Bot Bench I'd Rather Be Building Robots

For those who are keen to get their hands dirty with the latest beta release of ROBOTC, can do so right now.  New Features and Bug Fixes in ROBOTC for MINDSTORMS 2.25.1 BETA Improved “Step Over” debugging command. Previously you may have had to hit it several times for one statement because some opcodes (e.g. “setup sensor”) did a short ...

Thanks to a very generous person named Thorsten on the ROBOTC forums I am now the proud owner of A RCX 2.0 brick An IR Tower An RCX remote control (not pictured) A USB<->Serial converter I’ve been asked in the past to add support to my ROBOTC drivers for communicating with an RCX using the HiTechnic IR Link sensor.  It ...

Yesterday and today I’ve played a bit with the upcoming E-Meter from the Renewable Energy Add-on Set and whipped up both ROBOTC and NXC drivers for it.  The NXC driver you can find linked below, the ROBOTC driver will be part of the next release of the Driver Suite. You can download the NXC driver right here: [LINK].

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to receive one of the main components in the upcoming Renewable Energy Add-on Set.  I didn’t get a manual with it so it was a bit of a mystery to me.  However, thanks to John Hansen and some very helpful peeps at the Lego Electronics R&D department I got some more information ...

If you’re like me and are the proud owner of a small room, also known as the Lego Lair, you may find that the lighting conditions in said room sometimes leave a lot to be desired.  You may not really notice this until you start using a sensor that uses light to do its thing. Take the NXTCam for example.  ...

The Ukrainian company Holit Data Systems, makers of the 3 port NXT motor MUX, asked me to let people know that they’ve changed their domain name at the request of TLG. You can now reach their website at edu.holit.ua. They’re busy working getting PayPal payments sorted out.  It should all be up and running by next month (August 2010).  You’ll ...

When YouTube was still a separate entity from Google, I had created both a Google account and YouTube account with the same usernames.  This was fine until the accounts started being merged.  I clicked some links to try and do this but accidentally created a new YouTube account that was now permanently linked to my existing Google account.  I still ...

My good friend Eric likes to build big.  He is one of the designers and builders of the High Bay Storage System. A while back he told he wanted to build a tracked vehicle. He’s done this before, of course: Very nice, right? Not satisfied with this Lilliputian-sized tank (actual Lilliputians ride around in this), he set about making something ...

I’ve uploaded a new release of the ROBOTC Driver Suite. Version 1.5 has a couple of nice changes: Newly added: Drivers for Dexter Industries dFlex, dPressure and temp probe Test program for Mindsensors Touch Sensor MUX with HiTechnic Sensor MUX Driver for additional timers in ROBOTC Documentation changes: All drivers sorted by manufacturer for easy lookup (thanks to John Hansen ...

A new product was launched by Texas Instruments recently that seems to be aimed at the hobby-electronics geek. The MSP430 Value Line Launchpad is a super cheap board that features a PDIP socket that allows you to use either the MSP430G2211IN14 or MSP430G2231IN14 uControllers.  The specs of these processors aren’t phenomenal but seeing as the complete kit will set you ...