Running Lejos on Mac OS X

One of the classes I took last semester was Artificial Intelligence, and after a long and horrible 9 weeks of prolog bootcamp, we finally hit the robotics part of the class. There was only one problem, we where using Lejos, which is a java based programing language for the Lego NXT bricks. This was fine because I am quite proficient with Java, the problem was that Lejos does not have native Mac OS support, and all of the forums that relate to it only give partial help or promises of support eventually. This is not good enough so I set off on an adventure to get it running on my MacBook Pro.

The first thing I did was to get the latest update to Lejos, big mistake, the linux Lejos 0.4.0beta would not work for me. I finally got it to force build, but this was only enough to get a broken firmware on the brick. Realizing this I went back to the 0.2.0alpha that we where using in class and this compiled fine. You just download it from the Lejos Site and unzip it. Place the entire lejos_nxj folder in the Applications folder. Then open terminal and cd to the build directory aka /Applications/lejos_nxj/build. Then type and run ANT and it will make a build for the Mac OS based on the build.xml file in the build folder.

The problem I ran into is that in terminal you have to ether set up a tcsh shell with the environmental variables set or set them in a .profile file in your home folder. Both of these worked but where annoying and took quite a bit of research on my part to figure out what needed to be done. Also you then need to use a text editor and run the build, compile and link command in the tcsh shell on the .java file each time you run it. Sadly this was no better than the PC solution, which was essentially doing the same things through Eclipse and batch files.

In lab I had done the basic PC Eclipse Setup, but quite frankly the whole button setup made me want to scream, not that was was that hard, but instead I found it very pointless for all of that work that was required. So after I got Lejos working on my Mac I started to write a small application that would let me code and then run the code in one simple step, and at the same time make the PC users in my class envious of its simplicity.

The final result I was quite proud of, and only took about a week of using/upgrading, plus a bit of unix scripting on the back end to get it to the point where I was happy enough to just bring my laptop to lab and use it instead. Also now that the class is over I spent a little time to clean it up a bit more and make it more usable for people other than me. If you are looking for a quick solution or are planing on doing something similar I have uploaded my application, which I am calling LejosTools. Get it Here I hope it can be as helpful to someone else as it was for me. Also I have included the source with it, because I have no plans to continue development. All I ask is if someone uses the code send some credit my way as a developer. Otherwise enjoy...

As a side note, I have not tested other versions of Lejos, but from what I have seen the unix commands have not changed, so if you can get something greater then the 0.2.0alpha working, LejosTools should still work. If they do change just update the lejosfull sh script in the resources folder.