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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Solenoids on Lego NXT
Monday, July 9th, 2007
Aother nice project from markr80 - NXT controlled solenoids. Well documented video, and good references too (see YouTube description here)
Posted in video, news, knowledge | 1 Comment »
Disk Reader
Sunday, January 28th, 2007The disk reader is just one of the little tests that I’ve been working on with my NXT. At present the data that the robot reads is rather useless but, with a good imagination I think that you could come up with some interesting applications for this robot. The robot is very easy to put together. The hard bit is getting the data to mean something and get the robot do something with the data.
If you make anything interesting with the disk reader and you want to show people what you have made. Email me and I’ll post it up here for others to see.
Till NXTime.
Posted in development, knowledge | 4 Comments »
Combining studded with studless Legos
Sunday, January 7th, 2007
Our forums user PTP posted this nice picture showing various ways one can combine studded with studless Legos. Since I find this very important, I have published it here. Click on the picture for a higher resolution image.
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NXT Poker Machine
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
In an effort to learn more about NeXT Byte Codes I developed a simple poker machine for the NXT Brick. The program gives you one hundred dollars to start and lets you alter bets with the bricks buttons. Winning combinations are 4 of a kind, 3 of a kind, 2 pair and straights (straights must appear in order). My original idea was to create an old leaver style of poker machine and I will release it if people seem interested. This project helped me to further understand the implementation of subroutines, threads, graphical syscall and array handling with NeXT Byte Codes. I would encourage learners of NeXT Byte Codes to develop their own poker machine, it is very worth while.
I am providing a NXT Poker Machine file with the program and graphics so you can have a look, I will also provide the source code to people that are interested.
Posted in development, projects, knowledge | 37 Comments »
LEGO Mindstorms NXT — The Mayan Adventure
Wednesday, December 6th, 2006
Our good buddy Jim Kelly over at The NXT Step has announced availability of his new book ‘LEGO Mindstorms NXT — The Mayan Adventure’. Buy the book now from Amazon and Barnes & Noble!
LEGO Mindstorms NXT: The Mayan Adventure presents a multipart fictional story as the premise for introducing and detailing a unique robot. The story’s main character, Max, is on an archaeological expedition with his uncle in the jungles of Guatemala to investigate a newly discovered Mayan pyramid. During the expedition, the team encounters various problems. And each problem is solved with the help of a unique robot that Max creates.
Following each chapter in which a new problem is introduced is a “theory” chapter that discusses the concepts and provides the programming knowledge you need for creating the robot. The robot “solution” chapter ultimately follows. Over the course of the book, you’ll follow along as Max and the expedition team use the Lego Mindstorms NXT kit to overcome obstacles and move deeper into the Mayan pyramid.
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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 »
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 »
Array Block for NXT
Tuesday, November 28th, 2006Hi everyone, my name is Adam Parkes. I’m a new contributor to nxtasy.org. This is my first time working with robots, I’m a programmer normally, so I guess thats why most of my robots look really crummy. One of the first things that I noticed in the NXT standard development language is that there wasn’t an array block . After a few quick minutes of thinking about how to implement one I developed a block that handles reading and writing to a pseudo array of data. The reason I call it pseudo is that the block mimics an array, in reality the data blocks may not be located right next to each other, not that it matters much anyway for all intent and purpose it can be used exactly like an array. The block has one major drawback, it is unable to be resized at runtime. This is due to the block being hard-coded to have the exact number of data members needed in the array before compile time.
I have provided a tutorial on how the block functions and how to make your own. Using a similar structure you could implement an aggregate data type, e.g. classes or structs. If anyone wants a tutorial on how to make an aggregate data structure with NXT just drop me an email.
Till NXTime.
Posted in development, knowledge | 3 Comments »