Update - Books, Computer, Life

A few things to report:

1. Books - "The King's Treasure" is moving forward... slowly but surely. It's for the 2.0 kit, so I'm still wondering how 1.0 owners are going to be able to build these robots, but I'm working on it. One idea is for LEGO to do something similar to the Mayan Parts Pack that allowed NXT Education Kit owners to build the robots... another idea is to try and find a Bricklink partner who can package the missing pieces...

2. In addition to the King's Treasure book, I'm also working on another book that may be of interest to some of you - "Build Your Own CNC Machine" - due out around Oct/Nov 2009. Yes, your very own CNC machine... it can do wood, plastic, metal... the book will walk you through cutting, drilling, and all the other stuff necessary to build a working machine (2 feet x 4 feet work surface~!). I'm sure a lot of you can think of ways to use the CNC machine to enhance your robot building :)

3. Laptop - a technician showed up today and got my laptop up and running. Yay. Now I'm goign to wait and see what Dell does to make me a happy customer. Not only did I pay the extra $150 for next-day business service, but I also lost 4 days of work (2 actually since I was able to use a backup PC to do some stuff, not all)... all in all, I figure I've lost about $400 in billable hours plus the $150 extended warranty payment which didn't deliver as promised. I've got to reallocate my destkop PC as the controller PC for my CNC machine, so it's going out to the workshop - now I need a new destkop... nothing super-powered... just a good solid desktop... how about it Dell? A $400 to $500 desktop in exchange for holding onto a long-term customer? I'll keep you informed.

I am glad to be back to writing...

Jim

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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