Control your iRobot Create with a Palm Pilot

Step 9 The program, part 1

In the next few steps I'm going to assume the reader is already familiar with the C language. If your not you should try out a few tutorials and practice programs first. I found this document helpful, but it assumes a fair amount of programming experience.

Disclaimer: Before this project I had zero experience with the C language, my programming experience had been limited to Visual Basic and (mostly) Java. Because of this I'm not sure where the similarity between C programming for the Palm OS and for the Computer begin and end. And since this is quite literally my first C program ('cept for the obligatory "Hello World" app) my adherence to C standards and good codeing practice is probably pretty bad as well.

The first part of this program is the .rcp file. This file contains information PilRC uses to build the GUI; we'll call it "robot.rcp". We'll also need another file called "robot.h" where we will define some constants that will be used when referencing the GUI elements. Each element is assigned an ID number, and we will assign each number a name. When the compiler goes trough the source code it will replace the names with the numbers that they represent. For example "FormMain" is defined as 9000, that means every time we use "FormMain" in the program we really are using the number 9000.

Here is my robot.h file:

//--------------------- Fourms -----------------------
#define FormMain	9000
#define FormSelect	9001
#define FormMacro	9002
#define MainMenu	9100
#define AboutAlert	9101

//--------------------- Form Main --------------------
#define PicRobot	1000
#define PicWall_	1001
#define PicCliff	1010
#define PicWhealR	1011
#define PicWhealL	1012
#define PicBumpR	1013
#define PicBumpL	1014
#define PicWall		1015
#define FldVoltage	1100
#define FldProg		1101
#define BtnDisconnect	1200

//--------------------- Form Select ------------------
#define SelScript	2000
#define FldDescription	2001

//--------------------- Form Macro -------------------
#define BtnSend		3000
#define BtnClear	3001
#define BtnDel		3002
#define BtnUp		3100
#define BtnDown		3101
#define BtnLeft		3102
#define BtnRight	3103
#define BtnCClock	3104
#define BtnClock	3105
#define BtnPause	3106
#define BtnP1		3201
#define BtnP2		3202
#define BtnP4		3204
#define BtnP8		3208
#define BtnP16		3216
#define PicBar		3300
#define PicUp		3400
#define PicDown		3401
#define PicLeft		3402
#define PicRight	3403
#define PicClock	3404
#define PicCClock	3405
#define PicPause	3406
#define FldScript	3500
#define SclScript	3501

//--------------------- Main Menu --------------------
#define MnuStatus	8000
#define MnuScript	8001
#define MnuMacro	8002
#define MnuConnect	8100
#define MnuDisconnect	8101
#define MnuRun		8102
#define MnuStop		8103
#define MnuAbout	8200