Bot Bench I'd Rather Be Building Robots
It seems a Ukrainian company has created a motor MUX for the Russian LEGO Mindstorms market. From what I have been able to gather from the Google Translated page is that it has 3 motor ports and a pass through ability that allows you to daisy-chain up to 63 (!) of these things. I can’t imagine trying to code for almost 190 motors, but should you ever feel a burning desire to create an NXT powered millipede, here’s your chance!
They’ve made NXT-G blocks for the encoder sensor and every other type of motor block to allow you to use this pretty much transparently. The downside is that the blocks are in Russian and don’t seem to be import-able into the version of NXT-G that I have.
I’ve spoken with the guy who sells these and they’re around $70 through their website. I think they will need to work on an English site or find a reseller in Europe/US that can cater to this market.
You can view the translated product page here: [LINK]. Be sure to check out the very cool Johnny 5 video at the bottom. It seems the video only appears on the non-translated page, to see that click here: [LINK] and scroll to the bottom. The man I spoke with very proudly told me that his son had made this.
This looks like it might be a very nice product! Строительство Mindstorms роботы это весело!
Edit: updated the product page links.
Edit 2: An English product page is up now, check it out here: [LINK].
tHta’s Daniele Benedettelli’s Johnny 5 reconstructed with the mux. The borad has a power jack (good!) and in the picture of Johnny5 it appears to be connected to a 9V battery box… I’m curious to know if the mux includes the necessary cable – although it would be easy enough to make one.
Into the complete set enters:
1.motorMUX
2.CD with drivers for lego NXT
3.The instruction.
A cable it is necessary to get separately.
[…] to the NXT and one to daisy-chain up to 62 more of these devices to each sensor port. In my original article I mentioned you could connect up to 189 motors to your NXT, I was wrong. That should be 756, of […]
Maximum – 1011 motors
No, apparently the motor mux in the picture is an older prototype with 4 motor ports. The production one has 3 to make it more like the standard NXT motor layout. Therefore it’s not 4 * 63 * 4 + 3, but 3 * 63 * 4 +3 = 759 motors. That’s still a lot of motors, mind you.
My math is rather faulty, but if each mux gives you 3 motors, you also need to subtract 1 motor from the previous mux because that’s the output you need to connect the next MUX… so it would be 1 original motor +2 extra for each mux you connect
(1 + 63*2) *3 = 375
Jetro,
The daisy-chain port is *not* a motor port. So it will not reduce the number of available motor ports.
– Xander
Ok, I need to brush up on my Russian. Looking forward to further information on availability and integration into English NXT-G … come to think of it, any info on NXC?
Xander – Do you know if they ship to the US and what the price in $’s would be? I would love to get one or two…
Don,
I am not sure, but I will ask them! Stay tuned 🙂
Don,
They are currently figuring out a way to accept payments from outside the Russian Federation and Ukraine. PayPal apparently doesn’t work there. They’re also planning an English translation of the product page for non-Russian/Ukrainian customers.
I will keep you posted.