nqc

NQC on Linux/Unix

USB Tower

Most Linux distributions ship with Linux kernels which include support for the LEGO USB Tower by default.

To check if your Linux has support for the LEGO USB Tower open a terminal and show the kernel ring buffer using this command:

sudo dmesg --follow

(If your dmesg does not support the --follow option, plug in the tower first and call dmesq afterwards.)

Now plug in the LEGO USB Tower. The kernel ring buffer should show lines similar to those below:

[1006170.647340] usb 1-2: new low-speed USB device number 26 using xhci_hcd
[1006170.815426] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0694, idProduct=0001, bcdDevice= 1.00
[1006170.815441] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=4, Product=26, SerialNumber=0
[1006170.815449] usb 1-2: Product: LEGO USB Tower
[1006170.815456] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: LEGO Group
[1006171.465241] legousbtower 1-2:1.0: LEGO USB Tower firmware version is 1.0 build 134
[1006171.465453] legousbtower 1-2:1.0: LEGO USB Tower #0 now attached to major 180 minor 160
[1006171.465511] usbcore: registered new interface driver legousbtower

Most important here are the last three lines containing “legousbtower”. They indicate that the tower has been recognized and its driver has been loaded.

Serial Port

By default nqc uses /dev/ttyS0 as the device name for the serial port. If you are using the second serial port, then /dev/ttyS1 should work.

Build NQC

Prerequisite

In order to build NQC you need

• git to download the source code (optional - you can also download a ZIP archive)
• a toolchain, yacc and flex to build the sources
• emscripten for WebAssembly support

On Debian based distributions you can install those using:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install git build-essential yacc flex emscripten

Download NQC sources

Goto https://github.com/BrickBot/nqc to dowload the ZIP archive (<> Code -> Download ZIP).

Or use git:

git clone https://github.com/BrickBot/nqc.git

Compile NQC

Change into the NQC source directory

cd nqc

and build it:

make

Upload Firmware to RCX

Change into the NQC source directory (if not already there):

cd nqc

Upload the latest firmware:

./bin/nqc  -Susb -firmware firmware/firm0332.lgo

Run test programm

Change into the NQC source directory (if not already there):

cd nqc

Upload the test program:

./bin/nqc -Susb -d test.nqc

Proceed with Getting started.

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