Bot Bench I'd Rather Be Building Robots

These are the new Rotacaster wheels that arrived Monday morning. The one with the orange hub has dark grey, soft, very grippy rollers; the wheel with the dark grey hub  has slightly harder, orange rollers. These are the latest prototypes and they have undergone some great improvements; the rollers roll more freely and the hubs grip the axels in a ...

After seeing the video posted on Mauro Brunato’s website, I got all sorts of ideas in my head for other cool things to do with it. With a little help from my friend SC, I managed to get my hands on one of these Kinect sensors as well. It wasn’t easy to get it working, though but with the help ...

Dexter Industries have been very busy with their latest creation: a WiFi sensor for your NXT! I have one of them en-route to me as I write this, so as soon as I get my hands on it, I will let you know what it’s like.  I already have some pretty cool ideas for it in mind. I don’t know ...

There’s a new Hispabrick Magazine out with some pretty cool stuff inside: An interesting walker by Menno Gorter (looks like he’s over his hate of NXTs) Mindstorms at this year’s Legoworld in Copenhague Part 7 of the NXT-G tutorial Part 10 of the LDraw tutorial …and much, much more! Come download your copy of it here: [LINK].

The Pneuma-Snatcher is a very ugly robot based on the very nice looking Snatcher, designed by Laurens Valk. I used the two valve kits that Mindsensors sent to me a week or so ago.  They work very well for controlling the pneumatic valves.  If you hook them up to the NXTServo controller, you end up with a very nice way ...

As promised,here’s an easy to follow HOWTO for making your own VEX Cortex to NXT converter cable for I2C sensors. Please keep in mind a few things: Do this at your own risk This won’t work with sensors that require 9V to operate This won’t work with analogue sensors Do this at your own risk You will need the following: ...

The VEX Cortex is a nice platform made by VEX Robotics. It is supported in two programming environments, one of which is ROBOTC. Much to my dismay, the master firmware does not support I2C, which is why ROBOTC does not support it. I don’t really like it when someone tells me I can’t do something, so I went ahead and ...

Mindsensors are about to bring out a new servo kit that allows you to control a standard LEGO pneumatic valve. It comes as a kit, complete with all the bits and pieces including: A small microservo Two Technic axels A few bushings and other small pieces A mounting kit for the servo A pneumatic valve Here are some pictures of ...

After more than 2.5 years, I’ve decided to change the old theme for a new one. It took a while before I found one that agreed with me.  This one is not too busy and has a nice high contrast. Don’t worry, the wrapper may have changed, but it’s still the same tasty inside!  I have some pretty cool stuff ...

Help the LEGO MINDSTORMS team understand more about how you use gadgets and online devices as part of your everyday life. This anonymous survey takes only a couple of minutes, and provides us with valuable information about how young people spend their time, both online and with friends. Click Here to take the survey.  [original article: here]