ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

This is the last call. 3 days left to enter your ideas. (the text below is taken from the press release)  www.LEGO.com/Maker The “Are You a LEGO Maker?” Prototyping Challenge is for makers, ages 13 years and older, from around the United States. How to apply Please email your entry to  LEGOMaker@LEGO.com  by 11:59 pm July 13, 2015. Your entry should include the following: Name, age Contact information Name of Project/Idea Please tell us in 100 words or less about your idea – are you trying to solve a problem? Innovate on something everyday? Please tell us in 300 words or less why you want a Prototyping Kit to “power up” your innovative process. As part of your entry you must attach one key image to illustrate your idea. This image can be a photograph, computer rendering and/or hand drawn illustration. The resolution must be 300 dpi and not exceed 3MB file. Optional: you may also submit video material to illustrate your entry. Please submit a link to view t...

**TO RESIDENTS OF THE USA ONLY** ARE YOU A LEGO MAKER? Contest starts today! Are you 13yo or older and live in the USA? Then you must Enter the LEGO Prototyping Challenge!  From Play to Prototype To encourage this type of tinkering and exploration, LEGO Systems today announced the “Are You a LEGO Maker?” Prototyping Challenge where makers, ages 13 years and older, from around the United States are invited to apply for one of up to 50 LEGO Making kits to help them prototype their innovative ideas. For showcasing a compelling reason needed to power the prototyping process, winners will receive a LEGO Prototyping Kit, including a LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 kit, one thousand LEGO bricks and elements, access to a LEGO MINDSTORMS Expert Builder and the book, Spirit of Invention: The Story of the Thinkers, Creators, and Dreamers Who Formed Our Nation . The challenge opens today and runs through July 13. For more information visit www.LEGO.com/Maker . ...

On the 10th of August 2012 LEGO celebrated its 80 Anniversary. Especially for that occasion LEGO made a little movie about the history of LEGO, enjoy watching it. Congratulations LEGO See it here in other languages LINK

The Google Science Fair is already over and the winners have been announced at the  awards ceremony held   Monday, July 23rd, 2012  in Palo Alto, California!! LEGO, a proud partner of this awesome scientific event was present and brought along some cool MINDSTORMS robot for the finalists to play with.  Featured this year was the work of  Vassilis Chryssanthakopoulos better know to us as NeXTSTORM or the Crazy Greek Robotic Expert ;)  His Real Steel Boxing robots where there along with an army of "Muhammad Ali" (soon to be a bonus models available on the MINDSTORMS page).   He is also the brains  behind one last challenge for the finalists:  The Fusion mission: Leading scientist working for the United Nations have found out, that a fusion of selected rare metals can create a new substance and commodity that more than doubles the performance compared to using the metals individually. These metals have now been discovere...

Hey Apps developers, here is an interesting tool -- maybe something Mindstorms related could be developed?! I met this guy from metaio® at the Intel booth at LEGO WORLD 2012 in Copenhagen Today I received this email about their FREE SDK now available!! http://www.metaio.com/software/mobile-sdk/ Check out the official video below Let us know if you try this out.

From the MINDSTORMS website: "If you own a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT robot, if you live in the area of New Jersey/New York City, USA, and if you are willing (and if your parents say it is ok) for you to help us with some product testing in early October, ask your parents to download and complete the attached form, and send it back to us. Once we receive the signed form from your parents, you may be contacted by a representative from the company, that conduct the focus group for the LEGO Group. If you are chosen, we may end up having you join us to help with some consumer product testing." More details: http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/News/ReadMore/Default.aspx?id=320866 Good luck! Richard

Hi everyone, my name is Will Gorman, and I recently joined The NXT STEP Blog to share with you some of the fun things that I and others are doing with LEGO MINDSTORMS. I'm one of the founders of BattleBricks , a group of guys who enjoy building competitive LEGO robotics. Over the years we've hosted many competitions, including Sumo, Team Combat, SoccerBots and much more. More recently, I've started building and publishing my own projects, random ideas that come to me here and there. Some of my robots include the WiigoBot , RoboFlush , an iPhone NXT Robot , and the MakerLegoBot . I enjoy sharing as much detail as possible for all the robots I create, including step by step build instructions . I'm very excited to become a member of The NXT STEP team, and will do my part to share with the world this great platform to create and build ideas and inventions!

The challenge was to remake Wall-E3 (the one that went to Atlanta for the FIRST World Championship earlier this year) but to use only Mindstorms this time! No Power function or 3rd party components!!  humm,   Well we all know the NXT Servo motors are 'huge' and only 3 can be plugged  per NXT... Conclusion?  zWall-E4! Tech. Spec.: 3 NXT bricks 8 NXT Servo Motors 2 Color Sensors (for the eyes) 1 Ultrasonic Sensor 4 Touch Sensors & Bluetooth was used to link all 3 NXT's via a NXT-G 2.0 program. OK so he doesn't transform (yet), but I'm still quite happy with the result. There is always room for improvement though :) I look forward to hear your comments. Hope you enjoy this short video and for those lucky to be there, make sure you come see us at the MCP booth at LEGO WORLD 2010 next week. I: /. 7.

You might remember my freefall ride I talked about a long time ago. I have made a video using the old photos and video's. It is already on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty9leziU3Vc (or watch here below). //note: The video on youtube is better quality I built this contraption some time ago, and personally, I don't think it is constructed *that* good, however it *is* an interesting project... I compiled the video from old recordings and photos, the videos are poor quality and incomplete... But it DID work. Unfortunatly I can't shoot new footage, because the model doesn't exist anymore... More information om how everything works (and lot's of HQ photo's) on NXTlog! http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Community/NXTLog/DisplayProject.aspx?id=99ca3747-512c-4c11-b79f-6a54489367f7 enjoy! Martijn Hellemans

Once the marvel of modern communications technology, Baudot was the high speed internet of its day, now its sadly neglected. But by using the power of LEGO you too can now re-live this wonder of wireless telegraphy. Explanatory notes can be found here: http://www.g7smy.co.uk/?lego/baudot