ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Mark Crosbie from Ireland, known for such great NXT robots like the Queboid and the Streetview Car ,  has published a new invention of his recently: the Sound Machine . It's a LEGO® drum sequencer that allows for "building" music with standard LEGO® bricks: The Sound machine is now even featured on the official LEGO® MINDSTORMS site !

Shortly after reaching the 50 project milestone , today the nxtprograms.com web site reached another milestone by turning one year old! So here is a one-candle birthday cake project to celebrate. The flame on the candle of the cake will "flicker" while the NXT plays the "Happy Birthday" song ,and when the song finishes, you can make a wish and blow out the candle. The sound sensor will detect the blowing, and then the flame will disappear! Here is a video of the cake in action:

Tap out any rhythm on this simple NXT Echo Telegraph , and the NXT will answer you by playing back your exact rhythm with the NXT's speaker, as if a distant friend on the other end of the line was answering and repeating you. The program demonstrates use of the File Access block to store the rhythm timing data in a file and then reads it back out to repeat your rhythm. While writing the program for this project, I discovered a neat little NXT-G trick. You know how you can't wire a value into a Time Wait block in an attempt to specify how long to wait (because the Wait block has no data hub)? Well, instead of using a loop and a timer to do a value-based time wait, you can use a single Sound block to play a tone with the time value wired into the Duration, Volume set to zero, and Wait for Completion checked, thus producing a silent delay of the requested time with just one block.

I haven't had time to build or blog about one of my own creations for a while, so when I found myself with a few hours spare I put this together. Yes I know its a copy of one that I posted before but I've wanted to do my own version for quite a while. It's written in NXC and full source can be see here -- Damien Kee

I've been playing a bit more with datalogging (check out the fantastic tips from Brian in the forums) and I've always wanted a robot that could come to me when I called it. The sound sensor is great for 'detecting' sound but no good for deciding where the sound came from. One way to figure out where the sound is coming from is to use 2 sound sensors. So I built myself a little NXT head that had 2 sound sensors and a bit of foam in between. "Sure it's pretty" I hear you say, but whats that foam in between the ears for? Well I figure that if I had 2 ears, with some sort of dampening material in between, the ears would hear the same sound source, but at different volume levels. ie. If I clapped my hands very loudly on the left hand side, then the left 'ear' would hear a certain volume and the right 'ear' would also register a sound, but at a much quieter level. So I set up my head and start writing sound readings from both the left and righ...

BenderBot: The Anti-Theory Music Robot Here's a freshly thrown video providing some idea of BenderBot's functionality and purpose. BenderBot is a musical instrument which generates sound suitable for sampling and recording just as with any instrument. However, this instrument is like no other. You program and play it however you wish. The slate is clean (aside the sample programs and ideas) for you to create your own music. The bot can be set to run autonomously or can be operated manually. You program it as you wish. Viewers may notice (or knob-up your PC speakers until you do) the wild sound track segments near the start and end of the video. These segments are the results of a home recording studio production of BenderBot, an electric guitar, a sound processor pedal, and a Circuit Bent Texas Instruments Speak & Spell. These instruments were used to create sound samples that were then assembled into a nice track. Breaking it down further concerning BenderBot...with your P...