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Lego + Linux HOWTO
luge writes "In more than a few Lego articles posted here, I've seen the question asked "But can I use the Mindstorms under Linux?" Well, the new Lego + Linux mini-HOWTO provides the answer. There are (currently) 7 different software options in 7 different languages (including C, Perl, and Java) for the Linux-based Mindstorms owner."
Anyone have any ideas on how I can build a little mindstorms thing that will sit on my kitchen counter and spray my cats with water when they jump up there? I know when I'm at work they jump up on the counter and dance around until they get tired and then fall asleep next to the coffee maker until they hear my car pull up, then they run to the other room and pretend they've been there all day.
Motion sensing might not work very well because people who walk by would get sprayed. Image recognition would be best, but I'm not quite sure how to go about it.
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There's a COM object you can drop into your favorite COM compatible app and go nuts with. I did this when I web enabled the mindstorms set I got for my birthday a year or two ago.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
FORTRAN: the bricks simulate bricks.
Forth: while you put the bricks together backwards, you can make bigger, more useful bricks.
Assembly: you have many, many very simple bricks, but there is no limit to what you can build.
Bill - aka taniwha
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Bill - aka taniwha
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Leave others their otherness. -- Aratak
Getting off-topic, but you raise a very interesting point. I'm approaching 30 (shudder), and I think I saw the transition of legos from wholly generic to specialized. The space sets came out when I was a kid, as well as the first motor (big, black brick), and then the technics, and there compact motor. Generally, though, even with space sets and such, you got mostly generic bricks, with a few special types, but even those could be used for many things.
I think the first motors were in the mid 60's, so unless you're approaching 30 like Merlin does, they predated you.
Over the years, it seems the specialization continued to where legos are hyper-specialized. A set comes with a few normal bricks and many specialty items that don't have many uses.
Now, maybe it's reversing, with the greater amounts of generic pieces in the mindstorms and such sets, despite highly-specified star-wars, castle, and rock war sets.
Yes, this whole process is decried as the juniorization of Lego, and apparently even mentioned in Coupland's Microserfs.
Don't lump Star Wars in with the castle or Rock Raiders sets, though. The Star Wars sets are an excellent value for the money, and don't have many overspecialized parts, unlike Rock Raiders.
The X-wing for example, had R2D2, a canopy and a few printed parts for specialized parts, everything else was stock. Lots of grey slopes and plates, very tasty.
George
Yup, seven different projects for Lego Mindstorms, but no window manager that works.
how many real life bazaars have ever actually built anything larger than a hep of camel shit?
It appears that the cathedral builders haven't done much better in these regards. Take CDE (Please!), there was much rejoicing at the possibility that it might be replaced by GNOME etc. Microsoft don't seem to have done any better, Windows might be a bit more useable if I could run WindowMaker and GNOME on it. In short, regarding window managers, Apple seem to have built the only cathedral any bigger than your heap of camel shit. (Ignoring NeXT etc.)
Now if only there was an environment that provided something outside the Algol family. Oh wait, of course, I can use Forth. I RPN like not. :-) A nice functional language (Haskell being my current fave) would be well-suited to the MindStorms system. Pure functional PLs handle data flow so cleanly, and the flow from sensors to actuators is exactly that. Six built-in primitives for the three sensors and the three actuators.
A simple Braitenberg-style mouse:
Simple, clear, understandable. I like it.-----
Klactovedestene!
In college I built a maze traversing Mindstorms Robot. It would actually find its way through a 6 foot by 6 foot cardboard maze. I used NQC (Not Quite C) as the programming language because it was impossible to program the "follow the right wall" algorithm in Bricks (the programming language that comes with the set.)
This is supposed to be great art. So why does it look like a bunch of decapitated naked people? -- Calvin
I tried, but I kept falling off. I think I need to build the matress larger next time.
Unix is user friendly, it's just selective about who its friends are.
- RCX
- LegOS (C/C++)
- Lego::RCX.pm (Perl)
- Not Quite C
- pbForth
- TinyVM & leJOS (java)
- TCL RCX
Wow I suck.You try to make a car, but end up with a speed boat. But you don't care. its a really cool speadboat!
After months of development your lego car starts quickly, but then grows so big it crushes you. And crashes.
After half an hours hacking you have a dune buggy that works. Unfortunatly further development is impossable.
After months of development you realise its not quite feasable.
you lego build
Your lego car works everywhere, but its quicker to walk.
Your car doesn't work, but if it did you could control it remotly with a pretty GUI
Thad
Thad
It's official; they have finally combined the world's two greatest playthings: Legos and Linux Figure out a way to get sex and beer into the mix, then you'll really have something!
Yet Another Web Site
I have one lying around from my 6.270 robot...
The HandyBoard is damned cool though...
Tom Selleck in Runaway. Besides, spiders are cooler than dogs 8^)
Extra Credit: Write the person tracking software for the missle/bullets in CobolScript
::SIGH:: Do you even pretend to know what you're talking about? There are Window Managers that work, and work quite well. IceWM is one that springs to mind. There are several others out there as well.
:>) or you are simply misinformed.
Either you were trying for a bit of irony (and failing I might add
ObTagLine: The more you run over the 'possum, the flatter it gets.
Well, they weren't mindstorms (I forget what it actually was), but we used computer controlled legos in an engineering class at school one years. Very cool stuff, our project was a 'vehicle' that could navigate a maze with no user input. (Ours was a tank with a pretty cool worm drive, that thing could drive over anything, pretty impressive for something you can fit in a shoebox...) :-)
I've been meaning to check out the mindstorms, I grew up on legos, so this is obviously the perfect toy
-Space for rent
no...actually...it goes to http://www.flipse.com/legos.html you can copy and paste if you don't trust me.....or just rightclick and look where it goes.....
The anti-salmon
I've not used the software that comes with it since I don't run Windows, but it looks like its simple to use, sort of a simplified version of ProGraph (A visual language which may or may not still exist)
If I write a Logo interpreter in one of the seven languages, and then display the output on the screen as well as send the commands to the Mindstorm, then I can re-create a classic kid's learning environment from 1985 ! Except now my turtle can bite.
Could you build a PC case using Mindsorms components and have your machine look after itself physically? Like, you come back from work and it's taken a few bricks out of itself to reduce temperature? Or added a west wing on the side to house a couple of new hard drives? Or built itself some wheels and... uh, I've got to stop thinking about this now.
I'm not trying to be inflammatory [all honesty] but what exactly is the deal with "woman have a genetic problem with math and spatial analysis"? That's...umm...not true.
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
Hm, I remember writing Lego in, well, I think it must have been shortly after the first Space Shuttle launch, suggesting more specialized parts, like curved things and such, to be able to make more smoothly looking spaceships... Maybe I am to blame....? :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Children playing with Legos? Interesting concept! Does this mean I have to share?
Bush should have died, not Reagan -- Morrissey
Morrissey rides a cockhorse -- The Warlock Pinchers
``
No Laughing Allowed!
We already have a couple my son loves them he is 51/2
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
IIRC, the official development environment that you get with a Mindstorms set is built around an ActiveX component that you use with a drag-and-drop Windows interface. Seems pretty easy.
Has anyone looked into extending the hardware? With all the Linux/Lego code out there this would be a great way to control the physical world, or would it? I have an old direct drive Pan/Tilt for a camera I'd love to Net-enable cheaply and with as little custom coding (read.. ahh thats not hardware)as possible.
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
You should get the O'Reilly Mindstorm book it has some very very cool ideas.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Hard, plastic sharp thingys (Legos) & Electronics normally aren't good to mix with sex...I know...:P
How Jaded Are You?
I have a set of the old Lego Dacta system with the computer interface. It used a language called LEGO TC LOGO under DOS. It uses a proprietary LEGO 8 bit ISA Interface card. Is there any information on making this beast work in Linux? LOGO/DOS only has so much extensibility! John
Hey I know you! You're one of those guys on the old Frosted Flakes commercials. Yea, the ones where the person is sitting in shadow because they're ashamed of liking a "kids" cereal. I knew I recognized you!
Steven
Won $50 worth of Lego's in a "creative building" contest when he was seven with a cool skateboarding robot design built out of the little Lego sets that came with McDonalds Happy Meals(all I had at the time). Used the money to buy three Lego Technic sets, the pneumatic ones, and never looked back.
Is teaching his 4 year old how to program Mindstorms, and dug out the old pneumatic sets too.
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
arghhhhh, stop the juices... *gasp* ok, ok, I give in. Warning, incredibly useless creative stuff follows.
/. and saw the post about bulk ordering. There was a comment about a Lego machine gun which fired 2*4 bricks. I looked at it and saw that it used rubber bands and a hammer mechanism and some kind of hand crank. Suddenly the inspiration hit me. I'll redesign the thing! I'll motorize it and use a pneumatic plunger as a hammer to fire the bricks!
For some reason I looked back through the archive of Lego topics on
Basic idea. Put a motor on the plunger which charges a compressed air tank so it charges continually. Have two lines running from the tank to the firing plunger controlled through a SPDT switch, when air is put in at the bottom of the firing plunger, it shoots out and knocks the brick down the barrel, when I throw it the other direction, it will allow the compressed air to flow into the upper input on the firing plunger and retract it, allowing another brick to fall into the firing chamber from the clip. And I can even build the switch into the housing so it looks like a trigger.
The only real problem I see is getting the air chamber compressed to the point where there is a decent velocity imparted to the brick when the plunger strikes it. Those motors don't have near the amount of power the old Robotix building set motors did. I'll have to build gear ratios to allow the mechanism to push the compressing plunger down once there is a fair amount of compressed air in the tank already. Of course my upper limit is the working pressure in the rubber lines, I can make the gear ratio something ungodly and put tons and tons of pressure into the chamber, it may take forever to re-pressurize after firing, but that's the only way I can see to get decent velocity out of the firing plunger.
Now I'm going home and build this stupid thing, my kids will love it. I'll post the design when I get it completed.
Steven
-- I have marked myself unwilling to moderate-- I don't have other accounts to artificially inflate the karma of
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Has anybody actually purchased one of these Lego Mindstorm kits? Was it easy to work with? For what age group would it make a good gift?
ByteMyCode.com: A Web 2.0 code sharing community.
huge lego killer-robots controlled by a linux run beowulf cluster. all we need is a mindstorms laser gun.
Lemurific!
This sort of thing scares me...I might be only 16, but I remember when lego's were just put together and played with.....now we have programmable bricks of plastic......it just doesn't seem right...I thought the Disco r2d2 was bad enough...
The anti-salmon
It's official; they have finally combined the world's two greatest playthings: Legos and Linux
How Jaded Are You?
It'd be the first time a Lego construction ever got Slashdotted.
Now I can create a turtle using Java and a hare using C. Things get more realistic every day!
Now if only I could use my ultimate VB and AOL skills somehow...
Source code is a lot like a parachute; it needs to be open in order to function properly.
Wouldn't it be cool to use mindstorm to construct a physical bar graph of the traffic to my webserver?
The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
It's great that we've got all these "real" programming languages to use, but doesn't the average kid need something a little simpler?
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Having grown up on legos, I thought the Mindstorms looked really cool when I heard about them, but I didn't get to play with them until this past Easter. I spent the day with friends in town from church, and their H.S. son had a set. We spent about 2 hrs after dinner fixing code and getting his project working. Way cool stuff. Makes me want to get married and have kids so I can buy them some :)
:)"
:)
"I figured it'd be a lot safer than heroin...
Legos may be safer, but heroin is cheaper.
ShoutingMan.com
It doesn't sound like you grew up so much as grew older. Your post sounds like a typical bitter old-timer, "Damn kids, when are ye gonna learn ye gots to grow up!"
I'm 26, happily married, have good financial investments and am a systems/network administrator for a small company with a good salary and bonus. However, I still play with toys (and the old Transformers and Legos are my favorites) and I still watch cartoons (Cartoon Network is only second to the sci-fi channel in my book, and those two occassionally trade places during certain months). Does that make me a child? Hardly. I work my butt off, I pay my bills, and I treat my wife with respect (or she wouldn't be my wife). Yet I'm still able to enjoy a good 'childish' thing like cartoons and toys.
You knock Legos as childish. The funny thing is that Legos are designed with the basic premise of helping you develop your mind and your imagination. You are never too old to give up on those sorts of ideals. You need to constantly exercise your brain to keep it growing. And just because it is targetted at kids doesn't mean you can't use it as an adult. If you feel that way, you've already lost part of your humanity. Hopefully you'll get it back.
Oh yeah, and if you think my wife has a problem with my 'childish' endeavors, why the hell did she pull me through Valley Fair, running from ride to ride, screaming her head off and in general acting like a big kid? Simple, she (like myself) hasn't grown old.
You can grow up without growing old. We choose to seperate those two things. It looks like you choose to combine them into one process. In a way I feel for you, but it's your choice. However, don't knock it just cause you don't like it. It's a lot more fun than you might think.
(Now, my hypothesis is you are either a troll, or the following applies: You have avoided using Legos and other 'toys' because you know deep down inside that if you went anywhere near them you would play with them and have a great time. This fear of looking 'childish' has kept you from exploring something you may enjoy. It's too bad, but it happens.)
Bite my yammer.
Yup, seven different projects for Lego Mindstorms, but no window manager that works. There you have it, ladies and gentlemen, in a nutshell, the reason why Eric Raymond's "Cathedral and Bazaar" is wrong. Although we could actually have worked this out ourselves with a bit of thought -- how many real life bazaars have ever actually built anything larger than a hep of camel shit?
-- the most controversial site on the Web
What it needs is a self-contained grit-petrification unit coupled to a high velocity grit cannon cluster.
Petrified grits would do more damage than some puny miliwatt-level laser. This is coming from someone who used to have hardened oatmeal fights as a child.
One future, two choices. Oppose them or let them destroy us.
I'm pretty good with Technic, but now with all this Mindstorms/C/Java stuff, that I am an antiquated Lego freak.
Ahh, I miss the days when you didn't have to know programming to make Lego killer robots. Now I just have to find a way to make a Technic automatic transmission.
busse
Yes! Use Mindstorms to build your own Turtle
and then drive it using Logo. Put Van Halen on the stereo and pretend it is 1985. Maybe even dig out an Apple ][ as I'm sure it has enough CPU for the job.
to square
repeat 4 [forward 50 right 90]
end
square
pen up
forward 100
pen down
square
...
I am having the most intense deja-vu...
X.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
I can see it now. The next movement in Open Source meets Mechanical Engineering:
"Free" as in "Free your hand from the vise-grips."
[
Or you could go lower-tech and just use a mechanical contrivance... After all, the cat might just chew up your Mindstorms device :-)
Freedom: "I won't!"
... and about as expensive ...
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the pun is mightier than the sword
I personally use NQC under Linux (and I haven't used anything else, including the Windows software). Works just great. The docs are easy to use (although I bought the Baum book). The hardware worked flawlessly the first time. No problems whatsoever. It wasn't even complicated (like building a cross-compiler or some damn thing). Just install and use.
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One of the first things I did when I got my mindstorms kit was to go out and buy the Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms (O'Reilly, no less). It starts nicely with the system that the Lego people give you to program in, then talks about NQC and pbForth - along with instructions on how to get these for whatever operating system you want.
Sure, it's nice to have an online resource, but I find a printed book easier to use. That, and the pictures in the book for assembly of lego monsters take no time to transfer over the wire!
-Denor
C: The bricks fit together quickly, as long as you put them in place carefully, but push too hard in the wrong direction and the whole structure will spring apart.
Perl: You have over 43,000 different bricks, though most of them seem to do the same thing. The model is built quickly, but seems to have used a lot more bricks than you expected.
Java: The bricks can also be used with Duplo and Meccano. However, they operate so slowly that you go for a coffee instead.
Come on, someone who actually knows what they're talking about continue/correct me...
PigPog.
... I figured it'd be a lot safer than heroin... :)
One of my acquantinces from school makes lego mindstorm stuff...you can look at a bunch of his creations at flipse.com/legos.html They seem sort of neat...but I am still a little worried that legos are now computer controlled.......what next? wooden blocks?
The anti-salmon
I'm using a window manager that works right now: FVWM2.
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Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
Getting off-topic, but you raise a very interesting point. I'm approaching 30 (shudder), and I think I saw the transition of legos from wholly generic to specialized. The space sets came out when I was a kid, as well as the first motor (big, black brick), and then the technics, and there compact motor. Generally, though, even with space sets and such, you got mostly generic bricks, with a few special types, but even those could be used for many things.
Over the years, it seems the specialization continued to where legos are hyper-specialized. A set comes with a few normal bricks and many specialty items that don't have many uses.
Now, maybe it's reversing, with the greater amounts of generic pieces in the mindstorms and such sets, despite highly-specified star-wars, castle, and rock war sets.
Thoughts?
ShoutingMan.com
Buy them now, and admit you;re an adult fan of Lego.
Plus, it may help prevent carpal tunnel.
George
I saw a few comments that confused/disturbed me. Several folks seem to have issues with computer controlled Lego bots. My question is: Why? The way I see it, this is only a Good Thing(tm). The world is getting more technological by the day, isn't it an advantage if the children of the world get accustomed to and profficient with technology as soon as they are able to comprehend it? Also, since Leogs are wide spread and familiar, aren't they a natural bridge from the simple tech of block stacking to the more complex tech of computers? I just don't see the reason for resistence here.
-={(Astynax)}=-
-={(Astynax)}=-
"Darkness beyond Twilight"
I wasted quite a considerable amount of time trying to install LegOS : although there is a line in the Makefile.common to configure where you unpacked the glib Hitachi H8 tools to, it didn't work until I unziped it to the default dir (/usr/local/lib/gcc-lib/h8300-hitachi-hms), which I couldn't do because I lacked the rights. Maybe it was just me screwing things up, maybe I found a bug, fair warning anyway. Insight/advices/dromedary pretzels anybody ?
Nothing is foolproof to a sufficiently talented fool.
I refuse to grow up -- but I will be an adult about it.
Calls to 911 that we're likely to hear: 911 operator: "911 what is your emergency?" Frantic Person: "ARgghhh! Somebody rooted my computer this morning and now my toy dogbot attacked and tried to kill me. I'm hiding in the bathroom right now, but the robot is building itself a lock pick"
Sig it.