I wasn’t great about blogging in 2016, but I did ship a few things:
- A new site design that was long overdue.
- Several blog posts, most notably a guide to starting FANUC robots in AUTO, a guide on using pipes in KAREL and an open source hash table implementation for KAREL.
- Several updates to KUnit, a unit testing framework for KAREL. With a proper development environment, you can test your KAREL libraries from the comfort of your command console.
On a personal note, my wife and I got a dog, bought our first house, and our first child could come any day now.
Now that 2016 is out of the way, let’s see what I have planned for 2017.
A Book on Programming FANUC Robots
I’m nearly done with (working title) Robot Whispering: the Unofficial Guide to Programming FANUC Robots.
UPDATE: The book is done! Check out Robot Whispering: the Unofficial Guide to Programming FANUC Robots here!
I’ve found that many people often struggle (despite manuals and FANUC training) as systems get more complex. This book teaches not only the basics of how to program, but also many of the best-practices that, when followed, make programming tough applications much easier. Look for this towards the end of the month!
BackupTool
Hundreds of people have downloaded BackupTool, a free utility for backing up your robots quickly from the command line. I’ll release a new graphical version this year.
DataTool
FANUC’s built-in comment tool is pretty handy, but it’s not great for multi-robot systems. I quietly announced DataTool a little bit ago and will finish it up in the first half of the year.
TP.js
A couple years ago I wrote a somewhat functional TP implementation in JavaScript. It’s a bit stale, but I’m hoping to resurrect it and do something cool with it this year.
I should have more time for writing this year, so please let me know what you want to read about. I get many questions about iRVision and KAREL through email, so I’ll probably start with those topics.
Here’s to a great 2017!