EasyC
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
EasyC is an integrated development environment by Intelitek for Microsoft Windows designed to employ a simple drag-and-drop interface similar to that used in Lego Mindstorms to assist new programmers in creating on-robot software for the FIRST robotics competition. It uses the WPIlib to allow programmers to send debug data from the robot to the integrated on-screen terminal, control actuators, and read sensor data. EasyC allows access to most of the standard C constructs. The program also includes a hex loader, which is used to send the program to the microcontroller over a 9-pin serial connection, but it lacks conventional tools like version control, refactoring, regression testing, and tracing.
Intelitek releases two distinct EasyC versions for the FIRST Robotics Competition, and another for the Vex competition. As of 2006, the most recent version of EasyC for in both the FRC and Vex editions is 2.0. This release allows programmers to create their own custom functions.
Although EasyC contains a variety of constructs from the C language, the standard C library is not used. For instance, the printf function has been replaced by the simpler, but less flexible, PrintToScreen function, which is used to send debug information to those testing the software. Additionally, while not all the C constructs (such as switch-case) are exposed by the menu interface, the User Code block allows programmers to drag and drop lines of custom code one by one.
EasyC utilizes Microchip's MPLAB compiler and linker to build the PIC binaries it transfers to the controller.
