My brother is building a robot that will navigate around areas on its own, eventually being able to map out its surroundings in memory. To achieve this, he’s using a Brainstem robot controller hooked to a PocketPC 2003 machine in an autonomous unit.

The problems come when setting up the MS eMbedded Visual C++ environment to be able to compile programs that both run on the PocketPC and use the Brainstem libraries (for the correct CPU and everything). The whole EVC++ program has such a sad and terrible interface that I can’t make heads or tails of it, especially with the subpar Brainstem documentation.

Not trying to sound smarmy here, but when there’s no easy “just let me compile it myself I want it to be a console program and not some retarded wizard’s robe and hat garbage” option, it scares people away!

Just starting a project, here’s what the source file looks like: MS Embedded C example

OK, that’s a huge mess. It’s workable, once we set up the includes.

Let’s see, nope, there’s no easy to do that either.

So I did what any older brother would do: sent my brother to somebody who might possibly know. :)