Wii Will Hack You?!
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006
Word on the streets is that the Nintendo Wii is a blast to play. Its innovative wireless motion-sensing controller (the Wiimote) is revolutionizing the video gaming experience.
Sure enough, hackers have been dissecting the hardware to reveal what lies beneath all the pretty plastic as soon as they got their paws on the system. It seems Nintendo didn’t disclose too many details about the technology behind the Wiimote, so it was only recently discovered that it’s actually a Bluetooth-compliant device capable of communicating with devices other than the Wii. Great news for us, wouldn’t you say!? Imagine wirelessly controlling the arms of your robot with the physical motions of your own arms. Sure, we’ve seen a gesture-based application for the LEGO Mindstorms NXT, but this takes it to another dimension — literally!
Do any of our readers own a Wii? Anybody up for the challenge of creating the first Wiimote NXT application? I’m sure the NXT community, and even the rest of the tech world, would be interested in seeing it. Good luck!
Here are a few resources to get you started:
Wiimote Technical Guide
Video of Wiimote acceleration reading on a PC
Posted in video, hardware, news, knowledge, hacking | 8 Comments »
MS Robotics Studio Tutorial
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006
Another informative article has been added to the Microsoft Robotics Studio site. They’re definitely stepping up documentation and resources as the official release nears. Check it out!
Microsoft Robotics Studio Runtime – An Introduction
The Microsoft Robotics Studio is a Windows-based environment for academic, hobbyist and commercial developers to easily create robotics applications across a wide variety of hardware. The Microsoft Robotics Studio Runtime is a lightweight runtime written for CLR 2.0 that provides support for creating, hosting, and managing such applications.
Posted in development, news, knowledge | 6 Comments »
Vernier Analog Adapter for NXT — Early 2007
Saturday, December 2nd, 2006
Back in August, Vernier Software & Technology posted several videos of LEGO Mindstorms NXT robots built to demonstrate their sensors. This was made possible with a prototype adapter that we hear will soon be available.
Most of these videos use prototypes of an adapter we are working on which allows all of the 40 or so Vernier analog (BTA) sensors to be used with the NXT. We also are working on making special blocks in the Mindstorms software for use with our sensors and an adapter. We hope to have an adapter commercially available in early 2007.
Posted in hardware, news | 39 Comments »