MS Robotics Lesson 1 - "Hello World" in VPL

OK, so you have installed MS Robotics Studio. Yay!!!

MS Robotics uses Visual Programming Language (VPL), which is what I think of as VB for dummies. You'll be familiar with a lot of the controls, properties, etc., except that there is a lot of drag and drop. Don't get me wrong, we can steer away from that and code to our little geeky heart's content - and we will. Later. Baby steps.

Now open VPL from
Start
All Programs
MS Robotics Developer Studio
Visual Programming Language

1. From the File menu, click New to create a new project

2. Insert a Data Activity from the Activities toolbox



3. Choose string from the drop-down list on the Data Activity

4. Type "Hello World" in the textbox

5. Drag a 'Simple Dialog' activity block from Services and place it to the right of your Data Activity

You should now have something that looks like this:



6. Drag a link from the Data activity block to the Simple Dialog activity

7. The Connections dialog box will open. Select From: Data Value To: Alert Dialog, then click 'OK'.

8. The Data Connections dialog box will open. Choose 'Value' from the drop-down.

Your diagram should now look like this:



9. Press F5 to run and save when prompted.



I know, I know. We could have done that in one line of code using VST. Patience, young jedi. It's going to get more exciting. Baby steps.

-a