Look at that, control the ER1 wheels without the ER1 software...

I've rebuilt my Windows XP Embedded image using the updated XPe Service Pack 2 release. All the basic electronics are mounted, including my repurposed ER1 stepper motors/wheels and the ER1 control box that drives them. I was getting excited that I was pretty close to finishing my indoor chassis.

Ah, but another wrinkle appears -- the ER1 software really, really doesn't want to sit on top of XP Embedded. First it insisted that it needed ~150 MB of free space to install although to my measure, it only takes up about 20 MB and 15 MB of that are graphics and sound files it uses for vision and audible feedback. After I managed to trick it into place, it started working for a while and then started throwing GPFs. Sigh, it started looking like I was going to have to chuck the ER1 motors and start over.

While I was reading Evolution's forums to see if there were updated drivers I should be using, I stumbled upon a fortuitous post. A gentleman by the name of Yau Lam Yiu had already reverse engineered the ER1's serial control protocol, complete with a nice Visual C++ program demonstrating how to control the ER1 motors! Very nice work, the code is simple and readible. Now to port it over to Managed C++ and add it to my library of devices...