Delphi/Lazarus - API Bindings¶

Requirements¶

• Delphi 2007 or newer, or Lazarus (Free Pascal Compiler 2.4 or newer), other Delphi or Object Pascal compilers might work as well

Installation¶

To keep the Delphi/Lazarus bindings stupid and simple, they only have dependencies that are available nearly everywhere, thus making it possible to compile into any project hassle-free. We do not offer a precompiled library, since it would be a pain in the ass to provide them for all combinations of architectures and operating systems. This means, the bindings should work on most architectures (ARM, x86, etc.) and on most operating systems (Windows and POSIX systems such as Linux and macOS, etc.).

Because there is no precompiled library for the Delphi/Lazarus bindings there is nothing to install as such. The recommended way of using the bindings is to include their source code directly into your Delphi/Lazarus project. The next section shows some examples about how to do that.

Testing an Example¶

To test a Delphi/Lazarus example Brick Daemon and Brick Viewer have to be installed first. Brick Daemon acts as a proxy between the USB interface of the Bricks and the API bindings. Brick Viewer connects to Brick Daemon and helps to figure out basic information about the connected Bricks and Bricklets.

As an example we will compile the Stepper Brick configuration example with the Free Pascal Compiler (FPC), as well as the Lazarus IDE and the Delphi IDE. For that we have to copy the IP Connection and the Stepper Brick bindings from the source/ folder as well as the ExampleConfiguration.pas from the examples/Brick/Stepper/ folder into a new folder:

example_project/
 -> Base58.pas
 -> BlockingQueue.pas
 -> BrickDaemon.pas
 -> Device.pas
 -> DeviceBase.pas
 -> IPConnection.pas
 -> LEConverter.pas
 -> SHAone.pas
 -> TimedSemaphore.pas
 -> BrickStepper.pas
 -> ExampleConfiguration.pas

In the example HOST and PORT specify at which network address the Stepper Brick can be found. If it is connected locally to USB then localhost and 4223 is correct. The UID value has to be changed to the UID of the connected Stepper Brick, which you can figure out using Brick Viewer:

const
  HOST = 'localhost';
  PORT = 4223;
  UID = 'XXYYZZ'; { Change XXYYZZ to the UID of your Stepper Brick }

fpc ExampleConfiguration.pas

Threading has been used before cthreads was inizialized.

Threading has been used before cthreads was initialized.

API Reference and Examples¶

Links to the API reference for the IP Connection, Bricks and Bricklets as well as the examples from the ZIP file of the bindings are listed in the following table. Further project descriptions can be found in the Kits section.