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!