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.