First ANxTs have arrived!
Monday, July 23rd, 2007The first two submissions for NXTasy challenge #3 have arrived!
The first submission, from ‘Dad and Adam’ is called ‘Sandow’. It has a lift object weight/ANxT body weight ratio of 15.2 (!) and a mass-transfer rate of 77.7 kg cm/sec.
Second submission by Mac Ruiz, aka 222Doc, has a lift object weight/ANxT body weight ratio of 5.15 with a mass-transfer rate of 34.5 kg cm/sec.
Keep going, guys! Deadline is still far - September 15th 2007!
Posted in news, challenges | 1 Comment »
Author Reply to Book Review: The Da Vinci Invetions Book
Thursday, July 19th, 2007
A few days ago I raised some issues concerning Matthias new book “Advanced NXT: The Da Vinci Inventions Book” in my book review. I asked Matthias for comments on these issues, and I hereby attach his comments exactly as I got them:
“Guy, thanks for your review of the book and the overall good rating. I agree with you that the usage of parts that are not contained in the NXT kit may prove as some initial obstacle to readers of the book who do not possess other LEGO material than the kit. Yet, with some
creativeness, most of these parts might be replaced by NXT kit ones (for instance, the kit’s turntable can be used instead of the old-style turntable you mention for the Revolving Bridge). As stated in the book, there’s a particular book-related page on my own web site
at http://mynxt.matthiaspaulscholz.eu/book/index.html, where people can find media related to the book. Amongst other things, for each model there’s a list of parts used that are not contained in the NXT kit, alongside to links in which sets to find them (almost anyone
stems from the NXT’s predecessor, the RIS 2.0 MINDSTORMS kit) - following an idea of your’s. 
This page(s) will also make for your wish of providing videos and detailed pictures for the models to help buyers of the book in managing the more difficult building steps (so stay tuned for material to be presented there in the next days and weeks). After all, I have
hoped to help out already in the book with rather detailed instructions, in particular on the more complicated parts of the construction process. Well, the models are rather advanced in the end.
As for the graphical quality of the building instructions: there’s always a trade-off between resolution in detail and size of the book. And one’s always only as good as the tools that are available (sadly, LDD 2.2 was not available then and it still has some drawbacks that
would have made it useless for the models in the book anyway). However, I don’t think the instructions are that bad (they have been created with LDraw) - I still consider them rather fine and useful for the builder. I should be pretty surprised if people would not be able
to build the models in the book just because the instructions are not comprehensible enough. If that is the case (and any reader is encouraged to tell me so then), I will be the first to provide help on my web site.
Last but not least, I consider the detailed discussion of the five presently most important programming environments that run run on the brick an asset of the book. I know of no other publication presently available that provides such a detailed way to compare these languages and IDEs with real examples and decide on their usefulness for one’s
own needs and preferences in terms of NXT programming as the book at hand does. If a reader consider them intimidating then, it helped him to make a decision after all that this kind of language is not his cup of tea, dosn’t it?. Of course one could have provided the code on a web site only and leave it out of the book - but in my opinion, that appeals to the
content of almost any book: you can always move it from a book to a web site - but what would have been the use of the book at all then?
Sorry for having made so much words, and thanks again for your review and having given me the opportunity to make some remarks,
Matthias Paul Scholz (proud member of nxtasy.org for a long time already)”
Thanks, Matthias for your comments and for making the extra material available for the readers!
Guy Ziv
NXTasy.org
Posted in news, reviews | 9 Comments »
leJOS NXJ version 0.3 released!
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007As you all know, there are allready several programming alternatives for the NXT. These include, for example, NXT-G, RobotC, NXC etc. One other option is leJOS, a Java object-oriented language built on top on TinyVM. As you can read in the following email I got from Brian Bagnall, one of leJOS developers, this new release starts taking shape into a mature firmware alternative for the LEGO and RobotC firmwares:
The latest version of leJOS NXJ is finally ready! For those who aren’t familiar with leJOS, it’s a full replacement firmware for the LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick that allows you to run Java programs on the NXT brick. leJOS NXJ works with Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (a dedicated Mac build is coming soon). Version 0.3 now includes some key features:
- A flash file system including implementations of java.io.File,
FileInputStream, and FileOutputStream.
- CompassPilot and CompassNavigator
- A menu system that supports executing and deleting programs, and LCP commands with NXJ extensions over USB and Bluetooth
- Java streams over Bluetooth and USB
- USB support
- Flash native methods
- Working flash build of leJOS NXJ
- Improved LCP support (LEGO Communication Protocol) including file commands
- Improved Bluetooth support including setting the NXT name
- A file explorer that runs on your PC
And much more…
Check out www.lejos.org for more information.
I hope these guys release some tutorials soon, since understanding how to use leJOS from the examples source and the API is somewhat challenging….
Posted in development, news | 1 Comment »
Kong videos on YouTube
Wednesday, July 18th, 2007
John Brost put on YouTube three videos of Kong. Kong was designed & built to compete in the rock crawler challenge at Brickworld ‘07 in Chicago, IL, and won the event.
Now, John put some videos online, see them at the links below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9eEYHZI1JU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gzhwBWrCRY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgUAK1xQOpQ
There’s also a NXTLog page here.
Posted in video, news | No Comments »
Book Review: The Da Vinci Inventions Book
Monday, July 16th, 2007
A few days ago I rechived a review copy of the new APRESS book ‘Advanced NXT: The Da Vinci Inventions Book’ by Matthias Paul Scholz. After a few days, I finally managed to read through the whole thing (but didn’t build any of it’s designs, for reasons explained below).
Bottom line - it’s a good book, especially if you are looking for fully detailed building instructions and programming instructions. The book covers 5 of Da Vinci greatest works - the armored car, the catapult, the revolving bridge, the aerial screw (known by mistake as the ‘helicopter’) and the flying machine. Each work is described in a chapter of its own with historical background, discussion of the particular LEGO challenges and mechanisms used, full building instructions and programming details in NXT-G, RobotC, NXC, pbLua and leJOS. Before getting into the detailed codes, a nice diagram explains the program flow. Paul also gave good introduction to NXT and Da Vinci, as well as nice outlook on future improvements one can attempt for the 5 models, and two other Da Vinchi inventions which may be attempted by the reader.
Having said allready that this is a good book, it does have some drawbacks. The major one, for me at least, was the use of many pieces which are not part of the Mindstorms NXT #8527 retail kit (or the #9797 educational base set). Unfortunatly, the book does not give alternatives using the parts in the basic sets parts, nor give any indication which extra sets are needed and where to buy them. Some models use hard-to-get parts, like the revolving bridge which uses the old-style turntable (Peeron #2855 and #2856). Unfortunatly, I could not build some of the models due to lack of pieces…
Paul gives programming instructions in five different languages. Alltough some will find this an excellent way to learn new languages by comparision, I think it is not important. One could have, for example, put all the extra codes online, leaving only NXT-G (and maybe RobotC) code in text. For young readers, these detailed textual codes would probably be somewhat intimidating.
Another nice-to-have feature which I lack, is an online page with more pictures and videos of the machines in action. I think this would help understand some of the more difficult constructions steps, and especialy the use of strings in models such as the revolving bridge and the flying machine.
Last, as in allmost all black-and-white books with building instructions, the graphical aspects are problematic. In some figures the casted shadows distracts the eye, while in others the pieces are too reflective and some even appear to be transparent! I know how hard it is to make publication quality building instructions… I just hope a better solution will come up soon (and with the release of LDD 2.2 it may be close, even though it still lacks a lot more Technic pieces and other features to be a good candidate to replace good old LeoCAD/MLCad).
Guy Ziv
NXTasy.org
Posted in news, reviews | No Comments »
New contributer to NXTasy!
Saturday, July 14th, 2007NXTasy welcomes Mac Ruiz, aka 222doc in our forums, as a contributer to NXTasy.org. Mac is a retired construction superintendent from AZ. His personal website contains many creative NXT designs and he is an active member in our forums. Mac also wrote a chapter on robotic animals in the ‘Building Robots with LEGO Mindstorms NXT’ recently published by Syngress.
Welcome, Mac!
Posted in nxtasy, news | 3 Comments »
New Repository Project
Saturday, July 14th, 2007
Laurens Valk published building instructions (made with Google SketchUp) for his Brick Sorter. I added this project to the NXTasy repository ‘Projects’ page here. That page contains over 20 NXT models with links to building instructions, made by various authors.
With the released of LDD 2.2, making building instructions is even easier then before! I invite everyone to share LDD files and building instructions in our repository, simply by emailing me with guy (at) nxtasy.org.
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More NXT-G Blocks
Monday, July 9th, 2007Techno-stuff has released dedicated NXT-G blocks for their air pressure sensor and motion detector (passive IR sensor). The new blocks can be found in the NXTasy repository NXT-G blocks list.
Reminder - If you encounter anything you thing worth getting into the categorized repository, email me at guy (at) nxtasy.org!
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