Wow! It’s been a long time since I wrote here, but in the mean time cool things have happened. Firstly there’s pbLua, secondly I bought myself a Lua book.

So, how now do you go about to install pbLua on your NXT? If you’re using Windows, there’s not really an issue, because that’s all explained on the homepage. I’m using a Mac, so here it is.

Setup

1) First download pbLua, I’ve got a ‘nxt-lua-beta-15b’ folder on my Desktop.

2) Start up LEGO’s MINDSTORMS NXT

3) Use the Tools menu and use the “Update NXT Firmware…” option, click “Browse” and navigate using the browser to the folder ‘nxt-lua-beta-15b’ on your Desktop. The window should show “nxt-lua” as “Available Firmware Files”.

4) Now connect your NXT, click “Download” and wait ….

5) If everything is correct, your NXT screen should show “pbLua Beta 15b”, the 15b depends on the version you downloaded.

Okay now what?

Now you’ve got a Lua-enabled NXT, but it’s not very clear how to continue further. Luckily it says somewhere on the homepage that there’s a USB Console as well as a BT (BlueTooth) Console. Let’s start with the USB Console.

1) Fire up Terminal.app

2) Do an ls /dev/tty.usb*, in my case this shows a /dev/tty.usbmodem1a21, but your results may vary.

3) Then do a screen /dev/tty.usbmodem1a21, this should refresh your screen and show you:

pbLua Beta 15b
> 

You’re now in a Lua interpreter, type print("Hello World!"), just for the kicks of it!

Basically you can now use the pbLua API, to do anything you want, try nxt.SoundTone() for example, woohoo isn’t that great?!

4) To quit the Console type Ctrl-a Ctrl-\.

Enabling Bluetooth

1) Basically you go about as you would connect any other Bluetooth device to your Mac, just select “Any Device”, find the NXT in the list of Devices and have the “Use a specific passkey” option selected for the Passkey Options.

2) During “Gathering information about your device” and while it’s connecting, Mac OSX will ask you for a passkey, think of something, then go to your USB console and use the Lua function nxt.BtSetPIN('something') (on your USB console) to confirm the bluetooth-passkey from your NXT end. At some point Mac OSX will say “Connected”. Remember the device name!

Bluetooth Console

1) Reboot your NXT (by holding the grey button for some time) and start it again by clicking the orange button. Then you should see something like:

USB Console
BT Console
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
. 
00000 Button:0

Then use the dark grey button, to highlight BT Console, next use the arrow buttons to find the device name of your computer (which in my case is ‘galactica’).

USB Console
BT Console
. 
.
galactica
AD:000000000000
CL:000000
ST:00 Idx: 00 
00000 Button:0

Once you’ve got this selected, the screen should show:

Wait for connect
Active: 00
Update:  0 
.
.
.
.
.
.

2) Fire up Terminal.app

3) Do an ls /dev/cu.<bluetooth-device-name>*, in my case my NXT is called “r2d2” (yup!). So I did a ls /dev/cu.r2d2*, this shows a /dev/cu.r2d2-DevB-1, but your results may vary, depending on your device name.

3) Then do a screen /dev/cu.r2d2-DevB-1 (or whatever you found at step 2), this should refresh your screen and show you:

pbLua Beta 15b
> 

Woohoo, wireless pbLua!!

More to follow, later, keep you posted – check back!