LEGO Mindstorms and Arduino

The Arduino board is a favourite amongst hobbyists for its ease of use and powerful hardware. It was only a matter of time before someone manage to merge it with the NXT. Now there have been projects over the years that have done this, but John Baichtal, Adam Wolf and Matthew Beckler (from MAKE blog) did it, created an Arduino shield and wrote a book about the whole adventure.

Their Arduino shield can be used to replace the NXT brick and is capable of interfacing with 4 NXT sensor and 2 NXT motors.

So is it better than the NXT brick itself? AS John points out "Yes and No"

So the shield and Arduino beat out Lego’s microcontroller, right? Well, yes and no. In our explorations we found ourselves very impressed with the NXT brick, which is the default Mindstorms microcontroller. It’s so good that many hackers have figured out how to put alternate operating systems on the NXT brick like LeJos and NXT-C. Then there is the fact that the NXT can control 3 motors and our shield only two. That said, there is a lot to like about the Arduino approach. Simply being able to use all of Arduino’s vast ecosystem of hardware and code will do wonders for your robot. Wayne and Layne are also developing a motor controller that can run five motors and has a built-in XBee connector. It’s not ready to buy or build yet but you can see it in action here.

More info here - http://blog.makezine.com/2013/02/04/the-monday-jolt-bricktronics-expands-the-possibilities-of-lego/

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 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

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

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