ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

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...

Dexter Industries have updated their 'websockets' program which allows you to connect and control a robot through the Internet.  This means that it'll work from a laptop, smartphone, tablet, basically anything that can load up a standard web browser.  What makes it even better though is the fact that it is two way communication, mean you can send sensor values back to the web browser so you can keep tabs on your robot from anywhere in the world! How is this possible you ask? The hard part of using websockets is establishing a connection with a webpage. For security reasons, a key is passed back and forth in a complicated “handshake”: the webpage sends some information, and the NXT must respond with a specific answer back. We’ve taken care of that with our websockets library so you can easily and quickly setup your robot to communicate with Chrom, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari.  Dexter very helpfully supply a fully worked code example in RobotC, read...

Hot on the heels of their successful  'WiFi Week' , comes Dexter Industries aptly named 'WiFi Week 2'. Another 5 fantastic projects using the DI WiFi sensor.  They helpfully include lots of RobotC sample code for each to make life that little bit easier. Monday - Using DIWIFI to send data (sensor values, motor positions, etc) to the Pachube service. Tuesday - Reading in the weather information from Google and using that info to control your NXT Wednesday - This time, the tutorial shows you how to take your own sensor data, and post it online to thingspeak.com so other people can see it. Thursday - Want more than just weather from Google?  This will show you how to grab the latest news headlines from Google News and display them on your NXT. Friday - Last one for the week, this post shows how to access all the DIWIFI functionality from the LeJOS development environment. So....  who's going to give one of these a go?  Let us know in the...

Dexter Industries have just wrapped up a week of WiFi inspired posts aimed at getting you DI WiFi sensor connected to the Interwebs. I wouldn't say it your typical kid could do it, (it talks about modem AT commands and other scary stuff), but DI have done an amazing job of leading a newbie through the process, one step at a time. Definitely worth the read if you're interested at all about how these things work.  I certainly learnt a lot :) I love the final instalment where they take a temperature reading, and sent it to a twitter account. Tweeting NXT's, love it :) From their website: Wifi Sensor for LEGO MINDSTORMS Release The Dexter Industries Wifi sensor for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT is released!   Continue reading  → WIFI Week: Communicating with Computers The second installment of Wifi Week at Dexter Industries. Today we’ll be walking you through our example of how to connect to other computers and internet devices with TCP protocol. I...