BoeBot with Bluetooth and Robotics Studio

Rock Man

I'm wondering if anyone has any info on the current state of the BoeBot with Bluetooth and Microsoft Robotics Studio. I'm trying to get this working and I noticed that version 2.0 of the Robotics Studio does not support Parallax anymore. I was thinking I would just go with the latest version until I noticed there were no parallax folders anymore. So I'm working with version 1.5...
Has anyone had trouble get prompted for a login whenever accessing the http://localhost:50000/ControlServer main page of the robotics studio?? I'm stuck at this login screen with no idea what to login with - it doesn't seem like that should be happenning. (I'm using Robotics Studio 1.5 with Visual Studio 2008 after upgrading the project). I have my bluetooth connected up & working and & code running on my robot. I just want to try out the remote control app from robotics studio as a base (the first program in the guide that has the virtual joystick).
Does anyone have any information regarding parallax and microsoft robotics studio in general as well as any specific info regarding my setup.
Thanks.

AnbeSivam

Has anyone done autonomous mode of the boe-bot using PDA to give commands?

I've tried several but in vain. Anyone with suggestions?

briankb

I'm also interested in MSRS and the Boe-Bot or whenever I upgrade for the Propeller.

I don't understand why Parallax is not helping.

Over the weekend at a code camp I got a Programming Microsoft Robotics Studio book as a prize and started reading it in my hotel room. I was excited because I already have a Boe-Bot and extra BOE with the BS2 modules. I ordered the EB500 and now I'm frustrated with the entire thing. Microsoft Robotics Studio 2008 doesn't have anything about the Boe-Bot.

Are there any other resources?

Rock Man

Here's what I know about Robotics Studio
Version 2.0 has DROPPED support for Parallax.

You will need to get version 1.5. It appears that 1.5 only works with Visual Studio 2005. I am trying to get Robotics Studio 1.5 to work with Visual Studio 2008 but I'm getting stuck with having to login to the (Robotics Studio) ControlPanel which is what I'm thinking has to do with me upgrading the Visual Studio 2005 projects to Visual Studio 2008 but I'm not sure & I haven't had time to reinstall Visual Studio 2005 on my machine to try again.

One note that tripped me up for a while - when you plug in your EB500 bluetooth module & run the sample/test code & get your PC to see it as a bluetooth device & go thru pairing it (default PIN code is 0000) (The EB500 doc from parallax is excellent for this process - follow it to a T) you have one more step to do - at least I did on my Dell laptop with built in bluetooth. I had to select the device (it shows up as EB500) and right click then hit connect. That is what causes the connection to "formalize" if you will - whereby I got a com port assigned to the connection (it is that com port you have to edit into the MSRS code to get the connection to succeed)

I've looked thru the code MSRS uses to communicate with the BoeBot & it is very clever & very complicated. My feeling is that MSRS is just too taxing for the poor little BS2. Now if parallax comes out with a BoeBot with a propeller for its "brain" then I'm SURE there will be tons of people hooking that up to MSRS & doing some very interesting things with the platform. Until then, I (we) will just have to keep hacking around with what we have

I hope this helps - I'm still hoping someone out there (maybe from Microsoft?) can answer why my robotics studio is asking me to login to my control panel.

one final note: Both MSRS 1.5 and Visual Studio 2005 can be had for free from Microsoft (in academic versions) which is just fine for this application. Just google on each name & you'll find the links at MSFT.

TheGrue

I too purchased a BOE-Bot with Robotics Studio a little over a year ago and ran into the issue of VS2008 only available at the time. I could not get it to work at all with VS2008 and had to uninstall it. I got a copy of a MSDN version of the full VS2005 Suite since I could not find it online anymore at that time and that fixed my problem with the mysterious logon issues. Also I noticed with my Toshiba Laptop that I not only had to pair it with the EB500 [noparse][[/noparse]only needed to pair once] but I also had to connect to it each time wished to use it. I had found out that when I stopped Robotics Studio, it disconnected my Bluetooth connection with the BOE-Bot. Also not all of the demos worked with the 1.5 version. I have abandoned my efforts in favor of learning Propeller Spin and was going to come back to MSRS. I am disheartened that the latest version does not support Parallax anymore.

Steve Nelick

Hi TheGrue

You can use the Microsoft Visual Studio and your Toshiba Laptop with your Boe Bot and your Parallax eb500 Bluetooth transceiver. On the MSDN web site they have free downloads for Visual C# and lots of great free training. They also have Microsoft Visual Basic and C++. I'm using the Microsoft C#. I started with the Visual Basic, the Boe Bot, and the eb500 Bluetooth. Right now I'm using the Microsoft C#, the Parallax Motor Mount and Wheel Kit, and the eb500. On my Toshiba Laptop I display the readings from the sensors that are on the robot. And, I send commands from the Toshiba to the robot, like Go Forward 10 positions. For the MMWK, the positions are about a 1/2 inch, so 10 positions means 5 inches. I just bought the Parallax 433 MHz RF Transceiver Package and I'm going to try that and see how it compares to Bluetooth.

Another option that you have is the book, "Robot Programmer's Bonanza", and the RobotBASIC software. RobotBASIC uses the Boe Bot and the eb500.

I did download the Microsoft Robotics Studio, and I went thru the material that came with it, but it didn't look good to me.

Steve