References and Prior Art

• Eurobricks.com forum: Dacta Control Lab Software

  This long running forum thread has lots of information about various software options and other resources for the control lab.
  
  

• Posts by Andy Carol in rec.toys.lego
  10 Jan 1994 - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.toys.lego/boBgQvACOA0/hAdQKhfvk2IJ
  11 Jan 1994 - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.toys.lego/pBq6lLhBXYI/xA89uXITzk4J
  12 Jan 1994 - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.toys.lego/IUPB82JODlI/3SskyO848bAJ
  14 Jan 1994 - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.toys.lego/4jji44_XZkQ/ZHG31MzxWQEJ
  21 Jan 1994 - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.toys.lego/OyniLO9dPUc/0R3Ul43iPLwJ
  24 Jan 1994 - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.toys.lego/8uKLaDhKbpI/GGk0S20gF-0J
  31 Jan 1994 - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.toys.lego/OroP8ptYajo/_IvM9akAI9cJ
  2 Feb 1994 - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/rec.toys.lego/KXR8tKfIhEM/5D2m0_Xvr9oJ

  Andrew Carol first posted about writing software for the control lab to the rec.toys.lego usenet group in 1994. He released software written in C for Macintosh, though most often it is his posts about the protocol used by the control lab that are referenced by others as their starting point for writing their own software.
  
  

• http://www.lgauge.com/technic/LEGOInterfaceB/9751.htm

  The website of Tom Cook, L Gauge, is primarily devoted to train models, but he’s also written up some research into the control lab and written C# software for it, along with the earlier 4.5V Interface A.
  
  

• http://www.blockcad.net/dacta/

  The website of Anders Isaksson, with control lab software written in Delphi.
  
  

• https://www.drdobbs.com/embedded-systems/an-activex-control-for-real-time-compute/184410492
  https://web.archive.org/web/20070818221317/http://troyda.eas.muohio.edu/Research.html
  https://web.archive.org/web/20071130212114/http://troyda.eas.muohio.edu/paper2.html
  https://web.archive.org/web/20060906192126/http://troyda.eas.muohio.edu/LegoCorrection.html

  Charles H. Huddleston and Douglas A. Troy cowrote this paper on producing an ActiveX control for the control lab, which was reproduced in Dr. Dobb’s.
  
  

• http://www.timo.dk/wp/2009/01/25/java-control-class-for-dacta-70909/

  The website of Timo Paukku Dinnesen, who wrote a Java control for the control lab as a thesis project. It requires JavaComm and is tightly coupled to being a Swing application.
  
  

• https://github.com/baronworks/degoworks

  Another attempt at Java software, built off of Timo’s control, using RxTx. Not clear if it actually works.
  
  

• http://lejos.org

  leJOS is the most visible Java implementation for controlling MINDSTORMS® products, so I looked to it to see if there were any established patterns that I should follow for brick-control-lab. But I found code that always assumes a fixed number of ports with global scope, e.g.:

  import lejos.nxt.Motor;
  
  public class MotorTutor1 {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
      Motor.A.forward();
    }
  }
  

  That isn’t very object oriented, so it didn’t set much precedent for brick-control-lab to follow.