More DIY Electronics Training

I just recently finished up blogging about my experiences working through the experiments in the Make: Electronics book by Charles Platt. It took about a year and was 100% fun... I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to really learn about electronics and circuit building... I learned more from this single book than I've learned anywhere else.

Now that the Make: Electronics blog is finished, I've decided to continue forward by digging into the Arduino. If you're not familiar with it, I don't think I could do an explanation justice, so I'll simply point you to the official Arduino site as well as to the hundreds of Arduino projects that exist across the Internet - Instructables has some here, Make magazine has some here... do a Google search and you'll find more information than you'll ever have time to read.

I selected the "Beginning Arduino" book by Michael McRoberts - it comes highly recommended and after reading through the first 50 pages or so, I knew it was the book for me. It has 50 projects that start from the extremely simple "Light an LED" all the way up to building full-fledged robots with servos and other sensors.

You can follow my work as I tackle these 50 projects over at HandsOnArduino - I post my notes, pictures, and videos... and I'm keeping a spreadsheet on the blog that tracks my purchases for the projects.

I must admit that my experiences with the NXT over the past 5 years have really caused me to want to go deeper into electronics and robot building, and I'm sure there are many kids and adults who feel the same... I'm hoping that documenting my experiences with these books will help others to see what's involved and maybe encourage them to continue forward...

MINDSTORMS Retires!

2023 is the 25th Anniversary of the MINDSTORMS brand. For 25 years, MINDSTORMS has educated and inspired a generation of robot builders, both children and adults. Unfortunately, the LEGO Group decided to end the line on December 2022. Many ROBOTMAK3RS have been passionately involved with the development of MINDSTORMS through the MUP and MCP programs. Even with the newest Robot Inventor line, several ROBOTMAK3RS were invited to submit additional bonus models that were included in the official app. Regardless of the retirement of a major LEGO robotics product line, ROBOTMAK3RS continue to MAKE-SHARE-INSPIRE using all LEGO robotics platforms available to us. Here is the official statement from LEGO. Since its launch in September 1998, LEGO MINDSTORMS has been one of the core ‘Build & Code’ experiences in the company’s portfolio, carrying with it significant brand equity and becoming a stand-out experience for the early days of consumer robotics and leading to current Build & Code

Machine Learning Meets MINDSTORMS

Machine Learning Extension LEGO MINDSTORMS announced today a brand new feature that is sure to excite all users. Machine Learning Extension is coming to the software in August 2022. This will allow users to implement new applications that were not possible before. Machine Learning has become exceedingly popular in recent years with applications in all sorts of industries from robotics to financial services to climate change. Now, even the youngest of robot enthusiasts and programmers have access to the world of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Comparing two classes Machine Learning on MINDSTORMS will work with both images and audio. For instance, you could train your model to recognize smiles and frowns on your face and have the emotion displayed on your hub. You could train your model to recognize when a red ball is present or not or identify a particular LEGO element. You can control your robot with audio commands that use your own voice. It is exciting to see what new p

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix Part 1

In honor of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we asked ROBOTMAK3RS to combine a LEGO set of their choice with a MINDSTORMS set. Here is what these five ROBOTMAK3RS came up with. MINDSTORMS Chess Assistant by Arvind Seshan Overview: When you are new to chess, it can be a challenge to remember which pieces go where. Now, you can use machine learning and LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor to build a tool to help you learn where all the chess pieces go on the chess board. Sets used: LEGO® Iconic Chess Set (40174) and MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor (51515) Review: I really like how the chess set base can store all the pieces underneath and that the board neatly splits in half for handy storage. The chess pieces themselves are very sturdy and well built. My only criticism is the building of the box itself. It was quite difficult to see what pieces to use and since the entire box is made mostly of thin plates, it took a lot of time and patience. I would have liked the storage area to be sliding dra

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