Wanted: Patience and Sophistication
Saturday, July 29th, 2006
The Saturday edition of the Washington Post features an article on the LEGO Mindstorms NXT and its official Tuesday release. In an interview, toy industry analyst Chris Byrne gave the kit a rave review, but said it “requires patience and sophistication that people who like to blow stuff up in Halo might not have.”
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Microsoft’s Mr. Roboto
Friday, July 28th, 2006
The Motley Fool has an article online featuring the Microsoft Robotics Studio and its aim to “make it easier to get on with creating robots without having to build expensive prototypes first.” The author, Anders Bylund, speaks to the new LEGO Mindstorms NXT, but is only speculating that it would be supported by Microsoft. Little does he know, that support already exists.
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BrickFest Registration Ends July 29th
Thursday, July 27th, 2006
BrickFest 2006 will be a wonderful gathering of AFOLs from all over the world. The event takes place on August 25-27 at the Sheraton Premiere in Tysons Corner, Virginia. For those who have not registered, despite what the website says, you have until this Saturday. And for those who cannot attend, nxtasy.org hopes to bring you full Mindstorms NXT coverage!
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Mercury News Review
Wednesday, July 26th, 2006
The Mercury News has an Associated Press article reviewing the LEGO Mindstorms NXT. When commenting on the building experience, the author likens it to “assembling an IKEA bookcase with 100 pages of instructions and hundreds of pieces that look similar but are slightly different.” Heh. He wants more color-coding. Me? Just give it to me in all black.
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New Review - Digital Compass Sensors
Wednesday, July 26th, 2006
A new review (first one..) was added to the Reviews section of NXTasy.org repository. The new review compares the two digital compass sensors of mindstorms.com and HiTechnic, including some not-yet-published technical specifications of the two sensors. Read the review here.
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3-axis Digital Acceleration Sensor
Wednesday, July 26th, 2006
The mindsensors.com website has a new “Coming Soon for NXT” item - a 3-axis Digital Acceleration Sensor. Here’s a picture of it from their site.
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LEGO Bluetooth Page Updated
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006
intolerable has kindly posted a link in our forums to the updated LEGO bluetooth page. A compatibility matrix is provided, indicating which adapters work best with the NXT.
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NXT Repository - Call for Contributions!
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006The NXT (unofficial) Repository at NXTasy.org is open for contributions! As the NXT community expand (with more and more people getting their NXT sets), so does the need for a central file-sharing repository for all NXT users. We at NXTasy.org took the challenge and added a new NXT Repository to our existing (and very active) NXT-related forums system.
The new repository will contain moderated contributions from community NXT-fans worldwide. It is categorized into six major categories:
- Projects - for user-contributed projects, including building instructions and software.
- Blocks & Extensions - for contributed MyBlocks, NXT-G extensions (in future), NBC codes, RobotC codes etc.
- Hardware - for hardware schematics, either of the NXT internals or of new sensor designs
- Utilities - holds utilities and links to programs which will make your NXT experience more fun!
- Reviews - review papers on NXT, 3rd party products etc.
- Tutorials - explain advanced (and basic..) NXT techniques for everyone!
At the moment contribution is possible only via email to repository@nxtasy.org. Please supply a title and a description of your contribution. A questionnaire with detailed questions, depending on the category of contribution, will be sent by us via email. Once all needed details are gathered, your contribution will be added.
NXT Repository is open for your contributions! Help us making this repository THE place to look for help in YOUR NeXT Adventure!
Yours,
Guy Ziv
Repository Administrator
NXTasy.org | a LEGO Mindstorms NXT community
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LEGO Robots March on Microsoft
Tuesday, July 25th, 2006
On Monday, Microsoft held a “Big Robot on Campus” event at their headquarters in Redmond. CNET has an article following Steve Hassenplug as he and other NXT programmers meet to discuss the future of Microsoft’s Robotics Studio.
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Meet the NXT WiMo
Monday, July 24th, 2006
Brian Cross has created this new interesting NXT creation. It is a “Windows Mobile Robot”, or in short, “WiMo”. He uses his laptop to communicate via WiFi to a smartphone, which in turn uses BT to send commands to the NXT brick. WiMo is controlled using the new Microsoft Robot Studio and has two “modes” - personality mode and camera mode. When WiMo is in personality mode, the Smartphone’s screen is facing forward and displays a picture that represents WiMo. When in Camera Mode, WiMo rotates the Smartphone to face its camera forward and starts streaming video using DirectShow. More info and pictures of this robot can be found here.
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RobotC Version 1.0.06
Friday, July 21st, 2006
The third public beta release of the RobotC cross-development software is available.
Per Robotics Academy:
Changes:
- Debug/Error Reporting is much more consistent and stable.
- General program stability has increased.
- Updated firmware for NXT platform.
- Code Completion is more stable than previous releases. The use of keyboard arrows and the “enter” key to navigate code completion options works much more effectively now.
- Bug Fix: NXT internal motor encoder issues have been taken care of. Issue was with resetting the value of the encoder.
- New message informing user about downloading firmware has been added to the “NXT Brick - Link Setup” menu.
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Announcement - New NXT Repository
Thursday, July 20th, 2006In a few days, a new addition to nxtasy.org is coming up! The first (unofficial) NXT-related code repository is about to go live! This section of nxtasy.org site will contain user-contributed programs, contributed MyBlocks and in the future (when SDK is published) new NXT-G blocks.
A discussion topic dedicated to the new repository can be found on the forums: http://forums.nxtasy.org/index.php?showtopic=72
Other comments/contributions should be sent to guy@nxtasy.org
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