A little while back, the Lejos forums were getting reports that some of the newly purchased bricks were having issues with Bluetooth connections. Andy Shaw, one of the main developers of this project, determined that the main cause was a newly updated Bluetooth chipset in this brick. Unlike its predecessor, this chipset is BT 4.0 capable. That means that, at least ...
Read More »Using Robot Virtual Worlds inside a VM
If you’re like me and you use a lot of Virtual Machines, then this may be of some use to you. In Robot Virtual Worlds, you have 3 camera settings: Follow mode: you can use the wheel to zoom in and out. Camera view from above Free movement: hold left button and move to move the view. The wheel is ...
Read More »New: Mindsensors LineLeader v2
Mindsensors have released a new sensor, or rather, a new edition of one of my most favourite ones: the LineLeader v2. The v2 has a new, better, processor inside and has been optimised to work better with the rather, ehm, tempestuous I2C implementation on the EV3. That means that you can be sure that it will operate just fine. Other ...
Read More »Invitation to LEGO Education Community
If you are involved in LEGO Education, then this may be the perfect place for you to discuss with your peers. Below is a copy and paste of the original invitation. The target audience includes parents involved in FLL and people with a general interest in learning and using LEGO in learning, so teachers and other educators. However, due to ...
Read More »EV3 Build Your Own Block and HDK/SDK Docs Available
These files have existed for a little while now but I never got the official OK to distribute them. However, one of my readers (Marius Steffen) was given two Dropbox links via LEGO Customer Support to these specific files. That must mean that the documentation is no longer under NDA and so I now feel no reason not share them ...
Read More »LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Windows Themes
I downloaded most of these background pictures from the LEGO EDUCATION website via some Google searching. They’re very nice high-res images of their models. The reason I picked the LEGO EDUCATION images is because they’re less busy than the retail ones and have a beautifully clean, uncluttered and white background. Both these themes are essentially the same but one uses ...
Read More »Breathtaking: Debian Wheezy on the EV3!
Ralph Hempel is no stranger to MINDSTORMS and he’s been quietly working on something very special: a port of Debian Wheezy on the EV3. The folks of the Debian organisation wouldn’t let him use the Debian name (for copyright reasons), so this project is called ev3dev. What is ev3dev? It’s a complete Linux distribution for the EV3. What do I ...
Read More »Review: The LEGO Build-it Book – Volume 1
As most of my readers know, I am not much of a studded LEGO builder, most of my creations are Technic studless LEGO. When Starch approached me to review this book I wasn’t sure how I was going to be able to do build any of the models in it. Lucky for me, the models in this book are mostly ...
Read More »LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Source Code Available
At last, the LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 source code is now available for your perusal. It’s been uploaded to the Mindboards Github space: [LINK]. You can simply clone the repository. It would be really great if you could drop us a note to let us know what you’ve done with it! It would be nice if some of the programming effort ...
Read More »Dexter Industries BrickPi
The BrickPi is Dexter Industries latest project. It’s an interface board, or shield, for the super popular Raspberry Pi, a cheap ($25) and small but very powerful processor board that runs Linux. The BrickPi allows you to easily interface your NXT motors and sensors with the RasPi, without having to cut up cables or otherwise damage your precious LEGO parts. ...
Read More »