ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

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

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 .

Today even Google celebrates with LEGO their 50th anniversary! The 50th birthday of the LEGO brick is in January 2008 and there is plenty to celebrate. Children all over the world have played with LEGO bricks for the past 50 years, and LEGO is still right at the top of many wish lists – just as it always has been. Industry and trade associations also recognize the LEGO success. Just before the turn of the millennium the LEGO brick was voted “Toy of the Century”, one of the highest awards in the toy industry, by both Fortune Magazine in the US and the British Association of Toy Retailers. LEGO bricks from 1958 will even fit on today’s bricks. Read more. MINDSTORMS features in Builders of tomorrow Martyn

I'll let the press release speak for itself. This isn't out yet, but it does sound... very interesting. Given the target (the " One Laptop Per Child " program), I would suspect a low-cost solution, but at this point it's just speculation. The LEGO Press Release: LEGO EDUCATION EXPLORING WAYS TO BRING CREATIVE LEARNING SOLUTIONS TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES Sao Paolo, BRAZIL (NOVEMBER 7, 2007) – LEGO Education, The LEGO Group’s educational division, today begins testing of creative curriculum solutions in three schools in Brazil to establish the best technology platform for bringing 21st Century skills to students ages seven and older in underserved and developing countries. LEGO Education will provide selected classrooms with concept products that foster the hands-on, minds-on creative play for which the LEGO® brand is universally known. The company is building on 10 years of research, product development and success as a consumer robotics pioneer with LEGO MINDSTORMS®...

Today, I learned that the NXT-G 1.1 cd with Item code: 4524081 is available at the Shop@home. Unfortunately not in my country, even though the CD holds the Dutch language. The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT software version 1.1 CD-ROM provides support for Windows Vista (both 32-bit and 64-bit) and Intel-based Mac computers. Programs and sound files are compiled more effectively and faster so they use less space on the NXT microcomputer. This CD includes the following languages: English, French, German, Dutch and Japanese. I think it will be a matter of time until the CD ships to The Netherlands.

You might have seen the mention of a Free Trip to Space Camp in this blog posting .. Well, the magic week is here. Here's the scoop... "Watch Toonami (on Cartoon Network) Saturday. Look for the toll free number. Call for your chance to Win!" 10 lucky grand-prize winners will each win a trip for 4 to Space Camp. 400 runners-up will score one or more of the 700 LEGO Mars Mission Prizes (New LEGO Mars Mission Sets). Best of luck! Chris

Yesterday I got a mail form Steven, informing me that unfortunately I did not make it into MCP2.0. He had received many applications from many interesting people and it has been hard to choose. On the LEGO MINDSTORMS news page the announcement for applying to the MCP2.0 is removed, see also the post of Fay on Thursday, July 05, 2007. MINDSTORM Community Partners Taking Applications MINDSTORM Community Partners (MCP) is a group of volunteers working with LEGO to develop and test "new ideas, concepts, prototypes and products". If you would be interested in volunteering as an MCP, LEGO is accepting applications. More information is here. The deadline is July 10th. I'm wondering who else made it into the MCP2.0 (but be carful with the MDA).

It seems a lot of support messages (& a heck of a lot of server traffic) have been coming in to Brickshelf over the past couple of days, which seems to have shifting things a bit. From the Brickshelf main page: Notice: Brickshelf will not be shutting down! We will be offering "featured" accounts for $5/month shortly. We have received hundreds of supportive emails in the past few days including many who said they would like to contribute financially but did not know how. This has had us rethink the practicality of charging for enhanced features.We plan to do this without reducing current functionality for free users. Thank you for your enormous show of support. IMPORTANT: do NOT try to download the entire site, it causes major problems, slows things down for normal users and you will be permanently blocked. We will make older folders public again after we see the crawlers go away. Further points as they happen... -- Brian Davis

The LEGO Company is teaming up with Cartoon Network and Space Camp to send 10 very lucky kids to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama! Each winner can bring a friend, and both can bring a parent, to celebrate Space Camp's 25th Anniversary of making galactic-sized dreams come true. Winners will take part in space training, simulated team missions, rocket building, and even robotics with their friends and parents. They'll learn all about space stations and the Space Shuttle, try out astronaut food, find out how to sleep in zero-G, and much, much more! There are 2 ways to win... Watch Cartoon Network during the week of August 6 to find out how you could win the ultimate Space Camp experience! On Monday August 6th the Cartoon Network's "Mars Mission" homepage will also have information on how to win! A Mars Mission teaser page at LEGO.com Good Luck everyone! I kinda want to go myself...But me'kiddies are far too young. =( Chris

Well, it looks like there is both good and bad news on Brickshelf . I still don't know why it is closing, but it seems more certain: the site has opened with a somewhat more informative message stating "Notice: Brickshelf will be shutting down on 2007/07/31. Please save your files to your computer." So it looks like one of my favorite LEGO sources, a place where more than a decade of wonderful building has been cataloged, and the only source of some of these images on the net (from folks who have left the hobby for one reason or another) is soon to be no more. The slightly good news is you have a final chance to grab at least the stuff you already know where it is... before it is sadly gone forever. Gallery contains 1,907,738 files in 197,568 folders as of 16 Jul 2007, 3:28 PM... a really terrible loss. I'm not sure where I'll move for my on-line image hosting. some have suggested Maj.com, but given this rather sudden departure of Brickshelf, I'm not sure I...

If you are browsing through backposts of the blog, and wonder where a lot of the pictures have gone, we apologize. Many of us used links to a image service called Brickshelf , which it appears has been removed. Please do not flame the owners/operators of Brickshelf - I'm not sure why this happened with no warning, but Brickshelf has proved free, high-quality image hosting for AFoLs for many, many years, and they should be commended for what they've done. Personally I keep all my own photos on my computer, but very sadly many folks didn't, so many of those great MOCs may be lost forever, including the accounts of people who have passed away and their Brickshelf accounts remained behind as epitaths. If Brickshelf comes back, I'll be very, very happy... and if it is gone for good, I'll be very sad for the loss of a cornerstone of the on-line LEGO community. But I'll still be thankful for what we had, for a little while. On a more proactive note, I'd like...

Today I was left in total sadness, hearing the sad news that the AFOL Eric Brok of the Netherlands, the designer of the new 10190 LEGO set, has passed away. According to his wife Seby, Eric passed away peacefully on Monday 11th of June in the morning at 1 o’clock, after 1.5 years of fighting the cancer Eric was one of the first persons in the Netherlands that actually showed the power of the LEGO MINDSTORMS set, released back in 1998. He was a remarkable personality, always building impressive models and proudly showing the new tricks. We used many of his examples , in our own models. I’m sure that the results of his participation in the LEGO community will be alive for a really long time. For now my prayers and thoughts will go to Eric's family and close friends. Farewell, Eric.

via Motocube http://www.classic-space.com/plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?47804 And here is the article on Motocube . It's a good read. Shows a bit of what LEGO is working on (at least what can be talked about right now).