HALE, The Gathering, T-2 days...

There's been some new information posted at the HALE website that I thought might make for a fun heads-up on the mission. First, the payload allocations for the two balloons has been put up. Each balloon will be carrying a ham radio that will transmit GPS information down, as well as a SPOT transmitter that will be doing the same thing. The first balloon will carry: LUXPAK, Brix-Catcher, Peeps-in-Space, a separate student payload (no name), the "Energizer" communications payload Reel-E, & a video camera payload (a.k.a National Instruments) designed to "look up" through the mission to try to get video of the dynamics at cut down (OK... what it looks like to have your balloon pop 100,000' above the ground). The second balloon will lift several more payloads: a SLR camera payload that has flown before, FLL Team 90, the LEGO Mindstorms Teams submission, Gypsy, Lil' Joe, & a "Giant NXT" communications payload. The communication payloads are fun to see - the HALE team has "skinned" them into a giant-sized NXT and a truly large AA battery.

Note that on mission day, there should be live tracking of both balloons as well as Lil' Joe. The Balloon radio payloads will transmit about once a minute (and will include altitude data), while the three SPOT units will transmit about once every ten minutes, and send back no altitude data (they are there for payload recovery, not primarily airborn tracking). I will be following the mission in detail as well as possible from home, (& blogging it), but you can as well by following the links on the HALE website.

PS- The first picture is all or most of the payloads staged for launch - can you figure out which is which?

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Brian Davis

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 3

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these Fall and Winter remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Braill3 by Jerry Nicholls Braill3 is an EV3-based LEGO Braille bricks reader. This robot uses its fingertip, made from three touch switches, to read messages written using the LEGO Braille bricks and will speak out what it detected. If it sees a simple maths problem it will attempt to solve it and give the answer as well. To learn more about the process of creating this machine, read Jerry's blog . Braill3 can be viewed here . Set Review: The Braille Bricks set is well thought out. The ratios of the letters is suitable for general use and the addition of some punctuation and arithmetic operators is excellent. There is a card showing what bricks there are and their quantities, but no form of sort

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 2

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these summer and fall remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Remote controlled material handle r by Jozua van Ravenhorst (aka Mr Jo) This remix combines the LEGO Technic Material Handler (42144) with MINDSTORMS EV3 (31313) It uses the power of pneumatic cylinders to move objects around. By using a bluetooth remote control, very precise movements can be made with this model. Touch sensors in the base chassis prevent the turret twisting the cables that go through the turntable to much. The program has several protections to prevent over pressurizing the system for each of the 3 individual pumps and valves that control the 2 booms and claws. The real version of this machine is mostly used in waste material sites to bring the material to machines that sort and

Celebrating 25 Years of MINDSTORMS

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we take a trip through history. Please also visit ROBOTMAK3RS Community every week as we highlight different projects all through 2023 in celebration of the anniversary. Some of the early history is based on the content shared by Coder Shah in our MINDSTORMS EV3 Community Group . Some of the text and links may have been edited from his original posts for consistency and clarity. 1984 - Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen watched a TV program called "Talking Turtle," where MIT professor Seymour Papert demonstrated how children could control robot "turtles" using LOGO, a programming language he developed. 1988 - The collaboration between MIT and LEGO resulted in LEGO TC Logo in 1988, which allowed students to control LEGO models using computer commands. The video shows Papert demonstrating TC Logo. 1990 - LEGO TC Logo was hampered since the robots you built had to be tethered to a personal computer. LEGO and MIT

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