Time I Need More Time - Visual Robot Programming - I Need to Try it Out

The Microsoft Robotics group released the new September CTP (Community Technical Preview for those of you not up on the latest over used three letter acronym or TLA). What's in it in this release that has me so excited? Well a couple of big things.

One is some additional hardware support including the Roomba from iRobot (using a Blue Tooth Interface). That means I have to go buy some hardware to upgrade my Roomba so I can try it out now. Plus there is support for a number of Phidgets interface boards, sensors, and actuators. I have some of those to try out. Oh but that isn't all. No sir, not by a long shot.

There is a new visual programming language as if C#, VB.Net, Python, and Javascript were not enough in the way of options. This looks very cool and yet I have meetings all week and will not have time to try any of it until probably the weekend at the earliest. Ah, work is the curse of the hacking class. Oh but there is more.

New tutorials (would you believe using MSN Live Messenger to Control a Robot), new simulation improvements, programming and services improvements and, well, more than I can absorb at this hour. Check it out.