A Tale of Two TriBots
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
My local LEGO educational distributor (Robotec Technologies) asked me to create an interesting NXT demonstration for an NIDays exhibition. The end product was a 2 NXT demonstration using slightly modified TriBots which communicate via Bluetooth (BT) and using a combination of ultrasound (US), motor encoders and two HiTechnic compass sensors. The first TriBot finds and captures aluminum can, and then sends a message to the other TriBot, which in turn finds it, aligns the two iteratively by measuring azimuths using compass, and finally pass the can between the two. All programming was done using NXT-G.
A video of the whole process can be found here on YouTube. I’ll put more details and programs on NXTLOG soon.
Posted in personal, video, projects, news | 3 Comments »
Brickworld 2007 Announced
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
A new AFoL event has been scheduled for next year in Chicago.
Here are the early details:
BrickJournal™, BrickStructures™, Team Hassenplug, Team Possible, Team B-squared and Fun Time Technologies have joined forces and are pleased to announce Brickworld ‘07 to be held in Chicago. Brickworld™ is a chance to showcase your creations right here in the Central Midwest. Chicago being the third largest city in the U.S. naturally has a great deal to offer - including 3 Lego outlets. We are strategically placing the Brickworld location in the suburb of Wheeling, IL just 30 minutes northwest of downtown Chicago. Wheeling is conveniently located close to the expressway servicing O’hare Airport and is also half way between the 2 Lego outlets at Woodfield Mall and Northbrook Mall, each 15 minutes away. The 3rd Lego store is located downtown Chicago 30 minutes away.
The event will be held at the brand new 5 star Westin Hotel & Convention Center. The main ballroom offers 15,000 sq/ft and an additional 15,000 sq/ft around the ballrooms peripheral for small group sessions, competitions, demonstrations, The Great Build (more about that later), marketplace, etc.
BrickWorld ‘07 will be held from June 21st - 24th 2007. We are excited to bring this show to the public during a time of year when school is out and sunshine & good weather are in. The convention area will be open for setup the afternoon of June 21st for early birds. We will have a closed AFOL exhibitor day on Friday and public exhibition on Saturday, June 23rd and Sunday, June 24th. This June weekend is reserved at the site for the next 3 years, reinforcing this event as the one event not to miss!
Want to have an exhibit on display and/or interested in attending? Please visit http://www.brickworld.us/ for more updates as they become available.
Posted in news, events | 28 Comments »
NI NXT Toolkit Official Forum
Tuesday, December 5th, 2006NI has an official forum for discussions regarding the new NXT toolkit for LabVIEW:
http://forums.ni.com/ni/board?board.id=beta18
Of course, you can still use NXTasy forums for discussions on the toolkit.
Posted in news | No Comments »
NXT LabVIEW Toolkit DirectCommand VIs
Tuesday, December 5th, 2006When the Fantom driver was released, I was somewhat disappointed that LEGO released only a low-level interface. Indeed, within a few weeks several high-level wrappers were created by the community — such as NXT#, iCommander, Ruby-NXT, SimpleNXT etc. Yet there was still no high-level VI library for LabVIEW that allowed easy PC control over Bluetooth (BT) or USB.
Now, with the release of the NXT LabVIEW Toolkit from NI, this vacancy has been filled. The NXT Toolkit has three major components: a set of VIs that can be compiled into NXT code and run on-brick, a set of support VIs that allow creating new NXT-G Blocks, and a set of VI wrapping Fantom into higher-level graphical programming library for NXT control on PC (and Mac).
Posted in development, news, knowledge | 13 Comments »
NXT LabVIEW Toolkit Overview
Tuesday, December 5th, 2006Although the “official” release is scheduled for next week, National Instruments (who developed NXT-G and the firmware running on the NXT brick) “leaked” to the NXT community that the toolkit is available online as of today, December 5th, 2006. The LabVIEW Tookit for LEGO Mindstorms NXT is available for download on NI website.
Being granted the privilege to be a member of the beta testing group, I was able to play around with some of its functionalities over the past months. A scratch overview of the toolkit is described in this post.
Posted in development, news, knowledge | 1 Comment »
It’s Here! NI LabVIEW Toolkit for LEGO Mindstorms NXT
Tuesday, December 5th, 2006
National Instruments has just released the widely anticipated NI LabVIEW Toolkit for LEGO Mindstorms NXT! Click the screenshot above for a closer look. Download and enjoy!
Per National Instruments:
Users including adults, students and secondary school and university educators can now can create and download VIs to operate and control the MINDSTORMS NXT robotics platform. Third-party software and hardware developers can also use the toolkit to create native blocks for MINDSTORMS NXT software.
Once a LabVIEW program has been compiled and downloaded to the NXT, the toolkit can be used to interact with the NXT robot while a program is running. By dropping a LabVIEW control, the toolkit can send data to the robot and influence the currently executing program. By dropping an indicator, the value at that point in the program is sent back to the PC and viewed in a regular LabVIEW front panel. Developers of third-party sensors and other hardware add-ons for MINDSTORMS NXT can use LabVIEW to create native blocks that program and control their hardware for use in MINDSTORMS NXT software.
Posted in development, news | 1 Comment »
Updated LDraw and LeoCAD Parts for NXT
Tuesday, December 5th, 2006
Philo’s home page has been updated with downloads to his latest LDraw and LeoCAD NXT parts libraries.
LeoCAD
A few new parts, and several improved, thanks to the work of Kevin Clague and Daniele Benedettelli.LDraw
A few new parts, and several improved, thanks to Kevin Clague’s work.
[via TheNXTStep]
Posted in news, software | 1 Comment »
NXT Second Life Video
Monday, December 4th, 2006
Over the summer, Wired hosted an event in the virtual world of Second Life to kick off the LEGO Big Robot on Campus series. The Media Factory has posted a video with highlights of what took place.
Posted in video, news, events | 2 Comments »
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 »