Ramblings

OpenElectrons is a site created by Mindsensors to be for the Android and Arduino platforms what their Mindsensors.com site is to the Mindstorms NXT platform. Android OS and devices offer many features that are fantastic for people wanting to build an easy-to-program robot with many capabilities already built-in. Arduino is also a platform rich with peripherals and software that can ...

This post is coming to you from La Belle France.  I’ve been here vacationing for the past two weeks together with my wife.  We’ve been staying mostly at my dad’s place but had a great 5-day trip to the Pyrenean mountains. A lot of stuff has happened since I last posted. I’ve compiled a little list: I will be doing ...

NXShield for Arduino This shield is designed to fit on an Arduino. It will have 4 NXT motor ports, 4 NXT sensor ports and several RC servo motor ports. It allows you to use the I2C port on the Arduino. However it will have only a single I2C bus.  That means it will work fine with multiple digital sensors as ...

Today, the first guests for the FIRST LEGO League Open European Championships start pouring into Delft, the Netherlands. The competition starts on Friday and ends Saturday. A whole bunch of MCPs (myself included) and quite a number of people from LEGO will be manning the LEGO Mindstorms stand to show off our robots and Monster Chess. Join the FLL OEC ...

  Laurens Valk and I did a Mindstorms NXT demo yesterday at the Dutch Robocup Jr Finals at the science museum Nemo in Amsterdam. I made a short video of our booth featuring our robots. We had a couple of moving robots: Laurens’ front wheel drive jeep line follower from The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Inventor’s Guide 2 Segways ...

Over at Amazon.co.uk they have the Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kit on sale. You can get it for just £176.79, down from £234.99. For those in the Euro zone, that’s down from €266 to €200. My North American readers can get a discounted one at the Amazon.com website where it’s priced down from $279.99 to $256.95. Use the links above to ...

During a games night at our good friends Simone and Stu, the topic of LEGO came up (who would’ve thought it possible, right?) It was brought to my attention that a new LEGO store had opened in Rotterdam, whereupon my reaction was “WTFBBQ? Why didn’t I get the memo?”. So after several death threats and a promise of torture and ...

The NXT webserver has been up for a few days now and it’s really cool to see so many people logging into it to make the motor move.  When I created it, I had no idea that it was going to be used as much as it has been.  I’ve had almost 1200 views on the UStream channel and blog ...

Laurens and I were asked by LEGO to give a Mindstorms NXT demo at the Microsoft Tech Days Geek Night last Thursday, so who were we to refuse the almighty TLG? It was great fun, Laurens brought his awesome Segway robot that impressed a lot of the hardcore geeks that were present that evening.  His Manty robot was, as always, ...

This year at the St Louis FTC finals, Team 4466 (R.A.B.B.I.) will holding nightly FTC practice field sessions as part of their after pit activities. On Wednesday they will also be organising workshops and lectures and a Q&A session with your truly. I’m going to have to get up at the ungodly local time of 4AM to be able to ...