Programming the NXT with NBC/NXC

NXC was the first tool I used to program my NXT.

NXC works by compiling C-like source code to NXT compatible byte code. This means the generated code can be uploaded to the standard NXT bot running Lego's original firmware.

Getting started

Download the NBC/NXC compiler from the NBC/NXC web site. To install it I copied the nbc executable to /usr/bin/.

I found it very usefull to read through the NXC-tutorial and the NXC-guide is a must have.

Once you have your first script you will need to compile it:

nbc your_script.nxc

If there are any error, they will be reported.

To build an executable file that you can upload to the NXT run:

nbc your_script.nxc -O=your_script.rxe

Now you can upload the program to the NXT. I use nxt_push from NXT Python, which I copied into /usr/bin/. Connect the NXT to your machine and run the following command.

nxt_push your_script.rxe

Now your programm should be on your NXT. Select and run it.

After a while this gets a bit annoying so I wrote a little script that compiled and pushed the executable to the NXT. I called it nxc and placed it in /usr/bin/.

#!/bin/sh

dirName=`dirname $1`
fileName=`basename $1 .nxc`

nbc "$dirName/$fileName.nxc" -O="$dirName/$fileName.rxe"
nxt_push "$fileName.rxe"

This made life a bit simpler.

NXC and SciTE

If you like using Scite the following properties may be usefull. I added them to my User Properties.

#associate *.nxc with the C lexer
file.patterns.cpp=$(file.patterns.cpp);*.nxc

#point to the API file containing all NXC function signatures.
api.*.nxc=nxc.api

#various build commands
command.go.*.nxc=nxc "$(FileNameExt)"
command.compile.*.nxc=nbc "$(FileNameExt)"
command.build.*.nxc=nbc "$(FileNameExt)" -O="$(FileName).rxe"

With those settings you get nice syntax highliting and can compile/upload your programs to the NXT with a simple push of a button.

The Lego/nxc/nxc.api is taken from NXC's readme.txt You can find it the SVN repository.

NXC programs

See the NXC - examples. Or check them out using SVN from http://jan.kollhof.net/svn/Lego/nxc.

svn checkout http://jan.kollhof.net/svn/Lego/nxc