Advanced Display Image NXT-G Block
Friday, September 26th, 2008
Following my block, Steve made this useful block for displaying just any .ric file with passing up to 5 parameters. Note that to use make your own .ric you’ll need Andreas Dreier nxtRICeditV2 editor (download here). You’ll also need to save the .ric file in the ‘LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT\engine\Pictures’ directory.
You can download it from Steve’s page here, which has some other cool blocks and many good NXT stuff.
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Advanced Display Text NXT-G Block
Saturday, September 20th, 2008
After a long break, I finally found some time to write a new block. This NXT-G block allows writing text on the NXT’s display using different fonts than the system font. In this release, I included two fonts by Andreas Derier (to whom I owe the motivation for this block. without his new nxtRICeditV2 tool this block would not be written) - a small letters font and a large letters font. I also include one of my own - an upside-down font (useful if your robot has its NXT upside-down…). The block usage is self-explenatory, but just in case - it comes with detailed help which integrate into NXT-G environment when you import it.
As an example for using this block - here’s a screen capture of my NXT (using NeXTScreen):
I used the Display block to write on line 3, and the new font using the ‘Upside Down’ font on line 1 (note that for this font, you need to write your text right-to-left!):
In a few days I will post instructions on making new fonts. I will happily add contributed fonts to future releases of the block. Also, I learned a few new tricks on block building which I will share in the near future… Comments/questions are welcome!
Download the .zip package here
Guy Ziv
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Control PF from NXT (the hacked way)
Thursday, September 18th, 2008Controling power-function motors is possible with the IRLink sensor, but if you want a ‘hacked’way - here it is: wdaehn posted me this link where he blog on hacking the mindsensors.com RCX motors H-bridge to control PF:
http://wdaehn.blogspot.com/2008/09/lego-mindstorms-nxt-and-power-functions.html
Nice work!
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UCB: A Robotic Controller in a 2×4 Brick
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
Stefan Vorst designed the UCB, a controller small enough to fit in a 2×4 Lego brick (the picture above shows a UCB that is not housed in a brick). It comes with a power supply that connects to a Lego 9V battery pack; the power supply fits in a 2×2 brick (shown in the picture). The UCB can control two Lego motors. It also has a 12-pin connector that can be used to control up to 6 LEDs, or to interface to sensors. An expansion connector can link the UCB to an NXT; the NXT can then control the UCB. In this mode, the UCB can function as a motor controller, LED controller, or a sensor unit. The UCB is programmable; the device in the background is a Pickit 2, a low-cost microcontroller programmer that can control the UCB.
To learm more and to see the UCB in action, check out a video that shows it controlling motors, connected to the NXT, and being re-programmed.
The UCB has been adopted by Stefan’s club, the LEGO® Modellbaufans Rheinland e. V. Code for the UCB is available on sourceforge.
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PSumo
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008
Steve Hessenplug came up with this great idea for LEGO events - an easiliy programmable sumo robots. The idea is simple - the robots are allready built, and each have an RFID reader. ‘Programming’ is done by sweaping 5 cards in front of the sensor (each card has an RFID tag, and code for some function). This is a great idea for very fast programming sessions - but obviously much more limited then NXT-G.
The details, movies and more explenations are here:
http://www.teamhassenplug.org/sumo/PSumo.html
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sound localizing LEGO robot
Monday, September 1st, 2008
Here is our new sound localizing robot called Nic_3. It is capable of fixing the azimuth of a sound source that is located in the horizontal plane. The localizing process is done using the stereo audio amplifier that we already used with Nic_1 and Nic_2. (For several reasons Nic_2 has not been published yet.) The amplifier is directly connected to the RCX inputs 2 and 3. (input 1 is used to power the sensor).
The RCX samples 2 x 1000 data-points on each ear at a frequency of 36kHz. Then it processes the time-lag between both signals within 100ms. This is impressively fast, because we apply a high speed phase detection.
The RCX repeats the sampling and detection process 10 times and takes the average of the measurements. Then the RCX computes the azimuth from the time-lag and sends the angle to the NXT through the HiTechnic IR-link.
The RCX program has been written in ULTIMATE ROBOLAB and H8-Assembler, while the NXT has been programmed using the LabVIEW NXT-toolkit.
http://www.convict.lu/htm/rob/phase_detection.htm
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