[C.CC USERS] Transterpreter not finding plumbing.module - adventures in getting started

[Matt Jadud]

On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 9:50 AM, André David <andre.david at gmail.com> wrote:
> (Please cc me as I am not in the list and forgive me if this starts as
> user stuff and ends as devel stuff)

Hi Andre,

Please join the list to continue this conversation. Many thanks.

> my money on a -ino board and learning a new programming language. So I
> got the Transterpreter and tried compiling the simplest example from
> the book, using the code that came with it. I was quite disappointed
> to get:

> it seems that only the arduino flavor of TVM has plumbing. So, now I
> get it: I was using the default "Desktop (TVM)" under Platform in
> occPlug. Not good.

Our software works on a number of platforms. The book does walk you
through this. I can look at improving that section of the book, but if
you did not read any documentation, and tried to use the JEdit IDE and
our plugin just by guessing, then you have done well, considering.

So by "not good" you mean "I didn't read any documentation, and was
able to figure things out." Good.

> But then I can't run anything, because I need to specify a port. So I
> can't try out things without a real board. This prompted me to look

Correct. We developed our tools to be used with real hardware. You'll
find that very few Arduino tools have an emulator target.

> How useful/hard would it be? And are there plans for such a thing or
> are arduino boards cheaper than making this?

Well, occam-pi runs just fine on the desktop. (It runs on the NXT, the
SRV-1, and a few other platforms as well.) And, therefore, you can use
the Plumbing libraries, with some modification, on the desktop.
However, there isn't a lot of point: the "heartbeat()" process has no
meaning in any context other than a hardware context where there is a
light to blink.

That said, we could have a graphical representation of an Arduino
where we "run" your code, using a version of the library that runs the
code natively (on the desktop) but updates a graphical display. This,
too, becomes uninteresting quickly -- especially when you want to work
with motors and sensors, which would be more difficult to emulate
meaningfully. (You could have a slider to represent your ultrasound
sensor, for example... but it would be boring, and would not represent
the kind of real-world data you get from such a sensor.)

If you want to dive in, learn some occam-pi, and work on a graphical
interface, we'd be happy to include it in our distribution. However,
our time right now is focused on providing support for real hardware.
Given that an AVR-based device can be built for around $10, or an
Arduino purchased for around $20, we're confident that focusing on the
real hardware (at this time) is worth-while.

Cheers,
Matt