Java on the RCX

Jacob Frank Qvortrup University of Aarhus, Department of Computer Science,
jacobfq@daimi.au.dk

Information and projects realted to "Java on the RCX".

  • TinyVM

    • TinyVM is an open source Java based replacement firmware for the LEGO MindStorms RCX microcontroller.

    TinyVM's footprint is about 10 Kb in the RCX. A small Java user-program can access around 16 Kb of RAM. The overhead for each object in the TinyVM is 4 bytes, and there is no alignment of fields. This means that an object with four byte-fields takes up 8 bytes in memory.

  • leJOS

    • Like its predecessor (TinyVM), leJOS is a tiny Java VM. The focus in leJOS is completeness and performance. The current footprint of leJOS in the RCX is 17 Kb, which gives around 9 Kb for user-programs.

    Getting startet with TinyVM

    To get started with TinyVM you can get the source here. When downloaded type "tar -xvzf [file]". This will create a directory called "tinyvm_0_2_6". Change to this directory and type "make". Now setup your IR-tower with the environment variable RCXTTY ( e.g. for SunOS: setenv RCXTTY /dev/term/a ). To download the Java VM, type tvmfirmdl. This will take about a minute. To get more information access the README file.

    An example Java user-program is a program for a small LEGO car:

  • The Java source SmallCar.java and a compiled version SmallCar.tvm ready to be downloaded and run on TinyVM.

  • The C source SmallCar.c and a compiled version SmallCar.srec ready to be downloaded and run on the native build-in processor of the RCX.

    • Last update: 9-05-01