Next Thursday (8 September 2011) I will be giving a LEGO Mindstorms NXT presentation at the Competa Conference Center in Rijswijk. Some of the topics I’ll be talking about include: Hardware – what’s inside the brick? Sensors – standard, 3rd party and home brew. Some examples, both small and large (and extra-large) of what you can build with it. The ...
Read More »NXTLOG Explorer Bot Challenge
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 ...
Read More »Coming soon: Dexter Industries 6-DOF IMU
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 ...
Read More »Invasion of La Grenouille Robotique
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 ...
Read More »Demo at the Robocup Jr Dutch Finals
Laurens Valk and I did a Mindstorms NXT demo yesterday at the Dutch Robocup Jr Finals at the science museum Nemo in Amsterdam. I made a short video of our booth featuring our robots. We had a couple of moving robots: Laurens’ front wheel drive jeep line follower from The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Inventor’s Guide 2 Segways ...
Read More »Just Cruizin’: Microinfinity CruizCore XG1300L
I’ve wanted one of these sensors since the day I first saw it on the Hacked Gadgets website. It’s the Microinfinity CruizCore XG1300L. It’s a ridiculously accurate and low drift inertial measurement unit, or IMU. Some of the features include: Measures rotational speed and angle Measures tilt and acceleration Can track relative position Detects contact from any direction (I wish ...
Read More »Mindstorms NXT 2.0 Kits on Sale
Over at Amazon.co.uk they have the Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kit on sale. You can get it for just £176.79, down from £234.99. For those in the Euro zone, that’s down from €266 to €200. My North American readers can get a discounted one at the Amazon.com website where it’s priced down from $279.99 to $256.95. Use the links above to ...
Read More »Controlling your NXT with the Kinect
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 ...
Read More »Mindstorms NXT Workshop @ Sioux
Yesterday, Martijn Boogaarts and I held a Mindstorms NXT workshop at the one of the offices of Sioux, a software development company. We had a room full of eager software engineers and their offspring. Martijn did the general presentation and an introduction to NXT-G. I took care of the ROBOTC presentation and quick intro. There were plenty of NXT sets ...
Read More »Rotacaster One-Kit Omniwheel Program Update
I made some updates to the line following program for the Rotacaster One-Kit Omniwheel robot. This version 2.0 allows you to adjust the Gain and Power variables by turning the back wheels back and forth. When you’re happy with the values, you can hit one of the bumpers and it’ll start the auto-calibration routine and attempt to follow the course ...
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