Ramblings

Don’t fall off! Yesterday was the fourth installment of the RobotMC Team Building Day.  This event is organised every year and is probably the most laid-back and fun robotics event on the planet, I kid you not. It is an all-day event, starting at about 09:00 and ending at around 17:00, so it’s a long day of building, programming and ...

Last night I gave a presentation at the Competa Conference Center. I managed to make the audience listen to my almost endless driveling for a whopping 2 hours or so. I had a lot of fun doing it and judging from the reactions from the people there, I think they had fun, too. I brought a lot of robots and ...

In just 6 weeks’, the biggest, most exciting LEGO show is going to take place in Zwolle, The Netherlands. This year the Mindstorms and Technic themes will join forces and have a massive combined stand that will take up a complete separate area at the venue. There will be other themes there too, as well as many, many user-created displays. ...

Next Thursday (8 September 2011) I will be giving a LEGO Mindstorms NXT presentation at the Competa Conference Center in Rijswijk. Some of the topics I’ll be talking about include: Hardware – what’s inside the brick? Sensors – standard, 3rd party and home brew. Some examples, both small and large (and extra-large) of what you can build with it. The ...

Cool picture of my NXT illuminated by the Dexter Industries’ upcoming 6-DOF IMU’s U-R-Blind LED™. The red light is the power strip’s main switch and the green in the foreground is the light on the HiTechnic Super Sniffer, an I2C protocol analyzer.

I got a nice big padded envelope in the mail this morning from this year’s FTC Team 4466 (R.A.B.B.I.).  Inside was a really nice letter and a HiTechnic Servo Controller for Tetrix and a DC Motor Controller for Tetrix! It was a real pleasure working with you guys and thank you for sending me two of the most difficult to ...

Hi and welcome to the new site.  No, I’ve not been hijacked, kidnapped or otherwise subverted.  This is the new home for “I’d Rather Be Building Robots”. Since that whole sentence would make for a really terrible domain name, I did some brain storming for a new name and I came up empty.  Good thing my dad was in the ...

When National Geographic contacted me last week about writing an article about a robotics article they had published on the web I must say I was quite surprised. The article itself is a very interesting one.  It asks the question whether we are ready for all the robots that are slowly coming into our every day lives. Personally, I think ...

After a prolonged hibernation period, the Mindsqualls project is back from the dead and version 2.0 has been released. I was using an older version in my super secret Kinect project, so it is nice to see that is being maintained again. Mindsqualls is one of the easiest to use .Net library for controlling your NXT using C# or VB.Net. ...

The NXTLog website has a very cool challenge up! I blatantly stole the article below from the NXT Step. Original article: [LINK] There are robot explorers all over the world and even on Mars! We are challenging you this summer to invent the NXT great generation of explorer robots with your MINDSTORMS NXT. Will your robot explore the desert, the ...