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Showing posts from April, 2007

A New Member to "The NXT STEP" Blog Team

Hi everyone. I first want to thank Jim Kelly for inviting me to contribute to this blog. Some information about myself: I work as a research engineer in the Mechanical Engineering Dept. at University of Saskatchewan in Canada. I have been a fan of LEGO and robotics most of my life (got my first LEGO set at 4 yrs old), and am currently looking at using Mindstorms and Technic to enhance our university's curriculum. In my spare time, I enjoy building robots and mechanisms out of LEGO. I am interested in design, not just engineering. I hope to bring contributions to this blog that will stir interest. I encourage you to see Jim Kelly's posting below titled: "Pursuing the Camera subject..." for my initial contribution, and I invite your comments there . We are all making the NXT into more than it was ever imagined to be. Kirk Backstrom

Pursuing the Camera subject...

I received a request from reader Kirk B. to post a follow-up to the Q&A with LEGO regarding the question about the camera - LEGO pushed back and asked what WE (the consumers) were looking for... Kirk writes: The LEGO Co. had an interesting response to the LEGO camera question Jim Kelly asked them at the FLL World Festival: 3. Is there a plan to create a cheap (<100$) camera sensor for autonomous robot operation?I would turn the question around and ask: what would you really want to do with a ‘camera sensor’? Reading between the lines, it seems the LEGO Co. is looking for a convincing argument(s) to create a new camera. We could help the LEGO Co. by providing them some useful information for the development of a new LEGO camera. (Once all the comments are received, they will be forwarded to the LEGO Co.). Please comment what improvements you would make to the original LEGO camera and its software, and how much you would be willing to pay for the new LEGO camera. Also, “what wou

Some cool stuff to look at...

Check out some of Christian's designs... if anyone can find some more info and provide to us, please do (English translations welcome, too). NXTOffRoad at Work http://www.mindstormsforum.de/bilder/details.php?image_id=138&sid=2ae1c901bfebaff175e1d[url]9a73e9e5d0b NXTOffRoad Build-0 http://www.mindstormsforum.de/bilder/details.php?image_id=140&sid=2ae1c901bfebaff175e1d9a73e9e5d0b NXTOffRoad Build-1 http://www.mindstormsforum.de/bilder/details.php?image_id=139&sid=2ae1c901bfebaff175e1d9a73e9e5d0b Developerversion with MCU http://www.mindstormsforum.de/bilder/details.php?image_id=141&sid=2ae1c901bfebaff175e1d9a73e9e5d0b Cableconverter for extensions (MCU-Board for SD-Card, Camera, Motors andadditional IO-Ports) http://www.mindstormsforum.de/bilder/details.php?image_id=142&sid=2ae1c901bfebaff175e1d9a73e9e5d0b

NXT Sensors - HELP! My Light Sensor is Broken!

If your Light Sensor isn’t working properly, try recalibrating it, or setting the calibration back to the defaults. I recently mis-calibrated my light sensor, and spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out why it wasn’t working. It only registered a range of about 10. So everything was coming out wrong on the readings. I figured it out finally. I had messed up the calibration. Once I reset the light sensor calibration, everything started working as expected again.

NXT Sensors - Adventures in Color Detection

I was recently playing with the T-56 Robotic Arm (from the Mindstorms Kit). My son (he's 5) built about 65% of the robot. We created the default program… it grabs a ball, and if it is red, it turns and drops it on the ground. If it is blue, it puts the ball back on the stand. My son wanted to try some other colors with it. So we started with the Red and Blue ball, and added a Green ball, a Yellow ball and an Orange ball. My son had an old play set from when he was 2. It had the three colored balls, and they are the same size as the two that come with the NXT system. On to the Adventure! TIP : Check your light source first, since different amounts of light will give you a different reading. If possible, try and use colors that are farther apart on the color spectrum. Close colors often have a close light value, and even that can vary slightly if your object is moving or the reading is not taken in the same light every time. We used the colored balls and came up w

Official Website coverage of NXT/RC Plane

You can read a little writeup from LEGO on Chris Anderson from WIRED magazine and his RC Plane that he's converting into a drone using Mindstorms NXT. As you can see, he's getting a lot of attention and a lot of people are waiting and watching to see what happens next... Do you know someone who's got an interesting project that deserves some attention? Let us know... these kinds of projects are great and we want to encourage more.

(A Few) More Details of John Hansen's New Book

Click on this picture for a larger cover shot of John Hansen's new book, which provides a few more details of what it will contain.

Impact of FIRST Robotics on students' education and career choices

Brandeis University recently published the results of an independent study in which they investigated the impact participation in FIRST Robotics Competitions has on later education and career choices. They found that, compared to non-FIRST students with similar backgrounds, that FIRST students are: 1) More than 3 times as likely to major specifically in engineering. 2) Roughly 10 times as likely to have had an apprenticeship, internship, or co-op job in their freshman year. 3) Significantly more likely to expect to achieve a post graduate degree. 4) More than twice as likely to expect to pursue a career in science and technology. Nearly 4 times as likely to expect to pursue a career specifically in engineering. Additional details on the study can be found here .

A List of the "Best" Mindstorm Designs

A Swedish site named "Smidigt" has a list of the "best ever" Mindstorm designs. Here are their top five: 1) The "Etch-a-Sketch" NXT 2) Brian Davis' "Packbot" NXT 3) The "Segway" NXT 4) Eugene Tsai's "Gymnast" NXT 5) The RCX Auto Factory See videos of their top five here. Can anyone else point us to other NXT/Mindstorm creations that, in your opinion, should be on that list?

An Expansion Outlet for your NXT

Philo has formalized a very nice auxillary power source, based on the fact that the internals of the NXT drive the "brake" state of the Port A motor slightly differently than the B or C ports. This allows you to draw up to 800 mA of current from port A and still use it to control a motor. He's used this to power a small wireless camera as well as LED "floodlights" for it (something these cameras can really use), or even an entire motor multiplexer (shown in the picture). More importantly, he's formalized everything on his website: Port A Power Tap He has the schematics up, shows you how to build it all into a cable (a bulky one, to fit the capacitor), and even shows you how to mount the LED floodlights or build a more advanced regulated version. This is a great hack! If you want to discuss it, he's posted about it to both LUGNET and NXTasy , and he's great at following both. -- Brian Davis

Train places its own track...

It's an RCX design, but maybe someone out there wants to try and create an NXT version... (if you do, email us a photo or video and we'll be happy to share it). The idea is simple - create a train-like device that places its own track down, moves on to the new track, and then retrieves the previous one...

4wd vs 2wd? A Drive System Comparison

A couple days ago, my FLL team was designing a robot for next year's robot game, when we came to an unanswerable question: Should we use 4wd or 2wd? Being their mentor, I encouraged a more 'scientific' way of deciding by creating a chart, and this is what they came up with: 4 Wheel Drive Slippage occurs during turning Navigates more terrains smoothly Uses more battery power Capable of in place turning Goes straighter The robot has more support Must use gears / pulleys to transmit power but has unnecessary gear lash The chassis usually becomes a boxy shape 2 Wheel Drive Free-er turns It is more difficult to navigate all terrains Uses less battery power No in place turning More likely to drift Have to use a caster wheel or other means of support Could be directly connected to motor and not risk slop The chassis usually becomes a rectangular kind of shape Both drive systems have been used successfully in the past. A good example are the two 1st Place Robot Peoformance Winners
I gave the Wish List to LEGO while at the FLL competition along with a list of questions... below are LEGO's responses to some (not all) of the questions submitted by readers. LEGO will most likely be checking on readers' responses to these answers, so please post your comments if you have them. You can view the Wish List post here along with readers' questions (as comments). LEGO has informed me that the List "is in on our table when we talk new ideas - and it is, honestly!" I'll let you know as soon as I hear from LEGO regarding the Wish List. And now, here are some questions and answers: 1. Does LEGO plan to release a new pneumatics set for use with NXT? NO. But the pneumatics elements will still be available in other LEGO TECHNIC sets, so if you want to combine it, go ahead. 2. What extension sets are planned for the NXT? In time of writing there is no extension sets planned for the NXT set (#8527). But the sensor developers have many new ideas for extra s

The "NXT Generation" team from Denmark.

I received the following from Ejner Kobberø Andersen, coach for the NXT Generation team from Denmark: "I am coach for team #6340 "NXT Generation" from Denmark. Our team came in 3rd in the robot performance. Our team was able to run 2 x 400 point. During the last run our robot had a small hick-up at the stain resistant fabric challange where it unfortunately lost 31 points. Anyway our team returned from a great FLL World Festival with a 3rd place robot performance award. I linked to the Mindstorm Troopers home page and saw their robot performance video and thought your readers might want to also watch our team's robot performance. You can read more about our team on http://www.nxtgeneration.dk/ . The site is in Danish as well as in English (Press the English flag). Here you can also find videos of our robot performance, including Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen who is watching our team at the World Festival. You can also read more about our robot on the http://mindstorms.lego.

New Object-Avoidance Sensor for the NXT

This sensor detects objects at an oblique angle to your robot, instead of just objects located straight ahead. How many times has your NXT run into the wall because it was approaching it from an indirect angle? (Too many times, I know). This sensor aims to correct that. The sensor is reasonably priced, too. From mindsensors.com

NXT and RC Plane and GPS

After reading Chris Anderson's latest post on his creation of a homemade drone using NXT and RC Plane technology, I reached the end of his post and caught the following: "The other thing we did this weekend is start integrating the Bluetooth GPS receiever. We're using a Holux GPSSlim236, which a lovely (and tiny) piece of gear, but it's going to take a bit more software work to get the Mindstorms NXT brick to read data from it properly." There has been much talk of integrating GPS with NXT on various forum/user group sites, so those of you interested in this topic might want to keep an eye on this site for more information. And if you think you may have something that could help Chris, shoot him a comment (near the bottom of his post) - it appears it is getting the software working that is the next hurdle. This is one of the NXT community's most anticipated projects - we hope you're enjoying Chris' updates and we'll do our best to keep you informe

Close-up of Lego Camera Gimbal

Above is a close-up of Chris Anderson's Lego camera gimbal, to be used on his R/C plane with an NXT autopilot. (Scroll down to yesterday's post for more information). Click on the above photo to see more detail of the gimbal. Thanks, Chris, for sending this along.

Mindstorm Trooper's RT1200

One of the two teams that tied for 1st place Robot Performance in the World Festival this year is the Mindstorm Troopers from Ohio. Composed entirely of homeschoolers, they had won the 1st place Robot Performance award last year. This year, however, they made history by becoming one of the second teams to get straight 3/3 perfect scores at a World Festival. This was also the first time two teams tied for top Robot Performance, and on top of that, the Mindstorm Troopers became the first team to win Robot Performance two years in a row. Talk about a lot of accomplishments! As you can see in the picture above, their robot is highly compact and stable. Below are the team's comments on it, which they named RT1200: Our NXT robot, the RT1200, is designed for reliability and durability. Its streamlined differential-drive steering system avoids unnecessary friction points and gear interactions. There are only two drive wheels, each independently controlled by a motor. There is one drive wh

Lego Pan-Tilt Camera Gimbal

Chris Anderson is at it again, making a pan-tilt camera gimbal out of technic pieces and Lego servos. The gimbal is attached to his RC plane that includes an NXT autopilot. More details about the camera gimbal are here. I've asked Chris to email me some close-ups of the gimbal mechanism, which I'll post here later.

List of useful NXT-G Custom Blocks

Guy Ziv from nxtasy.org has published a list of available NXT-G blocks that are not included in the NXT-G software installation. Amongst others, there's a Line Following Block by Steve Hassenplug , a Block for the Acceleration Sensor provided by HiTechnic and an Advanced Array Block by Guy . Try them!

Lego Storage Redux

Back in February, Peter Hoh had an excellent blog post on Lego storage solutions. Our own solution: The Container Store The Container Store has conventional storage boxes like the blue one pictured above, plus it has more open containers like the following: It also sells inexpensive dividers for customizing your compartments within, like the following (sans clothing): As always, we invite your own ideas for the best LEGO storage solutions on the planet.

And, Still More Books...

On top of the announcement of John Hansen's book comes an announcement from Brian Bagnall of " Maximum LEGO NXT: Building Robots with Java Brains ". The table of contents looks very interesting - I'll be curious to see how he got a GPS to interface, and how well NXJ functions (I've not talked to anybody who's given it a whirl... anybody use it yet?). The best thing is this is more of an announcement of the launch data - 25 Apr is right around the corner! -- Brian Davis

New Contributer!

Hi, I am a new contributer to the NXT Step Blog. First of all, I want to thank Jim Kelly for inviting me. I recently met him at the World Festival, and he invited me. A little about me: I, like many of you, own both the RCX and the NXT. I got interested in Robotics when I was invited to be on my school's FLL team. I soon recieved my RCX. Since then, I have been an avid RCX user. When the NXT was announced, my intrest was renewed. My current project is designning a robot for next year's FLL season. I am also working on a robotic arm that plays ping-pong... When I have free time, I practice the clarinet and play ping-pong (table tennis) I hope to provide useful posts and comments to this blog, Robolab 2.9

FLL: The Debriefing

So it looks like another great FLL season has come and gone... but a very different one this time, in that for the first time it involved two very different platforms, the RCX and the NXT. So, before all you teams disband for the season and scatter to the four winds, how about collecting some thoughts on the season? I'm really interested in several things: 1) How did having two very different robot platforms in the event change things? 2) What special tips or tricks could you pass on for working with the NXT, NXT-G, and the newer version of Robolab? 3) Words of wisdom (or howls of complaint) to pass on to folks for nxt year, dealing with the hardware, software, or the way the contest was organized/run? Please take a moment to pass on what you've learned (if that isn't a good goal for FLL, what is?) Just add any FLL team or coach comments into the comments section of this post - I'd love to read them! And maybe others will as well. Thanks! -- Brian Davis

NXT Baseball Batter

Remember Eugene Tsai, the creator of the "NXT Gymnast"? Eugene and his students have created a baseball-batting NXT. Eugene, if you have more details about this robot, we'd love to see them.

FLL photoset - can you find yourself?

Joe Meno from BrickJournal (disclaimer: no, that's not him in the photo) tipped us off to his photoset from the recent FLL World Festival in Atlanta. What great pictures! And again, I'm really sorry I couldn't be at the event to meet you all. Wonderful pictures, of a whole lot of teams as well as some really nice robots... and some folks doing straaaange things. Swimming with the trophy? Steve Hassenplug wearing glasses? And who let the giant penguin in there?!? But Joe went one better than just putting up his photosets on Flickr, and also edited together a short Youtube video clip (with soundtrack). Take a look at the photosets and see if you see anyone you know... FLL World Festival, Day 1 FLL World Festival, Day 2 PS- Can anybody find Joe Meno in one of these? And if you've not seen or browsed BrickJournal, feel free to look over some of the amazing back issues you can find at the link above. -- Brian Davis

FLL Robots on NXTLog

All FLL team's out there: LEGO Mindstorms has just issued a press release asking all of us to post documentation of our FLL robots on NXTLog. Søren Lund also announced this assignment at the World Championship award ceremonies. Basically, if you're an FLL team, LEGO wants you to take pictures of your robot, along with a description, .rbt files, etc., and put it up on NXTLog. Remember to tag your robot with "FLL", so that people can find it easily. I'm going to be making an NXTLog of my team's robot (or actually, robots - we have three of them) and putting it up too. It should be interesting to see how many robots show up out there! -Jonathan

LEGO and FIRST responses to VT tragedy

In response to the recent tragedy at Virginia Tech, LEGO and FIRST have both issued responses. LEGO - http://mindstorms.lego.com/news/default.aspx FIRST - http://www.usfirst.org/who/content.aspx?id=5364 And those of us here at The NXT Step are keeping the victims' families and friends in our thoughts and prayers.

Philo's New Design

Philo's got a new design up on his site - called the NXTiiMote : From his site: "NXTiiMote is a remote control device based on a MindSensors acceleration sensor . You may control a vehicle through Bluetooth by tilting the remote, forward/backward and left/right. Additionally, a wheel and push button can control supplementary actions."

Is Simpler Not Better?

I have a question for you programmers out there. When Rick and I build robots we find on the Web, I am often struck with how unnecessarily complicated the programming is. For instance, our most recent project included programming to make an arm move back and forth. This is the code: Block 1 tells it to move forward indefinitely. Block 2 waits for the motor to rotate a certain amount. Block 3 stops the movement. Block 4 waits .03 seconds. Block 5 gets it moving indefinitely in the opposite direction. Block 6 waits for a certain rotation amount. Block 7 stops the motor. I replaced that code with these two blocks, each configured to rotate the motor a certain amount in one direction and stop. It worked just fine: Why do programmers choose such convoluted ways to do something so simple? Am I missing something? Is there a reason such simplification is not desirable?

Students Weigh in on Marketing Science to Girls

In February I started a discussion about how we might interest more girls in science. Even though I was interested in the broader view, the discussion seemed to focus mostly on whether a variety of colored parts would appeal to girls. A class of teenagers recently weighed in on the subject and you might find their extensive comments interesting. It sounds like the boys are the ones most interested in some color variety! Check out their comments here.

The Robot Rebellion is Here

Remember Dan Wilson's book, "How to Survive a Robot Uprising"? Well, the uprising is already here.

All Results of the FLL World Championship

The results of the FLL World Championships can be found by clicking [HERE ] .

LEGO NXT Plays Nice with an iRobot Create

I recently picked up the Create Development platform from iRobot, and was able to get it working together & nicely with the LEGO NXT using a roboDNA dashboard. One of the main features of the Create is a payload bay with screw mounting points, which allows builders to add on custom hardware attachments. I chose the LEGO NXT Robo-Arm as my first test attachment, in order to demonstrate how the roboDNA dashboards can simultaneously control two robots of different types, and have them operate cooperatively. To my surprised, it was easy to get the NXT attached securely to payload bay. The holes in standard LEGO beams match up almost perfectly with the mounting holes on the Create. The screws pass through a hole in the LEGO beam, and into the base of the payload bay. I modified the Robo-Arm's base to fit onto the beams. Mounting a heavier and larger LEGO NXT design such as a Crane is possible. ( Stay tuned ) No drilling or cutting required, just 4 or 6 screws from the har

Built on the Rock 2007 results

Team Built on The Rock Atlanta, Georgia USA 1st place Robot Performance 1st place Innovative Robot Design awards

Georgia Champs

The Georgia champions, the Shadow Tigers, had an impressive robot and a good final showing. Here's a picture of team and coaches along with Steven Canvin (LEGO) and myself. Watch out for this team next year!

National Instruments

National Instruments had a booth setup outside the FLL tournament area and was demonstrating its LabView software and some of the robots that were programmed and interacting with the software. They were giving out free "Lab View Student Edition" CDs and answering questions about the software and their company. Joe and Andy: It was great to meet you guys!

LEGO Education at FLL

Kristie Brown from LEGO Education North America was answering questions from teachers, parents, coaches, and kids... and displaying many of the different kits (not just NXT) that are available. I was surprised at the number of teachers/coaches/parents that were asking about starting up their own teams. If this is consistent throughout the world, FLL is going to be even larger next year.

LEGO Booth

LEGO had a booth area set up again for showing off the NXT. They had plenty of giveaways and a drawing - pins, stickers, red balls (everyone needs more of those, right?), and posters. This year, instead of setting up their own FLL challenge table, they simply used the table as an area for kids and adults to play with some of the robots that LEGO and a few others brought to display. Steve Hassenplug brought his usual assortment, including the OmniBot and another with those great LARGE wheels (seen in the 3rd photo).

Scholarship Row

Just outside the main entry area for the practice/booth section was Scholarship Row. Although most of the FLL participants were probably too young to benefit from this, it is nice to know that colleges and universities are showing an interest in helping students with scholarships and awards for study. I'd estimate about 20-30 colleges/universities were represented this year. It will be interesting to see if more schools show up next year.

China at FLL

Although it's a language I would love to learn, right now I do not speak Chinese. I met the team and was able to get this photograph of them at the practice tables. I have to say that one of my favorite things about FLL is getting to meet teams from all over the world.

NXTLOG at FLL

For those of you who enjoy NXTLOG, the person (behind-the-scenes) responsible for managing it is Maureen Reilly (in the orange shirt). She was at the LEGO booth working, answering questions, and listening to plenty of suggestions (from the kids AND some of us adults). (For some reason, Maureen brought her own escorts to FLL and required them to wear pointy red hats. They went everywhere with her... ... just kidding, Maureen.)

LEGO/Billund at FLL

Soren Lund, Steven Canvin, and many others from LEGO were in attendance. Also present was Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, Chairman of LEGO. In this photo, he and Soren are controlling a couple of robots (Remote Control) and battling it out. The folks from LEGO know how to have some fun. They were in the pits with the kids, playing and asking questions. In one of the photos, you can see Bryan Bonahoom talking with Soren and Kjeld. Steve Hassenplug was working as a technical judge, but he'd pop in here and there and talk with the kids and show off some of his designs.

Calgary Team

Here's a photo from the team from Calgary, Alberta (Canada). They were practicing over in a corner, getting ready for their competition run.

Jordan Team

I enjoyed visiting with many of the teams. One of them, the team from Jordan, was doing a great job of meeting teams from all over the world. Here's a photo of them with a team from Japan. They were also promoting something very important to their country - the vote for Petra to become a new world wonder. You can find some more information about Petra and Jordan here. Petra is something they are very proud of and they asked me to not only vote, but to also ask others to read about it and possibly vote if you feel it a worthy addition. (For movie fans - Yes, Petra was seen in the 3rd Indiana Jones movie - "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.") This last photo is of me with the team - they gave me a small plaque from their country and I exchanged contact information with their coach and hope to stay in touch with them.

The Gyro Sensor

HiTechnic was nice enough to send a Gyro Sensor equipped robot for demonstration purposes. I could always round up a small crowd by placing it out on the floor and running the program. Within a few seconds, the robot would be surrounded by kids and adults, all wanting to know what it was and how it worked. We even managed to get a picture of it's "Big Brother!"

FLL International

FLL International 2007 was... absolutely amazing. I'll post some random photos here as well as some additional extra posts on specific topics. If you attended and have any photos you'd like to share, please email them to me and give me some information and I'll be happy to share. There was so much going on that I know I missed a lot. These are some photos of various teams - some are FLL and some are Junior FLL. It was fun to listen in and watch them practice, discuss strategies, and share information about their country (or state) of origin with other teams. Many teams were accompanied by parents and sponsor companies. I can definitely say that I met many more corporate sponsors this year than last. It was surprising how many large companies are getting involved with FIRST. Local businesses can still be found as sponsors, but I was seeing some MAJOR names involved in sponsorship. Although I'm not that familiar with Junior FLL, I did notice that they have some

FLL International Champions

Gotta make this quick, but we at The NXT Step can be very proud - one of our very own contributors, Jonathan Daudelin, and the team he belongs to won the 2007 FLL International Championship and are sharing with another team (Note to Self: need to find their team name and congratulate them as well...). They scored 3 perfect 400s. More on FLL when I can ge to a more reliable Internet connection. Jim

NXT Retail Kit for $189.99US

BestBuy.com is selling these for the above price, plus $5.99US shipping. Get them here.

NXT Heart Rate Monitor

Using a home-brew sensor, the monitor checks the pulse and then records it numerically on a display. (Click on the above photo for an enlarged diagram). Video is here. (Via Motocube)