Great Book for Budding Inventors

I try to limit my number of non-NXT-related posts, but I'm so impressed with this new book that I have to share a bit about it.

The book is called "Making Things Move" by Dustyn R0berts. Dustyn is an engineer who also manages to teach non-engineers about design using non-techie language. She has been teaching a class at NYU called "Mechanisms and Things That Move" and the book is based on that class.

While many of the concepts in the book do require some math skills and the language/style of the writing isn't geared towards the 8-12 age group, the concepts by themselves are explained fairly easily and in simple language that I believe most kids will be able to follow (or at least spark enough curiosity to hunt down a parent or teacher to ask for help). Starting out with a good discussion on the 6 basic types of machines - lever, pulley, wheel and axle, inclined plane/wedges, screws, and gears - it just gets even better from there.

She covers:

* materials
* Fastening techniques
* Friction and Torque (I learned a LOT in this chapter)
* Power/Work/Energy
* Types of motors and how to control them
* Bearings, couplers, etc...
* way much more...

10 chapters in all, with projects galore to test what you've learned... it's an outstanding book. (She even throws in a breadboard and Arduino summary/primer in the back of the book.)

With lots of photos and great hand sketches, this book would make a great gift to any budding engineer, tinkerer, robot fanatic, and/or DIYer. I read it in a few days and am amazed at the amount of information packed into this book.

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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