I think I have finally settled down on the embedded system that will be used for the robotics course. At the sensor processing/integration level, the PSOC CY8C29466, either with the evaluation board that Cypress sells, or my own custom board. At the machine learning/interface to MS Robotics Studio level, the Luminary Micro LM3S811 ARM Cortex M-3 Microcontroller, with their evaluation board.

I am still debating whether to move to C compiler for the PSOC (up to now I have been teaching the M8C assembly language). With the addition of the LM3S811, with its own set of (free) C compiler tools, I am tempted to standardize on C for both microcontrollers. On the other hand, teaching assembly language is worthwhile I believe, for future roboticists.

 My first step is to get the two microcontrollers talking to teach other, most likely using I2C. Will post more once that is accomplished.

This year I am revamping both Web development and robotics courses to use Microsoft technologies: ASP.Net 3.5, IronPython/Dynamic Language Runtime, Robotics Studio.

 As a first step I am trying to port over the course website, or at least some sample code, to IIS. Apache has its headaches with long config files, but the IIS setup is even more confusing, since not everything is accessible in one file.

1.  The first stumbling block was I couldnt get a simple Default.aspx file recognized by IIS to serve when I went to http://localhost.
   • Solution: register ASP.Net 2.0 (3.5) with IIS
   • In the c:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\framework\v2.0.50727 directory run the command aspnet_regiis -i

Note that ASP.Net 3.5 is really ASP.Net 2.0 with some extensions.

2. Second step was to add SSL (Secure Socket Layer) support, ie allow https:// access. This was surprisingly easy from the IIS perspective! The only hard part was to generate the Certificate Authority and Server certificates.
   • solution: Look at this page
   • Be sure to open up the firewall with port 443!
   • Install the server certificate in the IIS manager
   • To remove the annoying warnings on the client browser, install the certificate authority certificate on the client machine.
3. NFS mounting. The students will be given accounts on the unix (really linux) systems with their own directories. We want to allow students to log onto the Windows 2003 server (cygwin sshd) using their unix username/password (ActiveDirectory/LDAP, to be discussed below) and mount their NFS directories. This will aid in “uploading” web site code to the server.
   • This site has very good information on setting up Windows Services for Unix (SFU) for Windows Server 2003