I’ve been a way for a while as you all could see. My last post was on Apr 09th! I got an email notification as someone replied to a thread I posted in so I went to check it out. After replying I noticed the MRS section and figured I should post this.
Since December, when I discovered Microsoft’s XNA (XNA’s Not Acronymed) Game framework I fell in love with C# and I’ve been dying to get my hands on a Microcontroller that supports C# but ARGH! No luck! However, MRS does use C#! I took a look at the SSC-32 MRS stuff and it seems to me that MRS, without its fancy 3D simulation, is basically a regular ol’ C# form with regular ol’ controls. The SSC-32 support for MRS is basically communication via the serial port. Right?
MSRS is a development environment with several different tools integrated into it. One is the simulation environment, which you can use to control robots you don’t physically have in whatever environment you want. Another is the Visual Programming Language, which allows non-programmers to use the functionality.
The .NET development platform is what will let you write C# code that controls your robot. You can do anything that you normally can in C#, including create forms. However, MSRS also includes libraries that allow you to communicate with different robots regardless of what normally controls them. Everything is service based, which helps do stuff with threads and multitasking.
The SSC-32 support does require a connection to the serial port, either by an actual wire or by bluetooth. The robot needs to be connected to the computer because the actual code is running on the computer, not the robot. I wrote a tutorial that tells you how to connect everything here, that might help you get started.
