Grey November - NXT driven submarine

Grey November Mark I and Grey November Mark II

Captain Greybeard was challenged to build a LEGO Mindstorms submarine.

To accomplish this, he decided to build a normal hull out of technic beams and place the NXT as usual inside the structure... but sealed inside a plastic bag!

With this plastic bag he could watch the display and push all the buttons needed ... and the cables for Motors and sensors are glued in at the seam of the bag to seal it tight ... arr arr And there would be one additional cable ... a plugged in cable for the power supply with a coupling on the free end ... so one can charge the NXT battery after sealing! This bag and the cable for charging the battery would be the only nonLEGO parts !!

The result is a very manoeuvrable little sub that we can see in action in this video:

Captain Greybeard tested the sub in his pool before sending it down to Portugal for the Arte em Peças 2012 LEGO Sub competition... he adds

"I built two submarine, Grey November Mark I and Grey November Mark II ...
The first sub is equipped with a compas sensor and a color sensor (for signaling it's state to the outside) and the second one with a compas sensor and an IRseeker.
When my subs returned from Portugal I want to try that the second sub will follow the first automatically. For that purpose I will attach an IR ball to the first submarines!"

While we wait to see that... Can anyone guess who is Captain Greybeard? hint: we see him in the video :D

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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

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

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