ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Hour of EV3 by guest bloggers Sanjay and Arvind Seshan of EV3Lessons Hour of EV3 Learning to program is a very important skill. The Hour of Code movement was started several years ago and reaches tens of millions of students in 180+ countries for everyone (ages 4-104). Hour of Code is held during the week of December 7-13, in celebration of Computer Science Education Week. Hour of Code promo video Hour of Code introduces students to various programming languages such as Python and Scratch and shows them that coding is both fun and achievable. LEGO® MINDSTORMS®  can be used to achieve the same purpose. We have found the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® to be a great platform for learning programming skills – everything from learning to write comments to creating complex algorithms.  The LEGO® MINDSTORMS® kit is “more than a toy”.  From prototyping possibilities to using as a platform to teach coding skills, it is fun and versatile. LEGO®  recently announced...

Anders from MonoBrick.dk has published a nice video on how to use an Android mobile for streaming live videos from your robot: Have a look at the details on the according post on MonoBrick .

Great project from Wolfgang Beer outline how to connect an Android phone to the NXT.  He built a little sentry robot that travels around his house, taking photos with the smartphone.  The smart phone serves as the gateway between a HTML5 browser control program (which he can control from anywhere in the world) and the NXT robot itself. There's a lot of sample code there to get you up and running as well. http://www.smartlab.at/articles/android-wifi-htm5-nxt-robot-controller/ This is what you see on your browser - the image from the smartphone as well as controls to steer the robot.

They people over at LEGO have updated the MINDdroid app that allows you to control your NXT robot from any Android device. A few of the new features: Upload a program to your NXT from your phone, no PC needed! Control sounds and play music Get sensor readings converted through text to speech "What about doing xyz?" I hear you ask?  We no problem at all, they have also released all the code as Open Source, so if you're good with programming, you can dive in and modify to your hearts content! Open Source Software:  https://github.com/NXT/LEGO-MINDSTORMS-MINDdroid

Now that we're on break, I had some time to do another demo in the series; this video shows a robot using the Android phone's camera to locate the line and follow it. The connection is based on Bluetooth, and all that is sent is the line's distance from "the center" of the received image. Around near 0:57, you can see the yellow dash that marks the position of the line. This is subtracted from the center of the screen (width/2) and sent to the NXT, which adjusts the motor speeds proportionally using the steering function. The bright light that creates a glare in the screen is actually the flash on the camera, which I turned on in order to eliminate outside lighting conditions. The phone is almost as good, if not better, as a light sensor! Enjoy, and happy building! Richard

Here is a little impression of the cool robots we have at BEEP. Come and see it tomorrow and Sunday. Edit YOU can even win a MINDSTORMS box, 8547 !!

Tuesday 16 May, Jorgen Vig Knudstrop (CEO and President, LEGO) talked about Game-Changing entertainment at the Google Zeitgeist 2011 event. Jorgen refers to us the fans that make the brand. full movie (as shown on Jorgen's phone). We helped LEGO to show several interesting LEGO MINDSTORMS models, sumobot (by LEGO) Soccerbots with helmets (by NeXTStorms) Streetview car (by Mark) C5 (by university students Kenneth Madsen and Lasse Lauesen). It was nice to see that many CEO's loved to play with the soccerbots.

Right You've seen them all, those Rubik's Cube solvers, now this is is different. The Megaminx is a dodecahedron with 12 faces, each with 5 edges. Each face can be rotated in a similar way to the well-known Rubik's Cube puzzle. The robot itself is built out of LEGO using a Mindstorms NXT kit for driving the mechanics. An HTC Desire smartphone running a custom Android app is the brain of the solver. The app uses the phone's camera to capture images of each face of the Megaminx which it then processes to determine the colors of the scrambled puzzle. After working out the solution, the app transmits the moves to the NXT controller via bluetooth to instruct it to solve the Magaminx. Check this blog for more information, and enjoy the nice movie update, second full movie I say that is a job well done, David Gilday!

The people of Roberta , the German project aiming to interest girls for sciences by using robotics, have created a cool new mobile app for Android, called " NXT speech control ": "With 'NXT Speech Control' you are able to control your NXT robot over voice commands. With this app you just have to fill in your commands e.g. 'hurry up', 'go away', 'hide' to the prepared nxt-commands (forward, backward, left, right) and then choose the speed and distance." Great stuff! Check it out and tell us about your experiences.

On Friday, Google announced on the Google Code Blog that AppInventor , its Cloud-based programming platform for Android , supports LEGO® MINDSTORMS NXT now: "[...] a fun 20% robotics project that resulted in three ways you can play with your iRobot Create®, LEGO® MINDSTORMS®, or VEX Pro® through the cloud. We did this by enhancing App Inventor for Android, contributing to the open source Cellbots Java app, and beefing up the Cellbots Python libraries. Together these apps provide new connectivity between robots, Android, the cloud, and your browser." Seems the whole mobile-NXT thing is gaining momentum. :) Try it out and tell us about your experiences.

Image courtesy of TLG The LEGO Group™ has just announced the first official Android  cell phone application for LEGO® MINDSTORMS: "We are happy to announce the launch of the MINDdroid application for Android (2.1 or higher) phones, that will allow you to get instant access and control to your NXT robot, and give the ability to control by the flick of a wrist! The MINDdroid app is a remote-control application that allows you to create a wireless connection directly with your NXT, and once a connection is established, you can tilt and turn your phone to make the robot move forward, turn to the sides, and by pressing an action button on the phone's screen, activate the Action motor. If you have a Shooterbot or other robot using two motors for motion and have a spare motor for actions, you are in for a lot of fun!" Cool stuff! To read more, go to the MINDSTORMS News page .