Skip to main content

The King's Treasure - Summary


The book is out! I'm happy to announce that "LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0: The King's Treasure," the sequel to "LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: The Mayan Adventure," is a 302 page book with CAD building instructions created by Chris Smith.

The book contains 21 chapters and provides five new challenges to solve by building 5 new robots. The book is broken into 5 sections, with each section containing four chapters:

First chapter of a section contains part of the fictional storyline - Evan is back in Guatemala with his archaeologist uncle and they're ready to enter King Ixtua's treasure respository - but traps and obstacles are everywhere.

Second chapter of a section contains building and programming theory discussions - you'll be using the Design Journal worksheet (5 blanks provided in the book but you can download them for free to print more) to help formulate your robot design and program.

Third chapter of a section contains the building instructions for a robot that can be used to overcome the challenge found in that section. Unlike the Mayan Adventure that used photographs for building instructions, I was able to get my good friend and fellow MCPer, Chris Smith, to take my photographs and convert them to CAD. They're large and easy-to-follow.

Fourth chapter of a section contains the programming instructions for creating the NXT-G program used to solve a challenge. I walk you through the placement of every block and show you how to configure them (and explain the hows and whys).

That's only 20 chapters, you say? Well, of course Chapter 21 contains the story's finale... will Evan, Uncle Philip, and the rest of the expedition team be able to uncover King Ixtua's treasure? But a better question is - will you?

Jim

ps. a HUGE thank you to all my readers - parents, teachers, coaches, and students - for your emails, letters, and comments regarding The Mayan Adventure - this book would NEVER have happened without your support. I hope you all enjoy it!

pps. I mentioned in a previous post about a special commemorative item I'd be announcing when the book was released... stay tuned... it's coming soon!

Popular posts from this blog

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 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

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