Re: GNAT verses A# for soft-realtime system

["Chip and Allie Orange" <acorange@comcast.net>]

Hi Dmitry,


"Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de> wrote in message 
news:cw3lptya4i66$.1osehyxuh7vi3.dlg@40tude.net...

...

>
> Great, I always wished to do something like that to play with my machine
> learning project pending.
>
> What does it mean "Windows-based PC"? Is it a sort of PC104 module running
> Windows [CE] or a full-blown PC? How are sensors and actuators connected?

It's a full-blown pc, running Windows, mounted in a frame with rechargeable 
batteries, two differential drive wheels, a host of empty drive bays for 
your own expansion, a webcam, and a smattering of IR ranging and bumper 
sensors.

Check out:

http://www.whiteboxrobotics.com/2006/PCBOTs/914PC_BOT.htm
and
http://www.914pcbots.com/wiki/doku.php
and
http://www.914pcbots.com/community/

It started life as mostly a mobile webcam platform.  In my discussions with 
the president of Frontline Robotics I've tried to convince him there's a 
large market of enthusiast programmers who'd like to tackle autonomous robot 
control programming if he would release the specs and/or the needed tools. 
I'm also trying to get him to offer a version with a dual core processor and 
more memory, as I suspect there will *never* be enough processing resources 
to suit those of us who want to tackle this.  Of course, there's  nothing 
but money and know-how stopping me from replacing the Epia MB with a more 
powerful mini-itx one.


> Does it have Ethernet controller [I wouldn't even try without one]?

Yes, WIFI and I think wired.


> Does it > have a frame grabber for the camera[s]?

I think so, that's supplied by Logitec, and is a question I'll need to 
research.

>
> Usually the biggest problem is not to choose the compiler. For a hobby
> there is no choice but [GPL] GNAT.
>
> The problem is to get a fully functional Ada run-time for the board you 
> are
> using, plus the drivers for the sensors and actuators, plus TCP/IP stack
> for communication with the outer world. For a Windows platform there 
> should
> be no trouble with this, except that drivers and APIs for sensors and
> actuators. Often vendor's C libraries are extremely poor in quality.



These are a board provided by PMD( http://www.pmdcorp.com/ ) , and according 
to another hobbyist, there's open source software which already tackles 
control of it; see:

http://www.914pcbots.com/wiki/doku.php?id=whiteboxos


I have reasons for wanting to use .net for development, unless the Ada 2005 
features that it lacks turn out to be important for what I want to do; could 
you make a guess on that?

Thanks.

Chip