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Hi,
perhaps this is interesting for some people. We hope so. :-)
I am glad to announce the availability, as of today, of two Squeak-based projects that both deal with letting Squeak interface with the surrounding world.
1. PhidgetLab
Phidgets are sensors and actuators that can be connected to a PC via USB. So far, support for them in Squeak was not freely available - this changes now. :-) A group of students in our group - Lysann Kessler, Stephanie Platz, Thomas Klingbeil, Philipp Tessenow, and Frank Schlegel - have developed PhidgetLab in fulfilment of a coursework assignment. It provides a "low-level" Phidgets API in Squeak, but is also integrated with Etoys.
Behold: http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/swa/projects/phidgetlab/
2. NXTalk
Over the past few years, we've made the occasional announcement of this: it's Smalltalk on Lego Mindstorms NXT. It's a real Smalltalk VM running on the NXT, with an image being interpreted. Now it's finally available, including the VM source code. NXTalk is the outcome of Martin Beck's MSc research; Martin is a former student in our group.
Behold: http://www.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/swa/projects/nxtalk/
Both projects' source code is MIT licensed. They both are based on (L)GPLed software, though: PhidgetLab uses the Phidgets API from the vendor, which is under the LGPL, and NXTalk uses NXOS, which is under the GPL.
We would be grateful for any suggestions for improvement - for both the projects and the respective web pages alike. Experience reports are, of course, most welcome too. Unfortunately, we cannot make the required hardware available as easily as the software. ;-)
Please let us know what you think!
Best,
Michael