More DIY Electronics Training

I just recently finished up blogging about my experiences working through the experiments in the Make: Electronics book by Charles Platt. It took about a year and was 100% fun... I highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to really learn about electronics and circuit building... I learned more from this single book than I've learned anywhere else.

Now that the Make: Electronics blog is finished, I've decided to continue forward by digging into the Arduino. If you're not familiar with it, I don't think I could do an explanation justice, so I'll simply point you to the official Arduino site as well as to the hundreds of Arduino projects that exist across the Internet - Instructables has some here, Make magazine has some here... do a Google search and you'll find more information than you'll ever have time to read.

I selected the "Beginning Arduino" book by Michael McRoberts - it comes highly recommended and after reading through the first 50 pages or so, I knew it was the book for me. It has 50 projects that start from the extremely simple "Light an LED" all the way up to building full-fledged robots with servos and other sensors.

You can follow my work as I tackle these 50 projects over at HandsOnArduino - I post my notes, pictures, and videos... and I'm keeping a spreadsheet on the blog that tracks my purchases for the projects.

I must admit that my experiences with the NXT over the past 5 years have really caused me to want to go deeper into electronics and robot building, and I'm sure there are many kids and adults who feel the same... I'm hoping that documenting my experiences with these books will help others to see what's involved and maybe encourage them to continue forward...

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...

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...

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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