Bot Bench I'd Rather Be Building Robots

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 ...

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 ...

Dexter Industries are currently developing a great new sensor, a proper 6 Degree of Freedom (DOF) Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) for the NXT. It consists of two sensors on a single board; a 3-D gyroscope and a 3-D accelerometer. Both sensors can measure their respective values on the X, Y and Z axes. The sensor, like many of the other ...

HiTechnic have released a new sensor: a barometric sensor that can also measure temperature! If you ever wanted to make your own weather station, then this is perfect for the job! It measures the pressure in 1/1000th of an inch of Mercury, which can easily be converted other units like Pascal and PSI. The temperature is measured in 1/10th degrees ...

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 ...

The Kinect SDK is here and the tutorial series of basic fundamentals on it also arrived: The Kinect SDK Beta download: [LINK] Installing and using the Kinect sensor: [LINK] Camera fundamentals: [LINK] Skeletal Tracking fundamentals: [LINK] Audio fundamentals: [LINK] Depth data directives: [LINK] Via [Kinect Hacks] Now I can finally work on my project!