Challenge 3 Winner
Monday, October 29th, 2007It’s been a too busy month, with real-life job and MCP duties filling up my day/night time fully. I am sorry for the large delay in putting online the 3rd challenge results - but here’re some preliminary outcomes -
3rd place - 222Doc with final grade 52
2nd place - Fuzzpault with final grade of 58
and the winner of 60$ cupon from mindsensors.com is Dad and Adams with final grade of 73!
Some more figures -
Lightest ANxT belongs to 222Doc with 606 gram (his final version weight 624 gram)
Best lifter - Fuzzpault with a weight of 53.3 kg!
Quickest ANxT is Brickmaster_MV (13 yr old) with a record of 8 seconds (but only lifting 1.8 it’s body weight)
Thanks everyone for participating. I will try to put online pictures and videos of all contributions in the near future.
Guy Ziv
NXTasy.org Editor, MCP2.0
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Thursday, October 18th, 2007
I just posted a writeup on an IR Link that allows the NXT to send commands to the Power-Functions receiver (the commands tell the receiver to turn the Power Functions motors on and off) and to receive commands from the Power-Functions remote control. The device can keep sending a “turn on” command to the Power-Functions receiver repeatedly on its own, thereby keeping the motor on without requiring further NXT communications. You can buy such devices from both HiTechnic and Mindsensors, but it was fun to build one. Some of the interesting aspects of this project are:
- Deciphering the Power-Functions communications protocol,
- Using an external AVR microcontroller with the NXT, and
- Automatic configuration of the I2C pull-up resistors.
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Frangible LEGO
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
Brian Davis (MCP, contributer to thenxtstep) put on YouTube this wonderful movie showing how Zamor shooters can be effective… There’s a bit of the motorized Bulldozer at the end.
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Spin Doctor, A spinning kilough platform
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
Our forums reader daytona955 posted here on his new kilough platform. What I really liked on this work is the use of alternating active/passive light sensor to find (in many cases) obstacles ahead of time (notice it changes direction before hitting the wall) as well as moving in a line while rotating around it’s own axis (for scanning the area around). Good work!
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NXT Power Programming
Thursday, October 11th, 2007I’d like to officially announce that Variant Press will soon publish my new book, NXT Power Programming. It should be available November 7th. You can pre-order it now at Amazon.com or Variant Press.
I hope everyone who purchases a copy of NXT Power Programming will find it to be a very helpful tool for programming the NXT using NXC or NBC.
Here is an excerpt from the back cover:
NXT Power Programming delivers everything you need to create the robot you’ve always dreamed about. This is the definitive guide to C programming by the developer of some of the most powerful and popular development tools for LEGO MINDSTORMS. John C. Hansen presents a comprehensive yet friendly set of tools that allow you to create almost any robot you can imagine. Inside, you’ll find an ingenious set of projects that explore the complete arsenal of NXT functionality. At the heart of these projects is Versa, a versatile mobile robot platform utilizing modular attachments.
Master the Art of:
- NXC, a C language for the NXT
- BricxCC, a full featured programming environment
- Sensors and Motors
- Utilities for Music, Sound Sampling, Graphics and more
- NBC, an Assembler Language for the NXT
- Building Robots without Bricks
- Handheld Arcade Games on the NXT
- An Intruder System using a Sphere Cannon
- NXT to NXT Bluetooth communications
- NXT to Bluetooth devices
- The latest sensors from HiTechnic and mindsensors.com
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RFID Rover
Monday, October 8th, 2007A wonderful work by Anders Sorborg - a rover which uses RFID tags to navigate around the house. See the details, video and pictures here.
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Mindsensors.com Camera for NXT
Monday, October 1st, 2007
Andy pointed out that mindsensors.com accepts orders for the new camera sensor for NXT, shipping at October 12th. More details can be read here.