More video from House of Bricks

Someone asked for more video from the robots point of view... wish granted!

House of Bricks combat

The first half of the movie is three remote-controled NXT robots fighting it out. Mine is, of course, the one that ends up on its side, and the other visible one is Steve Hassenplugs (with a single small front claw). The third was driven by John Brost, and had the camera mounted right behind its "claws": when he moved the control to raise or lower the claws, they drop down into the camera field of view. Ironicly, later in the day Steve's single claw managed to (accidently) shut off John's NXT by hitting the grey "cancel" button. Who needs weapons, just shut off your opponent!

The second half of the movie shows what inter-continental communication can do. Another member of the MDP came up with the idea of mounting one of the "Zamor launchers" from LEGO onto a NXT robot. When she shared this, some of us took this to an extreme, and by the end of the weekend we had several sphere-throwing robots. So, I demonstrated this on the organizer for the LEGO portion of the event, Joe Meno. The rapid-fire stream of balls was from my launch system, while Steve modified his robot to autonomously look for a close target and fire a single shot before retreating. The match-up between the two of them was pretty funny.

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Brian Davis

ROBOTMAK3RS Review: LEGO River Steamboat

I thought the LEGO River Steamboat would be an interesting set for a ROBOTMAK3R review for a few reasons. First, the LEGO designer of the model is Marina Stampoli, a long-time collaborator of the late ROBOTMAK3R Vassilis Chryssanthakopoulo s. From earlier collaborations with Vassilis, I knew Marina was incredibly talented, with an eye for aesthetics and functionality. Her background in architecture is particularly useful for her relatively new position at LEGO. Her other sets include the Magic of Disney (21352), Message Board (41839), and Red London Telephone Box (21347). Second, watching Marina's reveal video and reading her designer interview made this set even more tempting to build. The gearing mechanisms running through the model gave way to many opportunities for automation using LEGO robotics elements. Since ROBOTMAK3RS is all about adding interactivity and automation to LEGO brick, I thought it would be fun to see where and how LEGO robotics could be added to this s...

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...

Ghostbusters R.T.V Remix

Nino Guba is from Torrance, California, USA. He played with LEGO as a kid, but growing up in the Philippines, it wasn’t something he had easy access to. He only got reintroduced to LEGO when he moved to the US and had kids of his own. When his sons were younger, they received LEGO sets as gifts, but as they grew older, the sets got put into storage as their interest faded. Fast forward a few years, he started coming up with his own product ideas and thought about how he could quickly prototype them. That’s when he discovered LEGO MINDSTORMS—and was hooked! He raided his kids’ old collection, got everything organized, and now he's designing and building his own creations, blending his coding skills with LEGO robotics to bring ideas to life. Tell us about your Ghostbusters Remote Trap Vehicle (R.T.V) project. This project is a LEGO Technic adaptation of the Ghostbusters R.T.V.—a ghost trap converted into a remote-controlled vehicle. Its companion build is a prop replica of the Futaba...

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