Bryan A. Jones/Notes

From Ece

Links to old sites

• Robotics research group
• ECE6,4990-02 Intro to Robotics

SCons

SCons is a Python-driven Make replacement. Notes:

Installation

These notes apply to SCons 0.98.5 for Windows.

• Download and install the Windows .exe. On Vista, there will be two errors; hit OK.
• Add your python directory to your Windows path AND python/Scripts. The latter is where the scons.bat file is placed. For example, C:\Python25;C:\Python25\Scripts.
• From the command prompt, you should be able to run SCons, which invokes python/Scripts/scons.bat.

filib++

Source: from http://www.math.uni-wuppertal.de/~xsc/software/filib.html

Installation:

1. Install cygwin, just the basics.
2. Run the MSVC Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt to get the path to the MS compiler set
3. Run c:\cygwin\cygwin.bat to start the Cygwin shell.
4. Change to the filibsrc directory.
5. Run ./configure CC=cl.exe (parameter probably not necessary unless you installed gcc).
6. Open filibsrc/msvc/filib++/filib++.sln in MSVC++.
7. Build. You'll see many warnings, but there should be no errors.
8. The results are in filibsrc/msvc/filib++/debug. Run some of the example programs to make sure they work. Sigh -- many of the tests fail.
9. Change the filib++ project's C/C++ code generation option of runtime library to /MD to match MATLAB's defaults and rebuild. Note: with the /MD switch, all the test code builds will fail; resetting this to its default allows test code builds but breaks MATLAB.
10. Copy filibsrc/msvc/filib++/debug/filib++.lib to lib/filib++d.lib and filibsrc/msvc/filib++/release/filib++.lib to lib/filib++.lib for use with MATLAB.

SoWin/simage

To compile simage:

1. Get the latest version from Mercurial at http://hg.sim.no/simage/default. The version on the web site is horribly out of date.
2. Read build/misc/README.GDI+ and follow the instructions to download some files needed.
3. Open build/msvc9/simage1.sln.
4. Hand-edit config-debug/relese.h:
   • Optionally, #define SIMAGE_AVIENC_SUPPORT. Note that mpeg2enc is more than a #define -- there's an entire mpeg2enc directory that needs to be included.
5. Batch build the installs, which will build the sources as well. The headers and libraries will be copied to your COINDIR.

To compile SoWin:

1. Get the latest version from Mercurial at http://hg.sim.no/SoWin/default. The version on the web site is horribly out of date.
2. Open build/msvc9/sowin1.sln.
3. Batch build the installs, which will build the sources as well. The headers and libraries will be copied to your COINDIR.

Micro

Here's a link to the TA/grader page.

myCourses

Getting started

• When clicking on a course for the first time, pick "Copy content from another course" and import a previous Micro course, which has all the columns and formulas entered.
• Grader/TA setup:
  1. Go to the grade book, then click "Enroll Members". Enter netIDs, check the "Teaching Assistant" box, then click Enroll. After enrolling all the TAs, be sure to click the "Save" button or the TA enrollment will be lost.
  2. When done, go to the "Manage course" area (on the menu on the left), choose "Settings", then "Teaching Assistant Settings" under the "Administration column", then set "Allow Teaching Assistants to use Grade Book tool" to true.
• In the "Course List" portion of the initial myCourses screen, the system shows past and future courses, which is often not helpful. To hide them, click on the pencil in the upper right hand corner of the course list then click on the show/hide link buttons as desired.

To do

• Find a way to hide me and the graders/TAs, since exports have additional me/grader/TA rows is them.

My tweaks and hints on using the myCourses grade book:

• To change the order in which students see their column, reorder columns from the "View all" tab. The "Grades" and other tabs don't affect this.
• Require graders/TAs to input 0s for assignments that weren't completed but have been graded. Otherwise, the average function will treat the value as non-existent, not a 0, producing an improper average.
• By default, myCourses only displays 20 records per page, requiring several clicks per session to overcome. To get around this, click on the multiple-sheet-of-paper icon in the bottom right of the entire page (scroll to find it), then enter 999 for number of records per page. This get saved from session to session, so you don't have to re-do it.
• After reordering columns, remember to click on the save button at the VERY bottom of the page. Clicking on the "grade book" link or elsewhere loses any changes.
• You can see hidden columns and re-show then in the reorder columns page.
• To convince it to do an if-like statement, use MAX{expr, 0}/expr.
  • Drawback: if expr == 0, you get the value N/A (divide by 0).
  • If you want a 60% or higher average, then use MAX{grade - 59.9999,0)/(grade - 59.99999)*grade/10.
    • The 59.9999 makes anything higher (e.g. a 60) show up as a 6, where as using 60 would make a 60 show up as a N/A.
    • Also, since it's unlikely a student will end up with a 59.99999 average, this reduces the occurence of N/A results from the formula.
• When using the result of this if-like statement, always use it in a MAX{if-like, 0} wrapper. If the if-like value is N/A, the MAX statement converts that to a 0, which makes the rest of the expression work properly.