Robots

These two packages arrived about 1.5 weeks ago, courtesy of the Robotics Academy as a thank you for some of the things I’ve done for them over the past few years.  You can’t even imagine how amazingly grateful I was! This is a complete VEX Cortex Super Bundle, that sells for about $1300 US, wow! There is so much stuff ...

Among all of the cool presents I got for Christmas this year were two new shields for my Arduino. I got a L298N Shield and a DFRobot LCD Keypad Shield. I wanted some new shields so I could write drivers for the Arduino port of ROBOTC. I found the original C++ driver for the LCD shield and quickly ported it ...

As I was building one of my previous omniwheel frames, I wondered if I could rebuild it using nothing more than the parts that came with an NXT 2.0 Retail kit and three Rotacaster omniwheels.  After a few hours I came up with this: Quite nice and a pretty stiff frame that doesn’t bend much. Please note that not all ...

Earlier this week I received another package from Rotacaster with some more wheels for me to test and play with.  These ones had new molded hubs, instead of the white 3D printed ones. The grip on the axles is much better now and they’re still working on making them even better. The wheels have three different durometers (hardness) and I’m ...

This is Apollo, the smallest NXT based line follower I’ve ever made.  It’s loosely based on A-Maze-Ing, which I designed and built quite a while ago. Apollo is equipped some pretty cool stuff: The new Mindsensors Numpad A Mindsensors LineLeader sensor Two Rotacaster wheels The program in this robot is based on the same one I wrote for the Mean ...

Part Lego, part Arduino, part BoeBot, this is Frankenfollower. This robot was programmed in ROBOTC for Arduino, a port that is still in alpha stage of development but can be used quite nicely for programming the Arduino Duemilenova.  Other Arduino variants will be supported very soon. The Arduino port of ROBOTC has some really cool features: Easy to use sensor ...

If you like ROBOTC and you like Arduino or you like ROBOTC and you have no idea what Arduino is –or- you like Arduino and have no idea what ROBOTC is, then you’ve come to the right place. The Robotics Academy is looking for a few good (wo)men who want to help take the new upcoming version of ROBOTC for ...

When I started up Lego Digital Designer (LDD) this morning, I was greeted with a popup telling me that a new version was out. 120 odd Megabytes downloaded and installed later, I was presented with a very slick looking UI. The thing I love about this version the most is the building instructions (BI).  It now breaks up the model ...

Ever wanted to make your NXT robot run along the bottom of a river?  If you can wait until March 2011 you’ll be able to do just that! Robotics Academy, the makers of ROBOTC, are developing a virtual environment where you can run your NXT robot without actually needing the set!  Isn’t that cool? They have a multi-stage plan to ...

Want to control your NXT with your Android phone? Now you can!  This little beauty runs on all Android phones with Android 2.1 and higher.  It’s an official Lego program and it’s available on the market now.  Just scan the QR code on the right there and you could be controlling your shooter bot in less than 2 minutes from ...