Bot Bench I'd Rather Be Building Robots

Nothing brings people together than playing with LEGO and solving problems.  It was with that in mind that I organised a fun team building event at my current assignment at the KPN GIA Tooling Team.  I packed my car full of NXT sets and other paraphernalia and spare parts. The playing field was simple, the assignment, not so much.  We ...

Original article here: [LINK] The registration deadline has been extended to July 18. Register here. What needs to be submitted in Phase One? Team Biography Team Photo Team Video Answer to Creative Question Answer to Outreach Question Registration Consent Forms for All Team Members and Team Captain must be received. Just make sure to read the official rules carefully. now ...

I’ll be at the LEGO Festijn in Hardenberg this weekend.  Martijn Boogaarts and I will be displaying our robots and answering questions about life, the universe and Mindstorms. It’ll be a blast, so be sure to drop by if you can!  More information on where, can be found here: [LINK]. Be there or be square!

The folks at Dexter Industries don’t seem to need any sleep, it seems.  They’ve published a new set of program samples that allow you to communicate with your robot over WiFi through WebSocket using the dWiFi sensor.  What is WebSocket, I hear you ask? According to Wiki: WebSocket is a web technology providing for bi-directional, full-duplex communications channels over a ...

My robot Skittles is a big robot; he’s probably one of the biggest wheeled robots I’ve made so far.  When the Mindsensors PSP-Nx-V4 came in last week, I knew I had to make it remote controllable. I finished up the last bits of the driver for the new sensor yesterday and so this evening I cobbled together some code to ...

The mailman brought me a very nice package today, courtesy of the fine folks at Mindsensors!  Among its contents was a brand new PSP-Nx V4-c, the PS2 Controller Interface for NXT, together with a wireless PS2 Controller. So what makes the new V4 better than the V3?  For one, there’s the IR receiver on the back which allows it to ...

Good news for all my German readers.  You may not have won the Euro2012 championships, but if you’re looking to do some retail therapy, why not head on over to Amazon.de?  You can now buy a selection of Dexter Industries sensors without the hassle of dealing with customs. Ausgezeignet! You can buy the following sensors: The NXTBee WIFI for LEGO ...

Dexter Industries have re-launched one of their first products, the dSwitch.  The dSwitch is a device that allows you to control a main-operated device with your NXT!  Pretty freaking cool, if you ask me!  The possibilities are endless: Setup your NXT to turn on the coffee maker in the morning, wake up to the smell of a freshly brewed cup ...

BOFH-2012 EX-Q, the ultimate Bastard Operator From Hell Excuse generator. Not sure why the server is not working right? Can’t be bothered to figure why the mails aren’t being served? Just want to shut up the person on the other side of the phone line? Now you can do all that at the touch of a button!  Here are some ...

Splunk is an enterprise-class machine data gathering and analysis tool, capable of consuming 100s of gigabytes of machine generated data and turning it into arbitrarily searchable data and presenting it with fancy reports and graphs.  I’ve used Splunk in the past for a project and another time to do post-mortem analysis of a hacked webserver. Since I was working on ...