Bot Bench I'd Rather Be Building Robots

Dexter Industries have released a new version of their very successful BrickPi, the BrickPi+.  It sports quite a number of improvements over its predecessors: It now plays nice with EV3 sensors, that’s very cool. It has better motor protection by adding a more powerful motor controller chip, which has improved back-EMF and overheating handling. You can keep track of your ...

If you’re looking to expand your collection of toys to play with or simply can’t pass up a good bargain, check out the clearance sale at Mindsensors.com! There’s a lot of stuff there, so go take a look!  The sale runs until August 21 2015, so don’t wait too long!  

OpenElectrons are continuing their development of awesome stuff for the RPi.  This new product, the PiStorms is a “shield” for the RPi that allows you to connect up to 4 EV3/NXT motors and up to 4 EV3/NXT sensors.  It has a screen on it and can be programmed using a Python API. The RPi communicates with the PiStorms shield through ...

  ROBOTC 4.32 is here and it includes a few new features and plenty of bug fixes and enhancements. Please note that if you use LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3, you must update the Linux Kernel to 1.07X, after which you must update the ROBOTC VM as well, of course. Links for downloading files: ROBOTC 4.32 for MINDSTORMS EV3 and NXT: [LINK] ...

The people from OpenElectrons have started another Kickstarter Campaign. This time it’s an Arduino based robotics platform called the BumbleeBeeBot. The BumbleBeeBot has already been used in many (afterschool) robotics programs in various schools, so it’s been through a lot of field testing.  Now they’re ready to make it available to anyone who wants to back this project with larger ...

RoboSnap is a a very compact vision system for the RPi and EV3.  It is based on the very popular PixyCam (CMUCam5) but in a much more compact package. Capable of much more than simply recognising colours, RoboSnap can also detect simple shapes like triangles, rectangles, circles.  It can return provide size, location and colour for these objects, as well ...

The other day, I ordered some Raspberry Pi bits and pieces from my local supplier called SOSSolutions.  Among the parts were a Raspberry Pi B V2 and a very fancy looking Pimeroni  Pibow Coupé Ninja.  I noticed the lettering was a bit deeper and slightly less clear than my red Coupé, which I had purchased previously, but it was nothing ...

I wrote about the cute wooden robot named Codie a little while back.  Peter Erdei, one of the team members, told me yesterday that their IndieGoGo campaign is now live.  They’re at 22% of $70,000 already (as of the morning of 1 April 2015), not bad for a project that went live less than 24 hours ago! Go check it ...

If you’re an (aspiring) FLL participant or just someone who wants to learn some cool new programming tricks with their EV3, you may be interested in Kyle Markland, a.k.a. Builderdude35’s YouTube channel.  He’s made a whole bunch of very useful videos.  Here are two of them: There are many more: EV3 Robot Design: Building your FLL Robot EV3 Robot Design: ...

If you like programming but don’t have a robot, or you just can’t get enough of programming robots, then go check out the latest version of the Robot Virtual Worlds iPad app.  It was updated yesterday and comes with a massive slew of new features: New control structures: RepeatUntil loops If-Else statements WaitUntil New Sensors: Distance (sonar) Touch Gyro Additional motor commands ...