Basic Stamp 2 Robot Programming - ISL

Basic Stamp 2 Robot Programming 6-15
tion is a very traditional one for first-time programmers or people working with a
new programming language or development system. Its purpose is to demonstrate
that the programmer can implement a simple application.
While you can find this application in the
C:\tabrobotkit\code
subdirectory, I would like to walk you through the process of creating the application
on your own. I will not repeat these detailed instructions for creating an application
in the later experiments, but this should act as a guide for you in creating your own
applications.
First, the robot should have the BS2 installed (with Pin 1 pointing toward the
rear as I have discussed above), be connected to the PC, and placed on a nonconducting
stand (with the wheels free to turn) as I’ve shown in Figure 6-9.
With this done, turn on the robot. The LED on the robot will go on for a half second
and the wheels will start to turn. Press the “Stop” button on the remote control,
and leave the robot turned on. The robot is now waiting for a command from either
the remote control or the BS2. As I have indicated elsewhere, the robot’s battery
will power both the robot and the BS2 for a long period of time—you do not have to
feel as though you are going to have to “rush” through the process of programming
the robot.
With the robot connected to the PC, you can now start up “stampw.” This application
can be invoked from either
C:\tabrobotkit\Hello World
or from the desktop (after copying the icon to the desktop as I showed in the software
installation instructions).
“Stampw” will come up with the blank dialog box shown in Figure 6-10. Next,
“open” the “template.bs2” file in
C:\tabrobotkit\Template
by either clicking on “File” and then “Open” or by simply pressing the “Ctrl” and “O”
keys together. In either case, the “Open” dialog box shown in Figure 6-11 will come
up. Click on “template” to highlight it and then click on the “Open” button. This will
load the “template.bs2” file into the stampw editor.
Before you change the file, you should rename it. This is done by clicking on
“File” and then “Save As” (as shown in Figure 6-12). When you have done this, you
will get the dialog box shown in Figure 6-13. For this example, I changed the subdirectory
so that the changed file was saved in to
C:\tabrobotkit\Hello World
and I saved the file as “My Hello World.” Now, the “stampw” dialog box that you are
working with should look like Figure 6-14. Where I have put in a comment (this is the
single quote, ‘—everything to the right of this is ignored) and four “pound signs”
(####), replace this with the text
debug “Hello World!”, cr
end
‘ Output Debug Message
‘ Nothing more to do
This can be done by deleting the four pound sign line and simply putting in the two
new lines of text. The “stampw” dialog box should look like Figure 6-15.