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Archive for July, 2006

My Portal Updates

Thursday, July 20th, 2006

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Following the news of updates to the official site, LEGO has now updated the My Portal section of the NXT-G IDE. As expected, building instructions are available for a soundbot and clock. Also included is a link to the official forums. Don’t forget to check out our forums, as well!

FLL-Freak Video Tutorials

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

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Veteran FIRST LEGO League coach Skye Sweeney has put together quite a few video tutorials covering the art of solving FLL missions with the NXT. The site also provides a comprehensive set of links to other sites with helpful NXT information. As an added bonus, you can sign up to be notified whenever new information is available on the page. Skye aims to make a new tutorial per week, so stay tuned!

NXT-a-Sketch

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006




Here’s a cool video of Kevin turning his $250 LEGO Mindstorms NXT into a $20 (or less!?) etch-a-sketch. He even included the shaking erase maneuver! Now let’s see what George Vlosich III can do with this baby!

Easter Egg Plotter

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

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The Easter Egg Plotter by Andreas Dreier is probably one of the coolest NXT robots I’ve seen. Here’s a video (5mb) of the robot in action as it mimics the old school vector graphics printing devices. Unfortunately, only the different photo angles and captions are available to tell us about this creation.  It is clear, however, that one motor rotates the spool while the other two motors control the X and Y positions of the pen.  I would love to see the source code!

Andreas is also responsible for creating nxtRICredit - a tool enabling the creation of graphics for display on the NXT LCD. 

NXT LEGO Icons v1.0

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

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MacUpdate has a sleek set of icons for OS X inspired by the LEGO Mindstorms NXT kit. Customize away!

The Walkman Robot… Literally

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006

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Meet tveskov’s Walkman Robot.

Less portable than the original Walkman, but way cooler!

The blurb (in Danish) says:
“This is my first robot, a real Walkman. It can’t do much yet, but in the near future it should be able to dance on music, change poses if you clap your hands, and some other tricks.”
[Thanks to forum member Gibberish Driftwood for the translation!]

Mindsensors Compass Production Version

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006

Mindsensors Digital Compass

Mindsensors has sent us images of the production Digital Compass Sensor. One can see in the following images how to mount the sensor using standard Technic parts. Also, one can see that the sensors has a regular phone jack. We were told that a 6 or 8 inch compatible cable would be supplied with the sensor.

Mindsensors Digital Compass Mindsensors Digital Compass

New Featured Contributor - Rachel Delorme

Tuesday, July 18th, 2006

Please allow me to welcome Rachel Delorme to the nxtasy.org team! She will help with news-gathering and general editing of the site. Glad to have you aboard, Rachel!

NBC Does NXT

Monday, July 17th, 2006

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The local NBC news channel in Washington, D.C. has posted an article featuring the LEGO Mindstorms NXT.

Mindsensors Compass Shipping Soon!

Monday, July 17th, 2006

We’ve got it on good word that Mindsensors will start shipping their magnetic compass sensor within the next few days.  As you may recall, we posted video of the compass in action last Friday. We’ll keep you updated as we gather more details.

Hack: LEGO Mindstorms NXT

Monday, July 17th, 2006

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A short overview of the LEGO Mindstorms NXT by Technology Review features ‘Mouse’ - a robot created by MUP member Steve Hassenplug.

NXT Smile

Sunday, July 16th, 2006

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A few builders from Denmark sent us a happy little video of their first NXT creation. Enjoy!

Updated LEGO FAQ

Saturday, July 15th, 2006

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The official LEGO site has updated their technical support FAQ for the NXT. Included in the mix of questions and answers: “Why does my NXT just sit and make a soft clicking or beeping sound?” The published solution, however, does not yet mention the rumored patch.

A new caterpillar NXT-bot

Friday, July 14th, 2006

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Menno Gorter, an MDP member, has published some photos of this new caterpillar NXT robot. Although he keeps some of this wonderful creature’s details to himself, he did share with us that it took a total of 420 parts to make just the track, including the 60 double bent liftarms. Also the touch sensor visible in the picture is coupled to the ultrasound sensor to detect obstacles. Unfortunately, there is still no video available to show us this beautiful creature moving, but one can see that it can rotate (probably by bending its internal frame, as one of the pictures shows the liftarms spacing is not symmetric) as well as move forward.

Great job Menno!

More pictures can be found at http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?f=193709.

btw. Happy to post my first news at NXTasy! Hoping to give you more interesting stuff in the future. Guy