2011!!

Happy newyear to you all!!
I hope 2011 will fill your lifes with joy, love, luck, prosperity, happyness,...
I wish you all get what your hearts desire, yet can't be bought in stores.

My newyears' eve hasn't been what it should have been liken due to personal reasons, yet I wish you all the very best for 2011!

May the new year bring us many robotics, joyful LEGO-building, and other great stuff!


Martijn Hellemans
"Dino_Martino"

Building instructions for LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT

At Christmas, a lot of people will have got their first LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT set, and one of the first things to do then is searching the Internet for building instructions.
On this occcasion, The NXT Step provides an updated list of links here that lead to such instructions in the web:

• The official bonus models for the NXT 2.0 set
• NXTLog, the online NXT repository for models from the community
• nxtprograms.com, a great web site by Dave Parker
• Philo's NXT pages
• My own site with a lot of robots

Do you know additional ones? Please provide the links to them in a comment to this post.

LEGO-X Video Podcast #6

Just in time for the holidays, a very special LEGO-X podcast featuring an interview with Xander.



Wow, Joey has gone a long way from his first podcast, made for fun with his little brother almost 2 years ago. I think he was 13 back then. I can't wait to see what he has in store for us next because I have to say they are getting better each time. Meanwhile do leave him comments in the special chat box on his blog as he is continuously looking to improve his next productions.

The list of all his podcast as seen on LEGO-X.com/podcasts

Lego-X also produces podcasts for it’s readers to enjoy.  They talk about LEGO news, new MOC’s, and much more!  Check ‘em out:

Podcast 1: jojoguy10 and DKdude talk together about LEGO news
Podcast 2: Lego-X talks about basic LEGO news and people’s MOC’s
Podcast 3: Lego-X talks about blog updates, and a special interview with NXT puny
Podcast 4: Lego-X talks with Marc-Andre about his famous Wall-E
Podcast 5: Lego-X talks with the founder of Dexter Industries
Podcast 6: LEGO-X’s 1st Video podcast!  We talk to Xander Soldaat and other various things.  

Google's AppInventor for Android supports LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT now

On Friday, Google announced on the Google Code Blog that AppInventor, its Cloud-based programming platform for Android, supports LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT now:


"[...] a fun 20% robotics project that resulted in three ways you can play with your iRobot Create®, LEGO® MINDSTORMS®, or VEX Pro® through the cloud. We did this by enhancing App Inventor for Android, contributing to the open source Cellbots Java app, and beefing up the Cellbots Python libraries. Together these apps provide new connectivity between robots, Android, the cloud, and your browser."

Seems the whole mobile-NXT thing is gaining momentum. :)

Try it out and tell us about your experiences.

One-Kit Rotacaster Omniwheel

In his Rotacaster-Robot series, Xander Soldaat has created an Omniwheel vehicle that can be built with the pieces in one NXT 2.0 kit, and three omni-wheels.

A video, the NXT-G source code and LDD building instructions can be dowloaded from his blog (link).

Seasonal NXT robot

Well, this video by people from the German roberta program is almost a year old already, but I detected it just now - and it perfectly fits the season:

Avoiding speed tickets with LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT

dexter industries, a third-party vendor for sensors that are compatible with LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT, has published a nice video on a use case for their GPS sensor:



More details kann be found here.

ArtBotics Class

The students at Weston Middle School in Weston, Mass have had some fun recently with the NXT kits. The challenge given to the students?

Design, build, and program a robotic "2 -1/2-dimensional" sculpture which communicates socially with the viewer.

Take a jump here and here to view more and read details about the class and its objectives... lots of video and photos, too.

LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT warehouse

I made a small yet functional automatic warehouse.

The dropping shelves are unlocked, releasing balls in disorder. The robotic arm sorts balls by color and puts them in the picking shelves. Then, the Automatic Forklift starts its mission, picking balls and moving them back to the dropping shelves.

More on robotics.benedettelli.com. Enjoy!

Antikythera mechanism rebuilt with LEGO®

Today, I ran about a fantastic video in the web on the 2000-year-old Antikythera mechanism having been rebuilt with LEGO®:


The Antikythera Mechanism in Lego from Small Mammal on Vimeo.

Hispabrick Magazine!

I'm very glad that the authors of Hispabrick Magazine have begun releasing an Engish version of their magazine, because it is a wonderful thing.

Hispabrick is a free, LEGO-oriented magazine, originally written for the Hispanic community. It's not just about the NXT, but there is plenty of NXT material included, such as an article on the origins of the MCP, interviews with John Hansen and Ralph Hempel, and a the second part of a tutorial on programming a PID Controller For LEGO® MINDSTORMS Robots.

Got an idea for an article? Collaborating with Hispabrick Magazine is very easy, just send an email with your ideas to info@hispabrickmagazine.com and they will help you to “build” your article. If your language is not Spanish, don´t worry, they'll find a solution.

In any case, read Hispabrick Magazine!

Serious LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Soccer

Ready for a completely new LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Soccer experience?
Mario Ferrari and Daniele Benedettelli joined their efforts to create a completely automatic Soccer Game System. Forget RoboCup Junior robots that wander randomly on the field, without any clue of their position! The game field itself is a hybrid wood/aluminum/LEGO robot, that counts the scores and throws the ball back into the arena.



Check out more at robotics.benedettelli.com and stay tuned for updates!

"NXT One-Kit Creatures" Book in Full Color, for NXT 1.0 or NXT 2.0

Available now.

Features an undulating shark, a crawling horseshoe crab, a backwardly-mobile dung beetle, a walking chick and a leaping grasshopper.

All models can be built with NXT 1.0 or NXT 2.0.

Free Building Instructions for Xmas

As Xmas is approaching, I am preparing some presents for all you MINDSTORMS fans.
On my site, free building instructions and programs for some of my robots are available for download. As appetizers, you can find the NXT Horse Racing Game, race challenge for two players, and the Resonant Biped Walker, a robot that walks and turns using minimum energy.













Check Danny's MINDSTORMS page for updates, as other material will be published soon! If you don't want to miss news, subscribe to the RSS feed.

The dGPS

Dexter Industries has just released its new GPS sensor - the dGPS. You can read all about it here.

I've had one for a short time and I have to say that it's a fun sensor to play around with... but 'play' may not be the best word - while the sensor can help your robots answer "Where am I?" it's also a sensor that can be put to use in the field... just attach it to your brick and you've got a handheld GPS receiver... use some of the built-in features such as calculating angle of direction, distance, and velocity, and you can use this sensor yourself for your own purposes.

For teachers and students wishing to learn how to use the dGPS and its NXT-G blocks (3 of them), I'm currently finishing up a workbook (100+ pages) with lots of hands-on activities, explanations, programs, and experiments to run. I'll release more information soon on when the workbook will be available (likely Dec 2010 or January 2011).

The dGPS is $105.00 US.

NXT 2.0 Discovery Book - Give away contest - closed

As you might know, the submission deadline for the NXT 2.0 Discovery Book give away contest is over. To everyone who made a submission, thanks for participating!

I am currently going through the submissions to select the winners. If you have contributed and if you are a winner, you will be contacted via email soon.

Philo's NXT 3D laser scanner

Philo from France, well-known for numerous great NXT creations and as an author of many LDraw files, has updated the web page for his NXT-3D Laser Scanner. The Scanner is able to create three-dimensional computer models of things it scans with a laser:

Amongst other things, Philo uses it to create LDraw models for new LEGO® parts.

6 Legged walker design

I'm often asked - "how do I build a walking robot?"

Walking robots are tough, as you need to keep balance in mind at all times. When the robot picks up a leg, how is the rest of the robot staying upright.

I put together this video as an example of one particular leg mechanism. Unfortunately you can build it from one kit (too many gears needed), but it does show you how the leg design operates.

Can you build a better version? Tell us about it in the comments.

If you want other examples of walking robots, check out Laurens Valk and Fay Rhodes excellent books.




--
Damien Kee
www.damienkee.com

Pulito, a room-cleaning NXT robot

Your wife or mother has always asked you to do something "useful" with all that expensive LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT stuff you spent your money for?
Dave Astolfo now has the ultimate answer: Pulito, a room-cleaning sweeper robot. It uses the new DFlex sensor from Dexter Industries and (amongst other things) is able to recharge itself (!).



For more videos, images and details, see the related web site.

New Book: The Unofficial LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT 2.0 Inventor's Guide

A New book is soon to be released:

The Unofficial LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT 2.0 Inventor's Guide helps you to harness the capabilities of the NXT set and effectively plan, build, and program NXT 2.0 robots. After a brief introduction to the pieces in the NXT set, author David J. Perdue offers practical building techniques, like how to build sturdy structures and work with gears. Perdue then teaches you how to program with the official NXT-G programming language, using both its basic and advanced functions. The second half of the book contains step-by-step instructions for building, programming, and testing a variety of sample robots (all of which can be built using only the parts found in one NXT 2.0 set). This revised edition of the bestselling book on the NXT kit has been completely updated to cover the changes in NXT 2.0.
Many of the robots are designed and the BI are made by Laurens Valk.

You can download a chapter here and it is available for pre-order.

Making the LEGO® MINDSTORM® Rosetta Lander

In this fantastic video by Lightcurve Films, you will get to know 3 Mindstorms experts; our own Martyn and his two friends Eric and Gerrit. This is a 33min long, highquality film with english subtitles. A must see if you're a Fan of LEGO Mindstorms.

Maarten Roos of Lightcurve Films has this to say:

On 27 April 2010, I met Martijn Boogaarts for the first time. He had been indicated to me by Steven Canvin from the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® team.


I was working on an educational project around the European Space Agency (ESA) Rosetta Lander, involving making a LEGO® MINDSTORM® model of the lander that would resemble the real lander as close as possible and that could simulate some functionalities. I wanted to use it for an educational film. Detlef Koschny from ESA, and his son Julius, had made a nice prototype a few months earlier, but I needed specialists now to make a full working model.


I had managed to get the project supported by ESA, the German Aerospace Center, Europlanet and the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® team and so the time had come to start the preparations for the film.


In the next two months I visited Martijn and his two friends and colleague LEGO® MINDSTORMS® specialists Gerrit Bronsveld and Eric Steenstra regularly, following and recording their progress.


Here is the film that tells the story and shows what drives three grown-up men to play with LEGO.


The film is now part of the pilot educational kit 'Rosetta's Comet Touchdown'. See vimeo.com/​channels/​ rosettascomettouchdown for all details, links to Press Releases and all other films in the kit.


Produced by Lightcurvefilms (© 2010).

Making the LEGO® MINDSTORM® Rosetta Lander from Lightcurve Films on Vimeo.

This video is Part 2 of the video presented earlier on this post:
http://thenxtstep.blogspot.com/2010/10/europeen-space-agencys-rosetta-project.html

Enjoy!
I: /. 7.

Mike's report from LEGOWORLD 2010

© Mike Brandl

MCP Mike Brandl from Austria has published his report from LEGOWORLD 2010 on his web site.
As usual, it's a bonanza of interesting insight photos and videos and reflects the pleasant ambiance and spirit of the MINDSTORMS community there.

NXT-G tutorials in French - Version NXT-G 2.0 Now Available!

Few NXT resources are available in French language... So I feel it's important to highlight the tremendous work of Roboleo who published two complete - and free - PDF books about NXT-G 1.1 and 2.0.

These books are available from his website here: http://web.mac.com/roboleo/Roboleo/Accueil.html

If you are a French speaking NXTStep reader, please join me in congratulating RoboLeo for these amazing publications by commenting this post!

Merci RoboLeo :D
I: /. 7.

LEGO Digital Designer Version 4 is out

The new major version 4 of LEGO®'s official CAD tool  LEGO Digital Designer is out!
Amongst other things, LDD now features an improved user interface, a new tool for designing flexible parts and enhanced features for creating building instructions.

Download it from the LDD site and give it a try.

LDD is available for Windows and Mac OSX.

Factory 2.0 Project

This is the first video of the full functionality of the Lego Mindstorms - Factory 2.0 project. All video was recorded during the LegoWorld 2010 event in Zwolle (The Netherlands) from October 20th until October 27th.

The factory is capable of building virtually anything using the 95 types of bricks available in the warehouse. Models for the factory are designed using Lego Digital Designer (LDD) and are interpreted by custom written Windows software (For an example of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ki6d8JM7nc... After interpreting the LDD model building instructions for the factory are generated and are sent to the master NXT of the factory.

Creator: Martijn Bosgraaf (Dryw Filtiarn)

Total construction time: 4.5 months (June 2010 until October 2010)
~ 150 hours of Lego building + ~ 100 hours of programming (5 NXT's + LDD model processing software)

Total amount of bricks: Estimated to be around 25.000
Warehouse: 95 different bricks with a total of 1520 bricks in stock

Maximum model size: 16 x 22 x 11 (width x length x height in bricks)

Controlled by 5 NXT's
Models designed in Lego Digital Designer (LDD)

A great thank you to Peer Kreuger (mahjqa) for his effort to record the video and editing it to get this video online. Visit his channel.

WELL DONE Martijn !!

Blog Archive

Just a quick note - I receive many emails regarding old posts - a lot of them regarding downloads or files with the associated post. Come January 2011, we'll have five years (!) of archived posts. Many of these posts contain links for other websites or downloads that no longer exist. If a link or download does not work, please contact (if possible) the website's owner for those files... I do not archive them myself (well... only those downloads that are mine).

Also, if you post a comment on a blog article from 2006 or 2007 (or even 2009), it's very unlikely that you'll get a response. Few people read the old articles and your new comment (on an old post) is unlikely to get a response.

Like I said... I receive a lot of emails about these issues, so I just wanted to explain why you may not be getting a direct response from a website or article author.

Let me introduce myself

Hi everyone, my name is Will Gorman, and I recently joined The NXT STEP Blog to share with you some of the fun things that I and others are doing with LEGO MINDSTORMS. I'm one of the founders of BattleBricks, a group of guys who enjoy building competitive LEGO robotics. Over the years we've hosted many competitions, including Sumo, Team Combat, SoccerBots and much more.

More recently, I've started building and publishing my own projects, random ideas that come to me here and there. Some of my robots include the WiigoBot, RoboFlush, an iPhone NXT Robot, and the MakerLegoBot. I enjoy sharing as much detail as possible for all the robots I create, including step by step build instructions.



I'm very excited to become a member of The NXT STEP team, and will do my part to share with the world this great platform to create and build ideas and inventions!

and another... LEGO WORLD video :)

My turn to present you with a speedy video from LEGO WORLD -- A fantastic journey!



I: /. 7.

more LEGOWORLD 2010 movies

Vassilis, better known as NeXTSTORM made a cool short movie enjoy!



Martyn

MINDSTORMS at LEGOWORLD 2010

Have just returned from LEGOWORLD 2010 in Zwolle. With a lot of fantastic people from the MINDSTORMS community around, it was a great experience:



Note that for some reason, I did not even catch all of the intriguing and brilliant creations on film that could be seen at the MINDSTORMS booth.

NXT Checkout Scanner

This Checkout Scanner project I posted recently uses the NXT 2.0 Color Sensor in Light Sensor mode to scan simple "barcodes" made out of LEGO beams and imitate a laser barcode scanner. The interesting thing is how fast it is able to work (the standard light sensor would be as fast as well). Here is a video of the scanner in action:



This project was inspired a bit by one of the missions on the FLL board this year, the Medicine Dispenser, where teams might want to use a light sensor to count black lines on the mat to get the exact distance right. My team was doing this mission and driving very slowly to make sure the sensor was able to count the lines properly. As I was watching them, I was thinking this was one of those cases where your instincts as a human don't relate well to what a robot can do. I knew the sensor could work much faster (and therefore the motor response is the limiting factor, not the sensor), but I was curious how much faster. So I did some tests and then thought of this project.

It turns out you can take light readings about 300 times per second, which is fast enough to do some pretty fast scanning. When you are working on data coming in this fast, it helps to visualize it in graph form, so also included in the programming instructions for this project are a program and some instructions on how to do some basic "data logging" on the NXT, to get sensor data from the sensor, transfer it to the PC, and graph it, as shown in this sample graph:


The data logging program and instructions are for doing it "manually", not using the built-in Data Logging feature of NXT-G 2.x from LEGO Education, which is not available in the retail software, and in any case is limited to only 25 samples per second, so it's not fast enough for this application.

LEGO Technic Idea Books - Review

I've posted about Yoshihito Isogawa's Red, Blue, and Green books in older posts - his books are excellent resources but they've had one drawback - his books are published in Japan and can be hard to find (and expensive to obtain). And add to this the fact that most of the text in the books is written in Japanese.

Until now.

No Starch Press has just released three of Yoshihito's books - all of them are in full-color and the designs are divided up over Simple Machines, Fantastic Contraptions, and Wheeled Wonders.

For those new to Technic building, the Simple Machines book (Red title) is indispensable. It contains hundreds of small moving devices that can provide your robots with all sorts of new and unique behaviors. The book also introduces gears in a way that is easy to understand. Because English is not Yoshihito's native language, he has chosen instead to rely heavily on icons and graphics throughout the book that give you an idea of what a mechanism does. Take a look at some of the photos from inside the books and you'll see what I mean - even the Table of Contents uses the simple icons to convey the intent of a chapter or section of designs.

The Wheeled Wonders and Fantastic Contraptions books (Blue and Green titles, respectively) follow the same thinking - they contain more advanced designs than found in the Simple Machines book, but again... icons and detailed photographs make it easy to follow along and build what he is displaying for you.

You won't find detailed building instructions like you may be used to in other books. I imagine if this were the case, the books would easily push 500+ pages each and be very expensive. Instead, No Starch has allowed Yoshihito to use full-color photos, taken at close range, to provide enough detail to allow you to duplicate his designs. There are enough photos taken from different angles to easily allow you to figure out how to build.

Fantastic Contraptions throws in some usage of pnematics and solar panels and other parts not found in the NXT kit, but don't let this stop you from trying to build them - fortunately most of the parts can be purchased separately from sites like Bricklink.com or from LEGO Education.

Each book is priced at $19.95... buy them from Amazon.com as a bundle and save a bit of money on the books and on shipping. I have all three original books on my shelf and have enjoyed referencing them for ideas over the years... these three new titles are larger in size (as are the photos) and what text is provided is in English.

Finally, you can visit nostarch.com/technic/ to view videos of many of the designs found in the books as well as discuss the books.

It's nice to have these finally available for purchase in the US. I've had many teachers and students look at my Japanese versions of the books over the years and express their interest in owning the books. Well... now they can.

Last chance to win free LEGO and books!

Because of the the rush around LEGOWorld in Zwolle, I've decided to move the deadline one week forward. So, the deadline is November 7.

If you haven't made a submission yet, be sure to do it quickly. There are 8 prizes to give away, so there's a very great chance that you win!

The objective:
Find YouTube videos that are related to The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Discovery Book.

Go here to read more about the contest, its prizes and the rules.

Good luck!

Cool Color Sensor Pictures

Here is a little eye candy just for fun. I was taking pictures of my most recent project (post coming soon), which uses the LEGO color sensor in light sensor mode, and I was surprised to find the following image of its red LED in one of my pictures:

This is not Photoshopped, the star-like rays appeared on their own, I guess due to an interaction between the shape of the camera aperture and reflection/refraction/diffraction between the different lens elements. This is with the red LED shining brightly, as it is in light sensor mode with red illumination (or red lamp mode). The photo was taken at f/16 for 0.8 seconds with fairly bright but diffuse ambient lighting, and a fixed (prime) 50mm lens.

So then I had to try the other colors. Notice how the different wavelengths of light cause different diffraction effects. Or is this just differences in the LEDs themselves?


Getting a similar image in color sensor mode, when all three LEDs are shining, was harder, because the LEDs are much dimmer. I ended up getting one in near ambient darkness at f/16 with a 30 sec exposure. Note that larger lens openings make the effect go away.

LEGOWORLD 2010 (Zwolle, NL) Day 1

Today 20 October LEGOWORLD opened its gates for the 10th time.
with some of the most inspiring models ever seen.
here are some (poor Iphone) Pictures:


Martijn Bosgraaf's factory that can build a car but also a house!


A working Roller coaster, with 360 loop.


The preparation of the MINDSTORMS area.

Looking forward to see you all there!

Martyn

MakerBot in LEGO... now if it would just clean up after itself

Someone (willgorman on YouTube) has built a nice functional LEGO version of a rapid prototype machine. MakerLegoBot uses standard LEGO bricks to build small models one brick at a time. Inspired by RepRap & MakerBot, this is a fairly impressive implementation using 3 NXT's (yet still looking slim and svelte!). I don't even want to embed the YouTube video here, because a creation like this really needs a nice written description - which they provide over at BattleBricks. Take a look... and if you are going to Zwolle, this should be there as well!

I wonder how far you could take this. A long time ago (OK, 2005), Ian Hendry of rtlToronto built an automated duck assembly robot that was really amazing. It only built one thing (LEGO ducks... but nice cute ones), but did it from raw pieces, not pre-built sub assemblies, and did it with a single RCX. More recently there was the automated car assembly robot, but it was huge and worked with pre-built assemblies. And there have been some similar creations over in Europe, involving tables-worth of LEGO and days to set up.

But here, it's reachable with a much more modest investment in hardware, and at the same time is much more flexible - given it a digital build file, and it gives you a real LEGO brick-built model. Fantastic implementation... and perhaps opening up some new doors for future variations? One can hope.

LEGOWORLD 2010: Three days to go

Only two days to go for the largest LEGO® event of the world: the LEGOWORLD 2010 opens its doors on Wednesday in Zwolle, Netherlands, the day after tomorrow!
It will last no less than a complete week on an enourmous area in the IJsselhallen  and feature hundreds of exhibitors, shops, events, challenges and shows for ten thousands of visitors.

You will meet there also a lot of MINDSTORMS people in person that regularly appear in our blog entries as well as a lot of authors of this very blog (this time, we also will have participants of the MINDSTORMS Community Partner Program from 12 countries!).

I myself will serve both as exhibitor and spot reporter for THE NXT STEP.

If you can manage it, visit the LEGOWORLD - it's well worth it!

Renewable Energy from the NXT

Image courtesy of dexter industries

Dexter Industries, a 3rd party provider of hardware for the NXT, has released a solar power system for the NXT:

"dSolar Systems from Dexter Industries allow you to power your Lego Mindstorms NXT robot using nothing but the sun! This 9V solar power system is compatible with Lego Mindstorms NXT creations and includes everything you need to get started. Easily attach the solar panel to any of your Mindstorms NXT creations."

Interesting stuff! Browse to their website and have a look. There are also some interesting projects and videos on their blog.

Give away contest - Update

Several contestants have already made their submission, but if you too want to qualify for a free copy of the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Discovery Book, or LEGO prizes, be sure to make your submission in time! The current deadline is October 31.

The objective:
Find YouTube videos that are related to The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Discovery Book.

Go here to read more about the contest, its prizes and the rules.

Hint: As you can see using the link above, there are 8 prizes that you can win. So, if you want to win a prize, you should really submit more than 8 links ;). It's not difficult (there are more than 8 videos of the Snatcher alone). Just search smart!

Machines, Wheels, and Contraptions - 3 New Books!

Many NXT fans are already familiar with the work of Yoshihito Isogawa... and many of us own the Japanese versions of his books. Well, No Starch Press has now released three of his books, translated and in full color. Details below:



The Books
http://nostarch.com/technic_machines
http://nostarch.com/technic_wheels
http://nostarch.com/technic_contraptions

Videos
http://www.youtube.com/user/ISOGAWAYoshihito#p/u/2/UEk5v0jNp_4
http://www.youtube.com/user/ISOGAWAYoshihito#p/u/1/k8kohDn6oLI
http://www.youtube.com/user/ISOGAWAYoshihito#p/u/0/ZSFrkgGkvIM

If you are not familiar with Yoshihito's work, now's your chance to see some of the most interesting and unique mechanisms built from LEGO parts... and many of these mechanisms are simply stepping stones to giving your own robots more advanced movements and abilities.

I love my Japanese versions, and am now happy to have the English translation versions in my book collection.

NXT on the latest Make Magazine Cover!

If you're not familiar with Make magazine, now may be the time to pick up a copy (or subscribe - much cheaper per issue). Issue 24 features an NXT controlled satellite as seen here in this cover image. I don't have any more details as my issue hasn't arrived yet, but it looks pretty cool!

Each issue usually has a theme, and this one is Space Projects - 10 of them, apparently.

We all know that the NXT has been launched using high-altitude balloons, but this is the first I've heard of one actually being launched with the intent of orbiting the planet...

MINDdroid: Official Android application for LEGO® MINDSTORMS

Image courtesy of TLG

The LEGO Group™ has just announced the first official Android cell phone application for LEGO® MINDSTORMS:

"We are happy to announce the launch of the MINDdroid application for Android (2.1 or higher) phones, that will allow you to get instant access and control to your NXT robot, and give the ability to control by the flick of a wrist!


The MINDdroid app is a remote-control application that allows you to create a wireless connection directly with your NXT, and once a connection is established, you can tilt and turn your phone to make the robot move forward, turn to the sides, and by pressing an action button on the phone's screen, activate the Action motor. If you have a Shooterbot or other robot using two motors for motion and have a spare motor for actions, you are in for a lot of fun!"

Cool stuff!
To read more, go to the MINDSTORMS News page.

NEW Wall-E made for Zwolle!

The challenge was to remake Wall-E3 (the one that went to Atlanta for the FIRST World Championship earlier this year) but to use only Mindstorms this time! No Power function or 3rd party components!!  humm,   Well we all know the NXT Servo motors are 'huge' and only 3 can be plugged  per NXT... Conclusion?  zWall-E4!



Tech. Spec.:
3 NXT bricks
8 NXT Servo Motors
2 Color Sensors (for the eyes)
1 Ultrasonic Sensor
4 Touch Sensors
& Bluetooth was used to link all 3 NXT's via a NXT-G 2.0 program.

OK so he doesn't transform (yet), but I'm still quite happy with the result. There is always room for improvement though :) I look forward to hear your comments.

Hope you enjoy this short video and for those lucky to be there, make sure you come see us at the MCP booth at LEGO WORLD 2010 next week.

I: /. 7.

NXT parking station

An NXT version of an automated carparking station.

Nice use of the RFID sensor to identify different cars and I really like the 'lift' mechanism.



*EDIT* This video is from Stan Khaykin, from the 'Great Minds Learning Center - www.buildcoolrobots.com'

--
Damien Kee
www.damienkee.com

Videos featuring prototype wheels from Rotacaster

Here are some cool videos to follow up on Jim's post about these great new wheels from Rotacaster.

By sparramc:
A Lego Mindstorms NXT Autonomous Quad Rotacaster Killough Platform Omni-Bot



By xandersoldaat:
Rotacaster Test 2 (visit his blog for other test videos)



By bazmarc:
LEGO Space Police Sentinel - Rotacaster - Mindstorms



The official page to find more info on these Next Generation Holonomic Robot Wheels by Rotacaster can be found here:  http://www.rotacaster.com.au/robot-wheels.html

FLL Coaches Resource Website

A nice resource for FLL coaches is available over at http://www.legoleaguecoaching.org/ - be sure to take a look at some of the great articles related to coaching a robotics team.

New wheels for your NXT robots!

I received a detailed email from RJ McNamara about a new wheel available for NXT robotics:

The Rotacaster is the only Omni-wheel I'm aware of that will track in a "Killough Platform" like theory suggests, resulting with virtually nil slippage on all household hard floors surface. The "Durometer Type Rollers" in the Omni-wheel exceeded all my expectations by a long way after trying those offered from other manufactures! The "Durometer Type Rollers" work like a sticky compound race tyre on a high performance race vehicle.

Many thanks must go to Mr. Peter McKinnon from Rotacaster for having faith in me to take on the challenges involved with developing what is an Industrial Rotacaster Omni-wheel, into a product suitable for use with Lego Mindstorms & Technics Robots.

The Actual cost of the Lego-Rotacaster Omn-wheels and date of availability is yet to be released. The standard non-Lego R-2048-01 Double 48mm individual Wheel Price is AUD $13.75(including GST). Around USD $12.00 each. Rotacaster hopes to make Omni-wheels for use with other Robotics platforms in the future. Mr. Per McKinnon and the Rotacaster staff are great to deal with and their enthusiasm for this project has amazed me with Peter flying from his base here in Australia to the U.S.A. to oversee the development and tooling up.

-----

If any of our readers manage to get their hands on a wheel or two, let us know what you think! And many thanks to RJ for emailing about the new item!

Shirt Folding Robot

Just came across this nifty little robot

My wife says "why??" ... I say "Why not!" :)



from tinkerology


--
Damien Kee
www.damienkee.com

"Tora no Maki" by Yosihita Isogawa now as English books

Remember Yoshihito Isogawa's brilliant "Tora no Maki" book?
It was available as an PDF and written in Japanese; this was no real obstacle, though, as most of its content consists of images.
Yoshihito Isogawa announced now that in October, it is going to be published by No Starch Press as a three printed english books in the United States:
LEGO TECHNIC Idea Book - Simple Machines
LEGO TECHNIC Idea Book - Wheeled Wonders
LEGO TECHNIC Idea Book - Fantastic Contraptions

Great to hear - I encourage anyone who is not in possession of this great collection of ideas and strategies for building with LEGO® TECHNIC so far to go for it.

A Mystery from NeXTSTORM

Can you figure this one out?



I'm only sorry I won't be in Zwolle to meet NeXTSTORM in person. (That is where LEGO World is being held in the Netherlands at the end of this month.)

SkyPointer Project

Be sure to check out this new NXT project that uses LeJOS - it's called the SkyPointer Project and it points to objects such as planets, moons, and more.

Europeen Space Agency's Rosetta Project simulated with LEGO®

Comets consist of the most primitive, i.e. unprocessed, material in the solar system. To understand the earliest epoch of solar system formation, we must investigate the nature of this material. Much of what we know of comets presently comes from remote sensing using Earth-based telescopes, plus a few brief flybys that have added only a few hours of in-situ observation. The Rosetta mission is poised to make a dramatic advance in our understanding of comets by matching trajectories with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, orbiting it, and setting a lander on its surface. [1]

ESA's Rosetta mission will rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. In November of that year, Rosetta's Philae lander will touchdown on the comet and thoroughly investigate its composition.

ESA Space Scientist Detlef Koschny build a LEGO model of Rosetta mission  in order to visualize the complicated orbital choreography used in this space mission.

He then goes on and demonstrates the prototype of the Philae lander he made with his son's LEGO Mindstorms.

Then with help from Steven Canvin from the LEGO Mindstorms Team and other players, a full fledge prototype was built... Here is a fantastic video showing off this prototype:

The feedback from the engineering students on the prototype will be used by ESA, the German Aerospace Center DLR, Europlanet, Lightcurvefilms and LEGO to finalize the Education Kit and adapt it to the needs of European curricula.[2]

Read the full article here.
All video presented here are from the ESA YouTube channel

[1] Rosetta: Mission to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko [Hardcover]
[2] www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMN40NO7EG_index_0
.

Long-Distance LEGO Collaborations (or How the Internet Changed Everything, Again... With LEGO)

Blogs, forums, and file sharing have changed the face of how we interact... but I'm guessing I don't really need to tell that to anyone reading a blog, right? About a month ago I was contacted by a NXTasy (may it rest in peace) user, David Bell, about developing a robot that could produce a bar graph style display of CO2 measurements for a public 4-H display. He even offered to ship me all the LEGO parts, sensors, everything needed, & pay for the materials I might need to acquire. Even to compensate me for my time.

I didn't take him up on it.

The reason wasn’t that I was in a mean mood, or that I’m independently wealthy (feel free to throw those tens and twenties this way folks!). It comes down to I do this for fun, and if I can help others out in the process, so much the better… and if we can all do it dirt cheap, fantastic! So instead of them shipping everything to me, and me producing a “product”, we decided to collaborate long-distance. The goal was to produce an NXT-based robot that could draw a series of physical lines in a big display, and to have it all built & working by 2 Oct 2010 for the National Youth Science Day in Walnut Park, Petaluma, CA. David would have the HW, and he worked long-range with the folks at Vernier to interface their CO2 detector (which requires too much power to work straight off a sensor port) with the NXT. Meanwhile David & I discussed (& discarded) various plans for the robot, and I built a very simple one that could drive around and draw lines on a sheet of melamine. I documented it with pictures, and then emailed him the pictures so he could build a copy, while I wrote a test program for the sensor (which I’d never seen or used). Once we got the sensor working, I wrote a program to get the robot to draw lines, while David tested the sensors responses to establish how well it worked & its limits, providing me feedback in the form of pictures and videos. This design process went ‘round and ‘round several iterations, with me sending detailed commented programs to him and him building a table for it to work on and testing it, before suggestion further revisions to me.

The end result is TurtleBot: a simple basic retail kit robot, that can accept most pens and draw on any flat surface (paper, melamine, etc.), and draw a bar graph of CO2 readings when requested by a user (or on its own), repositioning itself with the help of a long straight wall. The first public test was last weekend, and this coming weekend it will be on display (and sampling your favorite CO2 source) from 1-5 PM at the National Youth Science Day. If you are out in the Petaluma, CA area, please stop by and see it (as well as a lot of other amazing interactive science displays).

The robot is sort of cute, and works really well for what it does (and is built with only the Retail 2.0 kit)… but there are certainly better Turtle-style robots out there (Marty, from the Idea Book 1.0 for instance). But in my opinion, the real coolness here isn’t in the robot.

It’s in the way it came about.

Remember if you get to see it, this is a robot that was developed collaboratively, without any of the principles being able to get to together, and without shipping any materials around physically… because we could prototype it with a simple, easily available modular building system (LEGO), using a very easy programming language (NXT-G), and the ability to network with people literally across a continent.

The robot is nifty. The concept of an interactive display was fantastic. But the ability to pull it all together with a geographically-challenged “group” in a few weeks because of the internet and the simple, easily available, modularity of LEGO… that’s really, eye-opening, amazing.

Go see David Bell and the Two Rock 4-H Club this weekend at National Youth Science Day, in Walnut Park, Petaluma, CA. And wave at TurtleBot for me. I miss it. It never emails me.

New sensors by HiTechnic: Angle and Magnetic

HiTechnic, one of the most active providers of 3rd party sensors for LEGO® MINDSTORMS, has published two new sensors: the Angle and the Magnetic sensor.

Similar to the rotation sensor built into the NXT servo motors, the angle sensor measures axle rotation position and rotation speed; while the rotation sensor is located on the motor's axle, though, the angle sensor  can be directly attached to the axle in question, hence does not suffer from inaccuracies that arise from friction or gear slopes. It thus is apt to be more reliable on models where this is a critical factor.
Another very nice feature is that it keeps measuring the angle even when unplugged or not powered; so there's no need for re-calibration between power cycles.

The magnetic sensor is a single-axis magnetometer and is able to detect and measure magnetic fields that exist around the sensor.

MindBOARDS: A LEGO MINDSTORMS Community

As many of you may have noticed, nxtasy.org is gone :(

Please read below some important news received today!

Sadly, it looks like the forums on nxtasy.org have gone down for good.  Several attempts to contact the site owner have gone unanswered.  The hosting company, aplus.net, refuses to respond to inquiries or offers of payment from anyone other than the site owner.
 

In order to provide a more stable source for the kind of LEGO MINDSTORMS discussions that the nxtasy forums were known for, a group of concerned nxtasy forum users have come together to create a new site.  The new site is www.mindboards.net.  It is hosted on the sourceforge website in association with the newly created mindboards project.  On the sourceforge side the early planning involves posting source and binaries for many different LEGO MINDSTORMS tools, such as the enhanced NBC/NXC firmware code (C), Dave Baum's and my latest NQC source code (C++), some of my cross-platform tools for the NXT (Free Pascal/Lazarus), and tools for iPhone OS and Android. 

The mindboards.net forums are in need of users and content.  They are the primary reason for the new site.  We will continue to try to acquire much of the existing nxtasy forum content, if at all possible, and make it available somehow from mindboards.net.  Along with the forums we have options for a blog, a wiki page, as well as the delivery of sourcecode and pre-built tools via the sourceforge SVN repositorys and file management system.  What we need most right now is your input, feedback, and participation.  If you know someone who is missing the nxtasy.org forums please spread the word.  We hope that it will be a suitable replacement.

Later tonight or tomorrow redirects should be functional for the following urls:

http://www.mindboards.net/

http://forums.mindboards.net/

http://blog.mindboards.net/

Thanks for listening and my apologies for the unsolicited email.

John Hansen

NXT-ans at HET Instrument

At the big Industrial fair "Het Instrument" in the RAI in the Netherlands is currently one of the underwater excavator models on show.

NI shows their product range and also they have a price contest to win a NXT2.0 box.

(picture by J. Pieters)

NXT 2.0 Discovery Book - Give away contest

The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Discovery Book has been out for a few months, and many people around the globe have already got their hands on a copy. Do you have a copy yet?

To spark your MINDSTORMS enthusiasm, I am happy to announce the start of a book contest, with prizes!

The Goal

Find YouTube videos that are related to 'The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Discovery Book'.

For example, find videos that show one or more of the book's robots in action, or find video book reviews. Make a list of links to as many appropriate videos that you can find, and submit them as follows. The contestant who sends in most links wins the contest.

The Prizes

The three best submissions by contestants who already have the book will receive one of the following prizes:

• 1st prize: Custom 'Power Functions' pack including:
  • PF battery box
  • PF LED lights
  • 2 Medium PF motors
  • 2 Linear Actuators
• 2nd prize:
  • MINDSTORMS NXT Sound Sensor
• 3rd prize:
  • MINDSTORMS NXT Light Sensor

The five best submissions by contestants who do not yet have the book will each receive:

• One free copy of 'The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Discovery Book'.

Rules and more information:

You can find information about the rules and how to take part on the
book's companion website.