There are many excellent LEGO Mindstorms sites out there. Here certainly one of the most remarkable high level sites from the ETH in Zürich, Switzerland - don’t be afraid of the German language; just go through the many projects - :

http://www.tik.ee.ethz.ch/tik/education/lectures/PPS/mindstorms/

… and admire this one:

eth_cmucam_project 

Ralph has released a new pbLua version.

Changes in website:
The tutorials have all been reviewed for errors again

Improvements in the firmware:
1. BT and USB Consoles works better.

2. Added some more initialization to the motors and tuned the driver. Now the first regulated motor command works properly.

3. Added (experimentally) the Lua debug library. This allows you to do stuff like set Lua hooks to run every n instructions so that you can break out of endless loops using the keyboard!

4. Fixed the RS485 routines to not crash if you send data before initializing the port to a baud rate

Good work, Ralph!

Our forums reader Jens Friedrich (a.k.a t.wolf) posted here how to connect the Wii Nunchuk directly to the NXT. The Nunchuk is an I2C device, with an analog stick and a 3-axis-accelerometer. This mod requires removal of some resistors from the device, and Jens gives detailed description and images of the process, as well as the NXC code that read the values from the device.

Excellent work!

As most of you know, FRC announced they will move from Vex to using LEGO NXT. For this, the ‘TETRIX’ system was invented. It is an all metal robotic system, which uses the LEGO NXT as the ‘brain’. It can also be cross-built with LEGO Technic parts. The above image, taken from this LEGO Educational store page shows the new HiTechnic servo motor controller for TETRIX. Since TETRIX can couple to LEGO Technic, this controller should be useful for “regular” NXT users too. Together with the new DC controller (see here) these may revolutionize the number of motors one can use per NXT. Each servo controller can attach to 6 R/C servos, and each DC controller to 2 DC motors. Up to 4 Servo/DC controllers can be daisy-chained to one NT port. A simple calculations gives a maximum of 6×4x4=96 servos per NXT (this will need carrying lots of batteries, mind you!).

NTS released Michael Gasperi new book - programming LMS with LabView. Since I was the technical editor, I promise anyone interested in this field will find it very interesting. It covers LabView 8.5 (but the toolkit works with LV 7.1+) and describes basic programming as it teaches the NXT toolkit step-by-step.

Order and preview chapter at http://www.ntspress.com/

Sound localization is an extremely exciting topic. Please consult our site to learn more about it. The page presents a LEGO™ Mindstorms® robot called Nic_3 that uses NXT and RCX bricks that are linked through the HiTechnic IR-link module. The 3 DOFs robot samples 600 data-points of a continous sound source on each channel of the stereo audio sensor. The sampling frequency is 36kHz. Then it performs the cross-correlation and determines the time-lag between both signals. Applying a novel algorithm (Kneip/Baumann 2008), the robot is able to localize a sound source in space with an average precision of 20° in azimuth and elevation.

Note that Nic_3 follows Nic_1, a 2D sound localizing robot and Nic_2, the spatial sound localizing robot prototype being realized by Laurent Kneip that has a better accuracy of 10° -Laurent will present Nic_2 soon on his site-.)

Also note that Nic_3 has already been used in a 2D-project before, which was annonced here on Sept. 1st 2008.

My 3yr old girl got a ‘twistcar’ for her birthday, and I was amazed by the ease she managed to move herself forward, turn and even move backwards only by moving the wheel left and right. I made this LEGO twistcar as a proof of concept. It uses a single NXT motor and can move forward and turn (very sharply, in fact). What moves it forward is the friction between wheels and ground - when wheels are tilted the NXT motor tries to force wheel slip motion. This has large resistance, so the whole thing moves forward (imagine these wheels where fixed to the ground). When the motorized wheels are in line with the front wheels, they don’t affect the motion, and they slow the motion down when they start tiliting to the other side.

Comments/questions/suggestions - use this topic.

p.s. Philo pointed me to Dave Parker ‘challenge’ here. This model actually does move like a fish…

Philo again, this time showing here how to hack the PF Battery Box to power mindsensors.com NXTServo. Also included a LDraw files pack with NXTServo, RC motor and associated accessories.

Paul T. published here about his latest project. This is a great combination of NXT, servo motors (4 of them, controlled with mindsensors.com servo controller), Wii remote and camera sensor. Fantastic job!

Philippe Hurbain has put online three LDraw files, allowing rendering of Zamor Launcher, magazine and sphere. Get them here:

Sphere:
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cgi?f=parts/54821.dat
Launcher:
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cgi?f=parts/54271.dat
Magazine:
http://www.ldraw.org/cgi-bin/ptdetail.cgi?f=parts/53550.dat

This is not all-together NXT related, but certainly important for LDD models. Two features missing in LEGO Digital Designer is the ability to control assembly order (which parts is added at what step, what sub-assemblies are made etc.) and control view angle at different steps. Both features are very needed for complex models.

A few days ago I found both features EXIST in the LDD file format, but not available in the software as yet. In fact, an .lxf file made by LDD is a simple archive, which you can open with e.g. the popular WinZip program. You’ll find a .lxfml file inside, which is a text file (in .xml markup language). Here there’re several important sections:
1. Cameras - LDD defines one camera, with ‘CameraRefID’ 0. You can set more with different IDs. Simplest way is saving multiple copies of your model, open each .lxfml in text/xml editor (like free the Microsoft XML Notepad) and copy the Camera definitions into one, changing the ID to ‘1′, ‘2′ etc.
2. Building instructions - shows the exact order of adding parts. Each ‘Step’ has several ‘Part’ instructions corresponding to invididual Technic/NXT parts. The ‘Parts’ section details each part, including the LEGO part number (which is listed in www.peeron.com)
3. View angles - a ’step’ instruction can have an CameraRefID attribute (like ‘Scene’ does) with a reference ID of one of the camera. Doing this will automatically switch view angle in the ‘Builiding guide’ mode to the other camera.

I hope LDD developers will make these features available to everyone, but till then the instructions above should allow (advanced) users to fine-tune their LDD files and make better building instructions for NXTLog etc.

Guy Ziv

A new NXT creation by Philo: “Odin”

From the website:

Odin is a robot that estimates its own position while it moves using odometry. In order to do that it measures as precisely as possible distances travelled and orientation of displacement. Its mechanical structure is well suited for that: when travelling it rolls on four parallel wheel so it is able to go very straight. For turning, it raises itself on a central pivot, turns around it and goes down, ready for the next move.

Building Instructions are online too!

Attention Educators!

LEGOengineering.com is happy to announce our new Community section. The Community section empowers LEGO educators from around the world to share lesson plans and activities and get feedback from other users. Users can also post questions, ideas, tips, problems and start discussions with the worldwide community. Users can view and share photos of LEGO creations from students. 

Becoming a member is easy. Just click the Join Now link here or on the Community front page. Within seconds you will be able to upload content, ask questions, and make comments.

Mindsensors.com, obviously aware of the operational and esthetic, difficulties with using the bare PCB sensors, is now making new encased versions of some of their sensors. It began with the camera sensor, and now they made the above-imaged PSP-Nx sensor (which allow controlling the NXT by a PS-type wireless controller). You can also see a 3d display of this sensor is found here.