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Cube Explorer 5.14 needs 128 MB of RAM and runs on all Windows platforms from Windows 98 to Windows 11 (32 bit or 64 bit).

Download Cube Explorer (1374 kb)

The source code is available on https://github.com/hkociemba/CubeExplorer

The downloadable archive contains a version for the Quarter Turn Metric QTM (a 180 degree turn counts as 2 moves) and Half Turn Metric HTM (a 180 degree turn counts as 1 move). Cube Explorer was designed for the HTM and this is the version with better overall perfomance. So use this version unless you exactly know why you want to use the QTM-version.

For those who are interested to build their own Rubik's cube solving robot, want to write cube solving software or just are interested in the way the two-phase-algorithm works in detail can have a look at my fully developed two-phase-solver written in Python. On a Raspberry Pi 3 it solves random cubes within a few seconds with less than 20 moves on average.

https://github.com/hkociemba/RubiksCube-TwophaseSolver

I meanwhile added some functionality to read the facelet colors with a webcam. This also works with the Raspberry Pi and the Raspberry Pi camera module. See here for some more information how to use the interface.

 

I adopted the code to just solve a 2x2x2 Rubik's cube optimally. This is computationally quite inexpensive.

https://github.com/hkociemba/Rubiks2x2x2-OptimalSolver

I also was curious if it is possible to solve 3x3x3 Rubik's cubes optimally with Python. The result is given here

https://github.com/hkociemba/RubiksCube-OptimalSolver

 

If you are interested in an Optimal Cube Solver in the Quarter Turn Metric which runs on the command line under LINUX and WINDOWS, you can download the documented C source code here. An already compiled version for Windows is available here. The program also accepts the file format of Cube Explorer, so you can generate your cubes in Cube Explorer and feed them to this program.
Bruce MacKenzie has ported this command line program to run on a MAC (nomen est omen). You can download the program here.

For demonstration purposes I wrote a Java package which implements the two-phase-algorithm in its simplest form without any symmetry reductions.

The package org.kociemba.twophase, the sourcecode and the corresponding javadocs are included in the file twophase.jar . The little Java program GUI_example.jar (Version 2009.02.16), which is an executable jar file shows an example how to use the package.

The tables in this implementation take only about 5 MB and are generated within seconds. Nevertheless the package routine solved about 26000 random cubes/hour if the maximum maneuver length was set to 21 moves and about 800 random cubes/hour if it was set to 20 moves maximum length.

You may use this package for free but you must include an appropriate credit line.

Last but not least I implemented the Two-Phase-Algorithm into a Mathematica-package. The code runs very slow, but it is also very short. It might be interesting from a theoretical point of view.

The interactive editor function in the package needs at least Version 6.0 of Mathematica.

© 2024  Herbert Kociemba