Playing with Lego

Have you seen that Lego MindStorms stuff? It's really quite fun to play with, if somewhat limited. One way to expand its horizons is to build native applications, using BrickOS and a GNU cross compiler. Here are a few instructions for doing this under Win32.

Before getting into this, here's the usual page of things wot I have made. I've also written an article for EXE on the subject of Lego software.

As you'll know if you've visited Lego Mindstorms Internals, there's a community of code hackers doing interesting things with the RCX. One notable bit of work is Markus Noga's legOS (now called BrickOS), a replacement for the firmware. Markus gives a few instructions on building the GNU toolset to compile code for use with BrickOS, but assumes a unix system. While this is fine, I have to confess I generally have Windows 95 running instead. I discovered that you can build a similar cross compiler for Windows.

I used to have a description here on how to build BrickOS under Windows: however it was so out of date as to be useless, and other people have been much more rigorous in keeping up to date. I suggest you have a look on SourceForge or search the discussions on LugNet for more information


Gavin's home page | BeesKnees home page

Last modified on 10th March 2004