Latest News
RDS 2008 R3
The samples have been updated for RDS 2008 R3 and are available from the ProMRDS CodePlex site. (The RDS 2008 R2 samples are also available on CodePlex).
Serial Port Service
An MSDN Magazine article (February 2010 edition) describes the Serial Port Service that allows you to send and receive data over via a serial (COM) port. You can download the code from MSDN or from the here: SerialPort.zip.
Sample Code moved to CodePlex
The samples have been moved to a new home on Codeplex. See the ProMRDS CodePlex site for more details.
Sample Code available for RDS 2008 and RDS 2008 R2
The samples are available for the 2008 release of RDS, we well as the new R2 version. See the Downloads page.
Sample Code available as a ZIP file
In response to requests from readers, the source code for the sample from the book is now available in a ZIP file (approximately 9MB). This means that you will have to build the services yourself. Howvever, it also means that you can unzip it into a V2.0 installation.
New example for using the Maze Simulator with VPL
A very simple VPL example is now available that allows you to start the Maze Simulator and use it from VPL. This is only a small file (only 10KB).
Video Clip of Synchronized Dance
There is a video available of two robots doing a Synchronized Dance using the service in Chapter 14. It is in WMV format and about 8MB in size.
Test version of Introductory Courseware for April 2008 V2.0 CTP
We have updated the Introductory Courseware so that it now works with the April 2008 CTP of MRDS V2.0. Copyright remains with Microsoft and the End User Licence Agreement still applies. This release is intended for final testing. Please let us know if you encounter any problems.
RoboChamps - Exciting new competitions from Microsoft
Microsoft has launched a new web site and associated competitions using MRDS called RoboChamps. The first competition is the Amazed Challenge and involves solving a maze (created by SimplySim) using the simulated CoroBot and associated services that were developed for this book. We have created a ProMRDS RoboChamps Page to offer useful information and sample code.
MRDS V2.0 CTP
In April 2008, Microsoft changed the name of Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) to Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio (MRDS) and released the first CTP of Version 2.0.
The obvious question is: What about the code from the book? Fortunately, there are no real "breaking changes" in V2.0, so you can easily migrate the code across from V1.5 to V2.0 just using the DssProjectMigration tool.
Once the official version of V2.0 has been released, updated versions of all of the book code will be available from this web site.
Visual Studio 2008
Microsoft released Visual Studio 2008 in January 2008. It is upwardly compatible with VS2005 and you can easily upgrade your existing projects just by opening them with VS2008. However, this is a one-way upgrade -- once you have switched to VS2008 you cannot (easily) go back to VS2005.
One of the nice features of VS2008 is that it can target different versions of the .NET runtime. Therefore you can continue to create .NET 2.0 executables, and remain compatible with MRDS.
We have tested most of our code with VS2008 and it has gone across cleanly. However, at this point in time we are still shipping the VS2005 versions of the code because this allows people who are still using VS2005 to use the code. Watch the web site for future updates.
