New Lego Mindstorms Dissected 136
Turismo writes "The new Mindstorms NXT robotics kit from Lego is put through the ringer by the guys at Ars Technica, and they like what they find. From the article: 'the NXT brick can communicate with three other Bluetooth devices at any one time. This means that if you had four Mindstorms kits, you could create a mega-robot with four brains, twelve motors, and sixteen sensors — all of it coordinated through Bluetooth. The setup also works with cell phone and PDA Bluetooth systems, meaning that you can use your phone as a remote control or an output device.'" Update: 08/31 18:54 GMT by Z : Fixed absent submittor.
The plural of Lego is Lego (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
If little Timmy took all the fish out of the tank and had them flopping around on the floor, you could exclaim, "put the fish back into the tank!" If it was a community tank that was disturbed, you could also calmly order Timmy to "put those fishes back into the tank."
No fish were imaginarily harmed when writing this.
Re:The plural of Lego is Lego (Score:4, Funny)
Two fish were in a tank. One asks the other "do you know how to drive this thing?"
Thanks for clearing that up for us... (Score:3, Funny)
The Amazing Sarcasmo
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
Re:The plural of Lego is Lego (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Nobody asked a friend "wanna play with my Lego brand building blocks?"
Parents stepping on pieces in their livingrooms often scream "Pick up these damn legos!!!" or just "OW!!!!! Steven Thomas Jackson GET DOWN HERE NOW!!!!"
Looks like quite the kit. the 9 year old here was just talking about wanting to build a robot. Hmmm...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but it is not commonly acceptable to The LEGO Group to have their trademark misused. At your house you can call them what you wish. However, to have an argument on the internet about whether "lego" or "legos" is the "correct" plural is idiotic, as neither is correct.
(Yes, to have an argument on the internet about anything is idiotic. This is just especially bad. ~)
hunter warrior (Score:5, Funny)
No death ray available (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
MS and Lego (Score:5, Informative)
Ahh, the real reason to build robots... (Score:3, Funny)
[1] I think I saw one of these robots on a
[2] I think if you're trying to get shorts, you've got electrical design issues
[3] 'Get' or 'Make' chicks... best prom ever?
I'm only making these (inane) jokes because I lack the skills to make a really awesome robot of my own. Call it robot envy.
Right (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm curious what else is in the box.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not knowing how acurate the photo is in the article, it appears that they may have started moving even the Mindstorms from the standards of the Technics sets.
Anyone know of a way to get my hands on standard Technic parts or am I SOL?
Re:I'm curious what else is in the box.... (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you talking about? They're right here. [lego.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
yes - i get that lego parts work together. i grew up on legos and bought my mindstorm kit not all that long ago (have to dig through my journal to figure out exactly when) and there were parts in that mindstorm kit I'd never seen in any of those kits i had as a kid. sprockets jump to mind as one type. if there were no more
Re: (Score:2)
And even pure 'bits' boxes, with axels, joints, beams gears and stuff.
There was nothing in my RIS kit that I didn't already have (except for the pbrick and sensors of course).
And since studded beams and unstudded beams work perfect together, they also work perfect with every other brick (ok, I've never found
Re: (Score:2)
the original poster had a concern that you addressed and i just mentioned that along with what you posted, and my observations from what the lego site
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So, I would guess you're observing that the technic beams don't connect to plain bricks? Well, sure. But there have always been technic parts that don't work with plain bricks. Even the technic beams have been around for decades. The only thing that's really changed in this set is that now the emphasis is on the beams instead of the bricks.
A move w
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://shop.lego.com/leaf.asp?cn=47&d=11&t=5 [lego.com]
They have a gear kit with 39 gear pieces for $13... axle kit, connector kit, beam kit, wheel and axle kits, and a $30 motor kit.
The new Mindstorms NXT also sells the NXT brick and the sensors and motors seperately, although if you bought all the sensors and motors separately, it would be $25 more than the NXT kit itself and wouldn't include any of the beams/connectors.
Re:I'm curious what else is in the box.... (Score:5, Informative)
This looks like a promising one: Educational Resource Set [legoeducation.com]. It's described as complementary to the new Mindstorms Education set (derived from the NXT kit) and is only $59. Looks like lots of structure, gearing, and wheels for a decent price.
Currently out of stock. Probably worth back-ordering, however.
The standards are the same, but the primary building element has changed. From the Technic Brick [lego.com] to the Technic Beam [lego.com].
Regards,
Ross
Re: (Score:2)
BrickLink for spare parts!:I'm curious what els... (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Please submit a link to a coral-cached picture of your difference engine :)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
And your problem is...? It sounds like you're saying buying a whole lot of Lego is a bad thing.
Trust me, all of my old Lego works quite nicely with my NXT sets. For that matter, all of the Lego that I've bought after buying my NXT sets works quite nicely with my NXT sets.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I hope this helps,
Hunter
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Also, for teachers, I believe there's several educational (read: bulk) technic sets for schools. I believe the educational program was called Dacta.
Point is, a quick ebay search for "lego technic" or "lego ####" (model number of technic set) can produce massive quantites of bricks for a practically nothing. I've also had good luck with bricklink stores in the past, but that's more for if you need one special piece.
Re: (Score:2)
As other people said, there are still some Technic pieces out there.
I'm trying to build an automated heavy-duty chainmail spotwelder out of LEGO and my old arc-welder-turns-to-spotwelder. It's very technic-heavy but I'm going to have to use metal chain (and cogs, with hardware interface) for some parts.
Re: (Score:2)
http://www.bricklink.com/ [bricklink.com]
You're welcome.
Oblig Stargate reference (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No thanks, Vex is more fun. (Score:4, Interesting)
I have a pc104 computer sitting on mine using a 386 and a hand rolled linux install... easier to do with a VEX setup than lego.
Re:No thanks, Vex is more fun. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No thanks, Vex is more fun. (Score:4, Informative)
I end up using the more extendable VEX simply because it's far easier to attach a SBC to it than lego. I also can fabricate specalized parts in 30 minutes after a trip to home depot, something that is darn hard under the lego system.
IF you are interested in never going farther in robotics the Lego system is darn nice and easier to deal with, but if you want to program your Bot in C or C++ (or even ruby) under a real time OS you have to do some really ugly hacks.
plus you will never ever get lego's processor to connect to a wifi connection and send back video. (Hacked pair of optical mice makes awesom machine vision BTW!)
Mindstorms does that (Score:3, Informative)
Mindstorms has a C compiler, a RTOS, and even a
Lego NXT review (Score:4, Informative)
"The Ugly" (Score:5, Funny)
Robot! Make me breakfast. (Score:2)
h263 video embedded in a browser? (Score:2)
Ring-a-ding editors (Score:1)
What about cube/mesh/tree topologies? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's Bluetooth. It should be able to communicate with up to 7 others in a piconet or many more using a network layer, unless Lego have put artificial contraints on the product.
Re: (Score:2)
Limits are network lag becoming too long, the radio frequency becoming too crowded, nodes dropping from and adding to the network, and the tree getting imbalanced, and $200+ a node cost...
Re: (Score:2)
That is, if you can get it to do something they don't care. There are already some alternate OS's for it already here: http://sourceforge.net/search/?type_of_search=sof t &words=legOS [sourceforge.net].
Re: (Score:1)
Re:What about cube/mesh/tree topologies? (Score:4, Informative)
The flexibility and robustness of the Bluetooth communications seems present, it's just a matter of writing software to send data through the mesh. I'm not sure if the default programming tool has the flexibility (yet) for this kind of logic, but the control of the sensors and motors is very detailed.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
So what you're saying is, NASA needs to invest
Re: (Score:2)
So it's just Wireless USB? Bah, humbug. Haven't the beggers figgured out that peer networking is so much more useful?
(PS: to the anonymous AC - my major, a quarter of a century ago, was EE... not CS)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's never intented to be a networking solution.
It is possible to expand the setup by switching roles (one uber brain gives commands to 3 others, these then switch to master and talks to 3 more each.
But it would be a painful setup.
However, the designers seems to have understood that issue too.
Port 4 doubles as a 921.6 Kbit/s RS485 link, multidrop, see http://www-p-net.org/ [www-p-net.org]
Ao the hardware is there, and the firmware is upg
Correction? (Score:2)
ITYM http://www.p-net.org/ [p-net.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Obligatory Simpsons quote (Score:1, Troll)
Microsoft Robotics Studio (Score:1)
The thing that struck me most while going over the studio was it's great tie-ins to real Lego robots, namely the old Mindstorms and the new NXT. It's pretty exciting and a great way for
Yay! (Score:2, Troll)
I bow to my intellectually superior lego overlords!
Lego Robot (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, I am actually the owner... and yes, my modem isn't liking this very much x_x
Labview alternative? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
persoanlly, I wish more software developers learned those skills.
Re: (Score:2)
"Never trust a programmer with a soildering iron, a hardware guy with a software fix, or a user with an idea."
Realistically, I don't see how welding is at all relevant to real time systems. If you're gonna build something that needs welds, hire a liscenced Professional Engineer to make sure you do the damn thing right.
Re: (Score:2)
Soildering? hehe. Sorry. OK, the real info: I'm not sure how much storage space the NXT's micro has, but it's probably not enough to do any sophisticated software t
Re: (Score:2)
I work in a biomed research lab currently, and the
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, I don't really advocate using ASM for anything extensive. I just meant, in the pedagogical sense, it was a good experience. I never really did anything in it again, but when I *did* use, for example, C or Labview to do embedded-typ
Seems a bit basic to me... (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
However geting it and loading different software and firmware to get it to do those extra things is certianly good experience for an EE student.
Why bother calling it a toy? (Score:2)
I'm not destitute, but I have a hard time justifying a $50 present for a child, much less a $250 one.
I'm NOT saying the system isn't worth it, and I'm NOT suggesting that LEGO lower the price for what seems like a really cool thing. (Then again, LEGO have never, ever been a 'reasonably priced toy' in any guise, so let's not kid ourselves that they couldn't price this at 40% off and probably double or tri
Re: (Score:1)
Couple of things (Score:2)
Legos are pretty cheap. witht hee xception of the big Kits.
an industries 10-14 year olf could make 250 bucks pretty quick. a couple of weeks of mowing lawns ought to do it.
If you had a child who was into robots, this is an excellent step for them to make, and the laungage is pretty good. So for some people it will be more of an investment towrds there children that is worth the price tag.
Based on Lego sales and quality, I would say the Lego could not
Re: (Score:2)
When I was 6 in 1978, my dad bought and assembled a $60 bicycle for me. We were military (lower middle-class) and based on the numbers from the US government [bls.gov], that's about the same as $180 today. So $250 isn't really that much of a stretch...
IMHO, if your kid actually expresses an interest in creative activities (like Lego), you'd be foolish not to support that with every dollar you can spare. Better than
Re: (Score:2)
Being an old geezer, with a 10 year older bro, I still have pieces that date back to late 50:s, like 2x4 bricks with
10-14 year olds ? (Score:2)
I'm disappointed (Score:2)
1) Still can't program in a real language: I want to make a double-dimensioned array so I can map out an NxN grid for a game. It doesn't look like I can do that in this set. When I was 10 years old, I was using BASIC to code, and it had this ability.
2) I want a growable set of inputs and outputs. If I want a 4th motor, their solution is to buy another brain. Instead, I should be able to plug-in a dais
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with daisy chaining devices as you describe is that the "brain" only has a limited power capacity and can't reasonably supply the power for too many devices.
The ideal daisy chain solution IMO would be one where there was no hardware limitations at all, all input and output devices simply being connected on a common bus, in a manner not altogether disimilar from USB, and invidivual devices having their own power supplies in situations where the particular device could not reasonably use the po
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You should have been using this. [sourceforge.net]
I'm sure that there'll be something else like it for the new ones. The old ones were based on the well known ATMEL chips, IIRC, and were therefore easy to write a specialized compiler for. I expect much of the same here.
2) I refer you back to #1. Write your own communication protocol and use a serial line. You can.
Of course, the real question here is why you'
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Port 4 can also function as a bi-directional multidrop RS485 high speed link (well 921.6 Kbit/s at least).
So expanders and multiplexers like the ones we've seen for the RCX is included in their plans. If noone else start to build and sell them first
Re: (Score:2)
It uses a tethered architecture though, so the code you write will actually be running on your PC.
I think I speak for us all when I say... (Score:3, Interesting)
I wanna be a kid again!
Well, I for one bow down to our new Lego robot overlords...
Re: (Score:2)
Just get a kit, spread it out on the living room floor, and go to town. They're great fun (I'm 34, married and we're expecting our first kid).
Regards,
Ross
Man that good have been helpful. (Score:2)
In simulation it worked great (using netlogo), but in real life tests, usi
Love the programming system! (Score:2)
They used a very similar type of system to this lego kit - dragging and droppi
Re: (Score:2)
It allows software freaks to begin to understand hardware.
It allows hardware freaks to begin to understand software.
It allows kids to experience and select good (software) from bad (hardware).
It uses USB, Bluetooth (Serial profile), RS485 and I2C for comms. all industrial standards.
It comes with
Re: (Score:2)
But still, my combined robots are currently cleaning my livingroom floor and dumping all bricks (while avoiding gpigs) in the big bin.
Links? Pictures? Howtos? Please!
Re: (Score:2)
The current firmware allows for 1 master and 3 slaves.
So unit one acts as master to 2, 3 and 4
Unit 2 can, after getting commands from unit 1, switch to master mode and connect to units 5, 6 and 7, and handing commands to and recieving data from those, and then switch back to slave, connect and report to unit 1.
So it's a tree network, but I have a hard time to see how this could limit the functionality. The lack of sensors and physical limits of certain pieces is more severe.
But whatever