined with other Bricks and Brickets on stack).

which controls the other with a code that was compiled before on the computer and uploaded to it by BrickViewer or a special code editor.

 

 

Would have to be created a special code editor that the syntax was like that other high-level languages ​​such as Delphi / CPP.

 

 

I imagine it as a main program with subroutines that would be fired by brickests connected to it (like rotarybricket or some buttons)

 

 

I Can offer assistance in creating / fine tuning code editor for receiving simplified syntax delphi and compile it into a universal code understandable for this brick .. (so everyone could use the syntax in a high level language that likes. formed over time by the possibility of using other programming languages)

1) One possibility to kind of do this already is to use a Beagle Board or a Raspberry PI or similar. We discussed the possibility to make a "Linux Brick" with the standard 4x4cm size, but i fear that it would be hugely expensive compared to the cheap embedded linux boards now available.

 

2) In the near future we plan to offer an "on device programming interface", compatible to the arduino API. That means, you can then program the Bricks and Bricklets themself (you can do this already, but there isn't a nice API or documentation yet).

 

3) Another thing that we discussed already is a visual programming language, that you can use to generate some kind of state machine that can be transferred to and executed on Bricks and Bricklets. This would be very easy to use but only usable for smaller problems. We would very much like to have something like this in the future.

 

 

Regarding your specific idea: The Brick that would control the other Bricks, would again be some kind of "Linux Brick". A Brick like this would cost us a fortune if we only produce it in our normal quantities (1000pcs). I doubt that people would be willing to pay 10x the amount as they do for a Raspberry PI for this. If we just use the normal Cortex M3 microcontroller, as on the other Bricks, we can also use the Master Brick itself to execute the code (as discussed in 3).

Come to think about it, you're absolutely right (Why create something, what is already exsist, and waste some time to write compiler)

 

 

Personally, I use the EPIA-P910 / or similar ( quad Core Pico-ITX) need to process in real time video and PointCloud from Xbox Kinect device in the air.

(www.viaembedded.com/en/products/boards/1950/1/EPIA-P910.html) Small Linux board will be not powerful enough for my project.

 

The original Ida (with The Brick that would control the other Bricks) was to overcome read out rates from Bricks faster then USB (More then 1000  times per second) to gain more precise data to work with. 

 

 

As U say it will be possible in Future (as discussed in your 2, 3 options in reply).