Mindstorms Community Partners 2.0

Tuesday, July 31st, 2007

As you all know, when the Mindstorms Developers Program (MDP) ended a year ago, LEGO chose 20 people as Mindstorms Community Partners (MCP). This year, they increased the number to 30 MCPs. I am privilaged to be accepted into the MCP 2.0 program which is starting nowadays. Of course, due to the prohibitive non-disclosure agreement (NDA) I just signed to join the MCP, I will not be able to say, well, almost anything about what surprises LEGO plans for mindstorms. However, I will continue posting public-domain NXT news as before. I will also continue review and moderate NXTasy forums, and pass on to LEGO your ideas and/or suggestions. Notice, however, that due to the above-mentioned NDA I cannot tell you if LEGO accept/appreciate/disregards anything you propose….

Yours,

Guy Ziv
NXTasy.org Editor

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Rack and Pinion Car

Monday, July 30th, 2007

Cesar Barscevicius has put this nice video, demonstrating a rack and pinion drive, with each pair of wheels (front and back) driven by one motor+differential and the third motor rotate the front wheels using a well-built rack and pinion. I could not figure out the power transmission mechanism in the front wheels, but maybe the builder will send some more details (and I’ll be happy for building instructions for this project!).

UPDATE: I’ve got an email for Cesar. Indeed he used 4 double bevel gears, inspired by 222doc “AWD buggy 4×4x4″ NXTLog project. He has an NXTLog project page for this car here. I asked him for more photos and maybe building instructions - stay tuned!

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NXT Brick Sorting Solenoids

Monday, July 30th, 2007

markr80, whom we previously reported built interface for different solenoids to NXT, has published this new YouTube. Here he demonstrate how to sort bricks by color using several soleniod-activated levers that deflect the brick to different lanes at the bottom.

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RFID sensor for NXT

Sunday, July 29th, 2007

Another long lasting who-will-be-the-first challenge completed! Anders has published in great detail how he constructed an I2C RFID reader sensor for NXT. He used a Paralax RFID reader and a MSP430F169 MCU to communicate with the NXT.
More information, video and details are found here.

Well done Anders! Thanks for time you spent documenting this project!

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NXTAssembler 1.0 version alpha 2

Saturday, July 28th, 2007

Matteo Valdina (website) created a new compiler for NXT, similar in function to NBC (i.e. creates .rxe files executables for the NXT) but based on XML. The last release is version alpha 2 of this ‘NXTAssembler 1.0′. You can download it here - http://sourceforge.net/projects/nxtassembler.

Examples of source code can be found in the folder “AsXML Test/program” in the package.

The project require Java 1.5 or newer and for building require “ant” tool (http://ant.apache.org/).

see also this topic on our forums for discussion of this new project.

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Challenge No. 3 Sponsorship

Saturday, July 28th, 2007

I’m happy to announce that our third challenge “The AnxT!” (see here for details), will be sponsored by mindsensors.com. The winner of this challenge will get a 60$ cupon for purchase in mindsensors.com online shop!

What are you waiting for? Build ANxTs!

Guy Ziv
NXTasy.org

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NXTLiftBoy

Saturday, July 28th, 2007

A nice NXT project by NXTLiftBoy. According to his email, he used Java for this project to do fast proportional wireless control by a PC with a mouse. The programming allowed him to use BT remote control on the ‘wrong’ BT dongle and stack (Toshiba) which usually does not work. I hope he will send more details on this later.
Nice work, NXTLiftBoy!

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Coding4Fun: MS Robotics Studio

Tuesday, July 24th, 2007

Last week, Coding4Fun posted an article/tutorial on using MS Robotics Studio with the LEGO Mindstorms NXT.

In this article, Brian Peek will demonstrate how to use Microsoft Robotics Studio to control the Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. A simple remote-controlled robot will be built and controlled using C# and the MSRS Visual Programming Language (VPL).

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