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Mindstorms' Next Generation
davey23sol writes: "MSNBC has a 2.0 review of Lego Mindstorms here. Looks like they have put in an easier programming system for users, touch and light sensors, and some other stuff. The transmitters for the infrared transmitters are now USB instead of serial, too. The new system will be $200, and if you have Mindstorms now the upgrade will just be $20. It should all be available this month. I can't wait to get one (never got around to getting my Mindstorms kit)." This review may not go into $200 worth of depth, so I look forward to more detailed reader reviews (and more pictures) when this is widely available :)
Everyone loves legos, but make a giant death robot out of them and destroy New York and suddenly you've gone too far!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
"I'll spell it Micro$loth Winblows in a Delicious Twist."
"I refer to them as Nutscrape and Internet Exploder, respectively."
I call it AO Hell, because I'm yet another cocksucker!
another spot.. (from another thread)
It's an ap story, so it should be many places soon.
it's also at dailyherald.com
Remember... MS assumes only IT'S software exists...
It works fine in NS 6, btw...
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
"Another advance is that the infrared transmitter now plugs into a computer?s USB port rather than a serial port ? to improve speed."
/. that much... all the girls i know would kill me for that one)
Now, i can see switching to USB to improve compatibility, but to improve speed?! How fast can you really blast IR anyway? Is this mis-informed journalism, or bad marketing, or did i miss the memo about 12Mb IR tranceivers?
I also found it somewhat amusing that his girlfriend was faster on the pickup than he was . Take that, gender-based stereotypes (thank god my friends don't read
I was at Target yesterday and saw something
that claimed to be 2.0, so I guess it is already
"widely avaiable."
Homepage
legOS is an open-source embedded operating system for the LEGO Mindstorms, a LEGO brick with a brain. Compared to the standard software, it offers vastly superior performance and flexibility.
As of version 0.2.0, legOS features include:
* Dynamic loading of programs and modules
* Full IR packet networking
* Preemprive multitasking
* Dynamic memory management
* Drivers for all RCX subsystems
* 16 MHz native mode speed
* Access to 32k RAM
Not sure about you, but the crappy IDE click and drag blocks all over the place doesnt quite the cake for building a robot. I wish i had a block to try this OS out. Legos ruuulllll333!!
Jon Bardin
Finally, engineers can build their girlfriends! (Although they wouldn't know what to say to her.)
"Old man yells at systemd"
AP website:
E CH test
= 37 13737
http://wire.ap.org/APnews/main.html?PACKAGEID=T
daily herald:
http://www.dailyherald.com/main_story.asp?intid
"Yes.. no matter what the culture, folk dancing is stupid." -MST3K
Give me a break. Legos are maximally social, if you have any ambition. You can't build a truly inspiring moonbase or a decent ski resort or a reasonable cityscape without all of your friends' Legos alongside your own. And the base/resort/city planning stage requires a degree of collective problem-solving and negotiation skills you won't find in any snow fort or football team. Don't generalize from your own twisted childhood.
My next-door neighbor and I used to play Monopoly in the middle of a Lego wonderland, using Lego vehicles to move around the board, Lego stands to hold our property cards and a powered Lego conveyor belt to pass money across the wide table to each other. Top that!
We can reduce ideas to bits and people to genes, but "can" does not imply "should".
I just started my Realtime systems course at my university, and in that course, for the lab assignments, we will use LEGO Mindstorms to build cars or robots and control them with a realtime operating system. I can't wait.
Will work for bandwidth
I purchased the 1.0 version. Since then there has been a firmware upgrade which was signifigant, but that's about all. You can download the firmware for free for those of you with an older RCX brick -- http://mindstorms.lego.com/sdk2/. Serial to USB for the IR tower...all that means is that now I can't use a really old computer on the new Mindstorms. It seems they dumbed down the programming system. Most of the people really into this stuff use things like NQC (not quite c) or legOS, not the LEGO programming system.
What they really need is more I/O and a better array of sensors. You can break the 3 output/ 3 input barrier, but it's awkward. And how about sonar!
BTW, there is a big community for the LEGO fanatic, including Mindstorm lover. lugnet.com is the place to go for those of you wanting a social LEGO lifestyle.
I got the Mindstrom 2.0 a couple of weeks back.
New in Mindstrom 2 are big blocks. Which are nothing but collection of small set of operations (know as small blocks).
Programmers will recognize these as subroutines.
The only other major change as compared to Mindstrom 1.5 is the support for USB instead of COM port.
Those of who think that just because programming is a lot easier with Mindstrom 2 you can build robots more easily are wrong.
Programming was never the difficult part. The difficult part to think of a design, finding the parts (you will always end up needing more parts than available in the set) and fitting the parts to form a strong structure.
Programming is a lot easier compared to desiging a good robot.
The System is only usable with Windows 98 and ME.
No Windows NT/2000 or other OS support.
They will expand the number of sensors and motors you can connect at one time.
I am aware of a number of "hacks" to allow you to attach more sensors and motors (my favorite involves a system whereby a circuit senses when a sensor is toggled between two certain modes, in that there is a current drop or something involved in the switch, and can activate a multiplexing system to select a different set of three outputs), but these systems all are custom, and require a bit of hardware skill and modeling skill to build - plus, no one else can replicate your machine unless they build that same system.
I would like to see the "Ultimate Accessory" pack added as a standard part to the system - to let you get a rotation sensor, and a remote, as well as other good parts.
It would also be nice to get some more "funkier" sensors or devices - like a laser pointer, one or two of the mini-motors, a wireless camera (something like the lego cam, but wireless), maybe an outboard battery pack, maybe high-power motors, a usb or network interface on-board the RCX (adding the extra sensors and motors onto the box will make it big enough to add this), so you can communicate directly, or network multiple RCXs together (Beowu... ah, nevermind).
How about solenoid valves for the pneumatics - by the way, why can't we get the pneumatic systems anymore, huh? Walking machines would get sooo much easier, to an extent. Pitsco sells the parts, for most of it, so it is available still, but only if you know about them - still, it is nearly impossible to get the blue air tank to power your pneumatic system - check Ebay and pay through the nose, IF you are lucky.
One other part I would like to see added as standard - a ball and socket joint. Lego introduced a part nearly like this with those cheesy Robot fling kits, but the arm that had the ball was made out of this flexible plastic - you can cut the ball off, which leaves you with a ball and a small cross peg, to attach to, but it is still hard to work with, and the ball is too tight in the socket - it needs loosening up (maybe some sandpaper and oil applied would help) to be useful, for things like very flexible arms and legs on experimental bots.
I would also like to see the return of the huge tires that came with the old Expert Builder car kit, these things are near impossible to find (once again, Ebay it). Plus, make it easy to get the old jointed track (Pitsco sells this) for treads. Plus the geared large turntables - must have parts for robotic arm devices!
With five motors and five sensor inputs, a real industrial-style robot arm built from lego (along the lines of a Rhino arm, or a Micromover arm) could easily be built, and teach a lot of principles of design, programming and control. Right now, to build such a thing, you need two RCX units, and a few motors, and it is still a pain to build (most work is in getting the two RCXs talking to each other properly).
Add more memory to the RCXs, as well - for much, much larger programs - heck, drop 128K in - more than enough!
For such an upgrade, I would be willing to pay $100.00 to trade in my old RCX for the new one, or something along those lines...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
LegOS is now at 0.2.5. You can get all the latest info (along with CVS access, etc) at SourceForge.
Why is there only one Monopolies commission?
Program what you want, go away, come back and 20 robots are now working on it for you...
LejOS (http://lejos.sourceforge.net) is an open source Java API for RCX.
LejOS is great, although it does have the usual Java problems: large memory footprint, slow (virtual machine), etc...
I like to use both legOS and lejOS, depending on the project.
Also, I've been working on RCXComm, which is fun if you grok RCX bytecodes.
If you watch TV news, you know less about the world than if you just drank gin straight from the bottle.
...these sets?
Was this the car you were talking about?
Technic appears to be alive and well. Though I must agree with you about the dumbing-down and relentless merchandising of everything these days. Growing up, I thought LEGO was a lot of fun without having to attach the Star Wars franchise or any other marketing crap to the products. LEGO were (and still are) just plastic blocks that stick together, and they managed to compete quite successfully with video games when I was a young'un-- there was many an afternoon that my ColecoVision sat idle while I was furiously building space shuttles and F-15s.
I loved the Technic stuff, I had a huge box of miscellaneous gears, axles, etc, a couple of the motors, and also the pneumatic stuff. I also have a huge town setup from sets from the 80's, the very first model of their battery-powered train sets, and enough track to circle the whole town... all carefully stored away until I have enough space to set them up again someday. Hell, I'm 28 and I still pull out the things once in a while when I'm in a creative mood. Once a LEGO kid, always a LEGO kid, I guess.
~Philly
Buy Fred Martin's book "Robotic Exporations" first before you buy Mindstorms.
He and MIT helped invent the Mindstorms.
http://www.handyboard.com/
I'm going to put together one of these robots and program it to sit at my keyboard and click Slashdot links. Every couple of minutes, it will take random lines from people's old posts and assemble a new comment. It's amazing what machines can do in place of humans.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
From the article: Though I really wanted to build something that would fetch the newspaper or drive me to work, my girlfriend was much more realistic.
I wish I'd thought of making a realistic Lego girlfriend. Somebody should tell the guys at Columbia Internet.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
1) noga.de is no longer maintained; legos.sourceforge.net is the canonical site now.
2) For a complete reference of all available free alternatives for Mindstorms on Linux, check the Lego Mini-HOWTO at the LDP. For more details on legOS and Forth (two of the most mature alternatives) check out Extreme Mindstorms. [shameless plugs, both]
3) There is, of yet, no way to run legOS or most of the other alternative environments on Mindstorms 2.0 from Linux because there are, ATM, no tools to control the USB towers that are standard with 2.0.
Thanks...
Luis Villa (legOS maintainer)
IAAL,BIANLY