ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Fellow MCP and guest blogger Anders Søborg from Denmark asked me to share this with you all: Run .NET programs on the EV3 A few days back I released the first version of the MonoBrick EV3 firmware. With the firmware it is possible to program and debug .NET programs on the EV3. The firmware uses the Mono .NET runtime for program execution which means that p rograms can be compiled with both Mono and Microsoft .NET – so programs can be developed on Windows, Linux or Mac OS. With the .NET framework you will have a huge library of functions at your disposal – this combined with all the 3rd party library and SDK's that already exists makes the possibilities endless. You can find more information here .  Here is a small demo video:  : . .

Recently I got this question a lot: " Can I use my NXT as a Bluetooth remote for the EV3 brick? " The answer is: "Technically it should be possible, practical with the standard firmware not." The main reason for this is that the firmware software developer of the EV3 never thought of making the code backwards compatible as with all the other LEGO bricks is a mandatory giving in order to pass the quality check, so now it is up to the community to start and think about it to make it work. One of the first tries is here from Hans Odenthal at Sioux.NET a group of software developers form the Eindhoven based country that do like MINDSTORMS as their after hours projects. As Hans Explains: The mailbox mechanism is different for the two bricks, the PC application is therefor needed to convert the messages from the NXT format to the EV3 format. By this means, you can send messages (e.g. if you press a button at the NXT) to the EV3 (e.g. to control a motor). A simp...

At TechnicBRICKs there is also some good information to be found with regards to the EV3. Here is a re-post about WIFI Dongles and EV3: (thanks Fernando) Similarly to what happened with BT dongles for NXT, there is a very limited choice regarding working WiFi dongles for EV3. Until someone changes something in the firmware/VM executable there is only one WiFi dongle that will work with the EV3. It is the NetGear WNA1100 (with USB ID 0846:9030). You can find these dongles at the moment at several sources, and eventually at your local retailer too. USA (19,95 USD) Amazon.com Europe (12,99 euro DE, 13,95 euro NL, 11,90 pound, UK) pixmania.com (select your country) then search for " netgear-wma1100 " USA (39,95 USD) LEGO Education (which charges a premium price for reselling this...) Unfortunately none of the small sized WiFi dongles in the market, or even any other large one like the NetGear dongle, will work! It has to use a specific Atheros chipset (one s...

Now that the Education EV3 site is on-line for some time, it was retails turn to show their models and content. As of September 1st, the box 31313 is officially on sale in most mayor retail shops. I'm sure that many of our readers already found the new LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 retail website . But did you also know that the older NXT (2.0) site is still on-line? If not then this is your time to download the last FIRMWARE, BONUS MODELS and NXT-G, before the site goes of-line. Don't wait too long.....

The first EV3 Education sets are shipped, and like with the NXT, also now you can update the Firmware. Until the community created their own firmware versions and other update programs becomes available, we have to use the LEGO software with their build-in solution. FIRMWARE UPDATE STEPS: start the Home (retail) or Education software select "new project" from the menu bar then select the "tools" menu and in there "firmware update" have brick connected over USB select a firmware in the available firmware list (by clicking it) press the "download" button after successful progress press "close" button The HELP does refer to a troubleshooting section in the printed User Guide for help on resetting the brick, but when the download fails, (you accidentally unplugged the USB cable) it is possible to reset the Brick as follow (see image). Then follow the steps again to update the firmware. There are 2 versions of firmware: ...

IAR has released a free LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT version of their compiler, which is what LEGO used to build the NXT firmware. With this release, it will be relatively simple to work with the firmware. Press Release And Download Thanks to John Hansen from NXTasy for pointing this out. Richard

I've heard some reports that under the newest Mac OS (10.5, codename "Leopard"), NXT-G will run fine, but is not able to update the brick firmware. I personally upgraded to 10.5 just about a week ago, and have had no problems with NXT-G (or anything else really - it was an amazingly painless installation)... but I've not tried to update the FW under this system as yet. If any of you Mac users do have a problem with this, please let us know, and when we hear more about this (one way or another) we'll try to post an update. For now, if you do have this possible problem, just make sure you have access to a version of NXT-G running under something other than Leopard. After all, the rest of it seems to work wonderfully. Now, I've got to go see if I can verify this and brake my NXT... Update, 9 Nov 2007 - I've verified this on my system. Under Leopard, the FW download process stalls out while preparing the NXT. I could take this newly-bricked NXT to a second...