The
software environment for programming the Tower is a Java interface
with tabs for each major function. A sample window is shown
below. There are currently two foundations for the Tower, and
since each has a different primitive set, different compilers
are needed. The PIC Assembly and PIC Prog tabs are used for
programming assembly code, versus compiled LOGO code. The assembly
can either be programmed directly through a low-level pic programmer,
or by a serial-line boot loader. The Graph tab provides standard
visual output and graphing functions useful for scientific applications.
It is important to note that while this interface uses LOGO
as its predominant user-level programming language, it is possible
to write libraries for other compiled languages such as Java
and C++ that directly interface to the Tower's hardware platform.