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LEGO Mindstorms: The Master's Technique
I devoured the book, performed all of the challenges and even amazed my friends with a few inventions of my own. From time to time I would see some inventions spotlighted online. I would marvel at the time and dedication people would put into these. I would wonder, like many others, how someone would conceive such things as a copier or a Rubik's Cube solver. Now there's a book that explains LEGOS from the mind of a master and an engineer of 25 years: Jin Sato's LEGO Mindstorms: The Master's Technique."
When I first looked at this book I was so excited. It would give me the excuse I would need to play with my LEGOS once again. It even has a cute LEGO doggie on the cover. Wait a moment, that cute doggie uses two LEGO Mindstorms kits. It has two RCXs. I only have one. Is this book going to be of any use to me, the casual LEGO builder? Simply put, "Yes!"
Jin starts the book at the most logical place, the beginning. A quick one-page history, one short chapter on the LEGO bricks themselves. This includes info on what they are made of, some of the evolution of LEGO into TECHNIC pieces, and how to assemble them in different ways to create strong connections using minimal pieces.
Chapter 3 starts with the good stuff, motors and gears. What would LEGO Mindstorms be without motors and gears; just a lump of art. In just a few pages the Jin explains everything a first-year mechanical engineering student needs to know about gears. He steps you through creating a gear test bed. This shows you, using a single motor, how all the gears operate and work together. At this point I was wishing I had started reading this book at home near my LEGOS.
I could write in detail about the wonders of each chapter. To keep from writing a review that's the same size as the book, let me summarize some things. This book is filled with lots of examples. Not so much a beginning to end to create a single project, but more a process of creation. Anyone can follow a step-by-step approach for creating a single LEGO project. I have several of those at home sitting on a shelf covered in a thin layer of dust. I call them LEGO art. But with this book, each example evolves you into the next more complex example. The nice thing about these examples is the comments scattered through out. There is a bit of theory explaining how it should work before you get into the construction. This really helps you understand why you are building each part. Eventually you build up to building MIBO, the LEGO doggie on the cover. Personally I couldn't build MIBO since I only have a single RCX, but the concepts he explains gave me new ideas and a drive to build with my current resources.
Every LEGO Mindstorms enthusiast should have this book next to their LEGO storage bin. It's a great reference book when you are in a creative mood.
You can purchase LEGO Mindstorms: The Master's Technique at bn.com. You can read your own book reviews in this space by submitting your reviews after reading the book review guidelines.
Legos are quite expensive nowadays. In order to build a huge project, or even a more "tech" one with motors and IC chips, it takes a small fortune.
How about Lego software so kids can build virtual structures?
At this point I was wishing I had started reading this book at home near my LEGOS.
:)
You mean you don't bring LEGO to work? Just tell the boss it's a new way to do use-cases or something
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Do the editors even read the articles??
We know the answer.
-c
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof which this margin is too small to contain.
How about Lego software so kids can build virtual structures?
You can't step on a piece with your bare foot, put pieces in your mouth, and your dog can't accidently crush your 4-day project.
Why that's simple, you can buy a Lego Mindstorm at lego.com! :-)
Error: Success
One of the most fascinating things about Mindstorms is the thought about kids playing with these as they grew up. Twenty years ago we were playing with the first home computers, something everyone dismissed as an expensive, pointless hobby. Sound familiar?
Will this be the point that future historians point to to say "here was when the mainstream robotics revolution started"?
Pimping my Karma Whore since 1847.
Apparantly I heard tell that Lego were working on a kind of 'virtual plaza'.
:)
Basically some kind of online world where kids can meet and play with virtual Lego online.
No doubt agressively priced so as not to devalue real Lego
Some of our more brainy "Legheads" as we call them spend several weeks building Lego models of various particles, then ram them together to get a first order approximation of what they'll find during a (much more expensive!) accelerator run.
Like any true lego fan would, right upfront he tries to convince us he has a life.
I have about $10,000 in legos in rather large boxes in my closet. It's to bad I don't have any of the fun ones with all the gears and motors and stuff.
In high school I was in a robotics class though, we built a lift out of legos using I think about 4 sets worth of parts (mostly for reinforcing) and we lifted about 50 pounds with it. Probably coulda done more but we didn't want to start breaking rods and gears
I haven't had a chance to play with the mindstorm stuff yet, but rest assured if I had the money I would!
There are only 10 kinds of people in this world... those who understand binary and those who don't
Back when I used to go to RTLToronto meetings, Jin always brought along some of his creations. I've seen that Aibo-looking dog up close, and it was pretty awesome: IIRC, the two RCXs communicate to each other in order to walk. His two-legged walker is interesting as well.
More links:
Jin Sato's Mindstorms website
RTLToronto, a LEGO enthusiasts group for the Southern Ontario area
A nice photo (JPEG) of Jin's table at a previous RTLToronto get-together.
->www.chuma.org, ranting and Newtons, what more could you want?
Lego sells a version of Mindstorms for schools (Called
Robolab) along with curriculum, teacher training, etc... In my opinion, it is one of the best tools out there to actually get kids thinking, creating, and using technology for something other than processing worksheets and delivering standardized tests.
The activities that come with Robolab are OK to start with, but the real learning comes when kids come up with their own problems to solve and robots to create. I have seen kids make fax machines, robots that blow bubbles, machines that sort items based on their color or a bar code... there are limitless possibilities.
The software that comes with the set is ok also, but there are a bunch of free compiliers out there so code can be written in C, Logo, etc... and sent to the Lego "brick".
Now schools just need money to buy these and time to train the teachers!
Thanks for the review. I've been looking for a good lego book. I am part of a lego robotics club at the middle school where I work, and the Mindstorms kits are at the heart of this program. The kids compete at an annual Robotics Park in events like chain-reaction (sort of the old mouse trap game where you put a ball in and a series of events happen) and of course the robot competition. We had a heck of a time this year trying to find good examples of claws. We needed one where the robot would drive out, pick up a sponge, then drive back to base. We managed and did ok. Came in 5th out of 28. For all of you lego fans out there - keep your local schools in mind. If they are involved in a program like this (many are), then they need as many lego parts and gears and motors as possible. Also the plastic bins to keep everything. Most schools are also crying for volunteers. We have the kids lined up to join, but not enough adults to take this on. It is a committment, but a very rewarding one. Esp if you like building robots, cause then you have scheduled time to do it and get to teach the kids along the away. Before selling any of your old lego or construx parts at a yard sale, think of donating them first. thanks!
Sorry, I have a patent on that combination and arrangement of Legos. Cease and desist or work out a license arrangement with me.
Coding Blog
I built a cool webcam out of lego and you can control it over the web.
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~brejc8/camera.html
This is how i built it
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
To be completely accurate a lego sim would need to be able to determine the final project midway. Then randomly choose one part and make sure you have 1 too few.
Well, yeah, now that they've fixed the article, i guess it is. Get here on time, next time!
For all you closet Lego freaks there is a simple answer. 1. Have kids 2. Buy the legos, tell you wife they are "For the kids" 3. When every you play with them by yourself you can always say "I was making it for little Johnny" 4. Whenever you make something really cool make sure "little Johnny" isn't around to break it. My wife has already figured out that I am a geek. I did well to hide it from her while we were dating. She figured it out after about 2 months of living together. But I'm hoping this little Lego plan I have will put her off for a few months. This may be a little off topic but when I was 10 my life revolved around building robots with my legos, writing BASIC on my TRS-80 CoCo and DND. The really telling mark was that I wrote a DND Module on my TRS-80 CoCo.
The plural of LEGO isn't "LEGOs", it's LEGO, or even more appropriately "LEGO bricks" or "LEGO pieces"...but most definitely NOT "LEGOS".
That's the kind of FUD we expect from Microsoft or terrorists. Women are far superior to men in every way. How can you think of a penis as something wonderful? It hangs down awkwardly between your legs. Women don't have that hinderance.
Next, just because you can't give your mom an orgasm, doesn't mean she can't have one. In fact, it is far more common for women to climax multiple times whereas this is far more rare for men.
I could go on, but you get my point. Women are better, hands down.
The GPL makes software more like your mom. Free and open to all.
I still have, sitting less than 10 feet away from me, my DACTA set to connect my LEGOs to my old Apple IIe. it was the basis for a lot of my life now. It was the first chance I had to install a 3rd party card into a computer, the first chance I had to program, and the first chance I had to build anything of substance. I got it for my birthday, and at an amazing price of $4000! (Forgive me if that is horribly wrong, but I was young, and I swear thats what my dad said they cost.) If nothing else, it allows me to keep around my IIe for a long time.
Now, office computing didn't really exist at this time - PCs weren't even a glimmer in IBM's corporate eye, and I don't think that Apple had got going either (mid-seventies). Yet projects were still planned and still needed to be tracked.
My dad suggested using Lego. He got laughed at at first, but eventually converted the company to using it. The idea is simple: buy a big base board , some different coloured long bricks, and voila: a fully editable dependency chart can be created just by moving the bricks around.
Powerpoint? Pah. PAH!
Cheers,
Ian
Why, that's simple. You can Karma Whore at slashdot.org! :-)
At my school, we used lego mindstorms for class projects. This was for honors freshman engineering classes. In the first semester class (a general engineering education class), we had to make them go through a maze, using the lego programming language. In the second semester class, a C/FORTRAN programming class, we had to make them go to assigned spots in specified amounts of times, programming them in C. Certainly wasn't easy. Biggest problem was that the lego parts weren't dependable to perform the same every time.
I believe that the existence of women is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy
It won't work with my version of IE. And it's a work machine that I don't care to put any additional crap like Netscape on for fear of being whipped :(
Does anyone know of a robot (built with Mindstorm
product or some other) that can flip a book and
turn its pages as it photocopies it on a standard
home scanner?
This would help me in my book digitization
project.
In 1984 I wanted a Mac for Christmas. I got a bike.
This March I bought my first Mac - PowerBook Titanium G4 550: $2299.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
I have a LEGO Mindstorm kit, and I find it great. However, I also find it difficult to get pieces. One of the things I need are some racks. I want to build a robot that will go up and down a track with fairly precise control, and rack and pinion seems to be the best way to do this.
There used to be a LEGO Technic forklift kit with lots of racks and pinions and also an add-on kit with a bunch of racks. However, even when I go to the LEGO outlet, all the Technic kits I see are fairly useless cars or robots, and there don't seem to be any add-on kits. The Mindstorm add-on kit has a lot of weird pieces (including a foot pedal), but no racks.
Does anybody know where to get extra racks, pinions, gears, wheels, and other bread-and-butter pieces for complex kits?
I note that the sex of the story teller remains ambiguous until paragraph 9. I've known males wear bikinis (not so sure about Mr Middle America jacking off at the sight of two blokes sucking face however)... And it's "refrigerator", bimbo. No d in sight.
HTH. HAND.
When I was young I never thought it was needed to go poking for books on how to do more things with my toys. Whatever happened to people thinking for themselves and coming up with their own ideas and ways of using things?
Something just strikes me as incredibly wrong when you have to use a thick book to play with toys.
Aren't toys supposed to be an amusing waste of time and not a complete thing you have to study?
[)(]subliminal labs[)(]
"I may grow older but I refuse to grow up." My parents always hated when I said that. Actually reviewing the book gave me an excuse to play with my Legos in a grown-up way. I have no children of my own yet but I'm going to have lots of wonderful toys for them when I do.
check out http://www.pitsco-legodacta.com for a good selection of legos. they have an entire catalog of legos for hands-on science and technology products. makes me wish I wasn't a broke college student
I recently went to a talk by a guy (Dave Brown of DAU and GMU ) who got his PhD recently, and used Legos in his dissertation experiments. He showed that by "learning" a Bayesian network from actual performance data of a system you could create a model that would predict the performance of the system much more accurately than the textbook formulae it was theoretically supposed to follow.
To show this he studied battery decay patterns by running lego models around and measuring the speed they went as they ran out of juice. He also uses lego models for prototyping in the classes he teaches at Defense Acquisition University.
In short, this guy gets to play with legos at his paying job, and for his PhD project. The bastard. I'm so envious. I gotta figure out how to work that into my job.
Light cup, beer drink, thin so chain, neck turtle fat, man I won't say it again
Darn, I was shooting for a 5th grade reading level not 6th. Not everyone is as advanced as you. You have to write to your projected audience and this review is for a very broad audience.
Not a literal one but when you are working on your obscure little project, have you ever just hit a dead end, a "you cannot move forward unless..." and after you tear at your hair, run screaming in circles you look to a referance manual and wham there is the solution.
Ifnot you are either a certifieable genious or you are not pushing your limits (or you are a certifieable genious who is *not* pushing his limits).
Books like these speed up the engeneering process a lot. Imagine that if to make a car the wheel had to be reinvented every time, sure we would learn a little more about basic wheel construction than if we just took knowing how a wheel works for granted, but we would never get around to power steering if we were still hung up about how a clutch works.
That was long winded and incoherant, but my point is...
... Robotics is still very imature like programming anything during the early 70's adn any book that furthers the art is welcome in my book.
Please excuse my crappy spelling.
I used to have a cool sig, back when I cared
Judging by his website, Jin Sato is the Mozart of Lego's. That being said I'm intimidated by the complexities of his robots. Add to that the fact that he often uses several identical and expensive sets and you'll find that the average Lego enthusiast can't approach his level of building.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Actually I read the book while traveling. But I may have to start bringing my LEGOS into work, I'm running out of space at home.
Lego has always been my favourite toy, even if some of the new kits look a bit lame. A few years ago, I think I was in grade 9, I was in London with my folks and we saw the precursor to Lego Mindstorm in Harrods. I can't remember what it was called... somthing like Lego Robotics lab. I looked at the price tag and it was 200 quid. So I forgot about it.
Few years later, in Grade 12, and friend and I built a lego robot anyway for a science fair project. Wired it up to an interface card, fiddled with some transducers, and programmed it it qbasic(!). It was a lot of fun.
This book uses more technic style legos, cheaper, and easier for kids to get their hands on.
Lego Crazy Action Contraptions
This is quite interesting considering that also at the same time, the state of California is coming after Lego Mindstorms for not making the implementation of the kits more easier to use and accessible for less educated kids, specifically those from poorer areas. Lego could be forced to make a more scaled down version of mindstorms with new color coding of certain mechanical parts, and an available alternative "pre-built" kit. You can see the article at the ACLU website
Do you ever exceed the speed limit while driving? Granted, the speed limit isn't in the LEGO FAQ, but it's a rule, a Law, and yet you break it with regularity, don't you?
Get over your 'leet skilz of FAQtoid enforcement, and learn to appreciate life without being an anal-retentive bastich. LegoS are fun to play with. (Yes, that sentence ends on a preposition. Wanna spank me?)
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Don't get me wrong. I love Lego building blocks and enjoyed them as a kid. I think they are still useful and fun for kids in today's overly-structured environment.
Anywho, one of the early websites erected in 1994 or so was by a voluntter Lego fan. He put up all sorts of Lego trivia and had cute lego graphics. Wasn't making any money and wasn't dissin' Lego.
In 1995, the site went blank. All it had was a copy of this letter from a lawyer in Denmark (I think), where Legos are made. In a rather unfriendly tone it said to ceise and desist (sp) immediately or be sued. The Lego volunteer shut the website down.
In summary, Post a Lego on the Web--Go to Jail (a good bumper sticker :-).
I do, but if I told you, I would become a felon. Good luck though.
The REAL jabber has the user id: 13196
What you do today will cost you a day of your life
Very helpful information.
I thought it was gay and cool, man..
I enjoyed my Erector Set (1980s version) MUCH more then any legos I or anyone else ever had. I simply believe the Erector is much closer to a "real world" modeling with metal. I wish they didn't ruin the erector like they did. PLEASE SOMEONE BRING BACK ERECTOR! -- and add a mindstorms like component -- or I'll just have to RMO. Most erector stuff is all collector stuff, but you can find som inexpensive erector parts on EBAY for cheap. Just my $0.02
At the risk of being modded "-1, Pedantic", please be aware that the word "LEGO" (all uppercase) is a trademark for LEGO Group A/S, and is a proper name. It is not an all-purpose noun and verb like "Smurf" and should be used as an adjective.
You can say "LEGO Mindstorms", "LEGO bricks", or "LEGO Technic", but "I built some lego with legos" is as jarring as "I built some linux with linuxs".
To my nephew when he's old enough not to eat them. Mindstorms look cool... now I have a justification to replace the sets I'm going to give away! Hopefully he won't abuse them as badly as I did (carving pieces up for a particular application). Also, did you know that with standard technic legos, some duct tape, and one of those big rubber bands that hold coolers shut you can shoot a lego right through two layers of drywall and leave a welt on your sister in the next room? I don't know who was more surprised; me or them :) Those were the days...
Sure, it's an old program, but it's cool nonetheless.
http://leocad.gerf.org/
Even has a Linux version out, though I don't know the status of it.
Also, check out the models! You can create nearly anything.
I saw an article on Slashdot eons ago that talked about a robot made of legos that ran off of a palm V as it's 'brain.' It was pretty impressive, and I wonder if there is a way to do this with this robot kit...
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
after getting my kit I figured out that a lot of the time you need either another RCX brick(the lego computer) or another motor, to do anything--the easiest, and cheapest way to get these is to get something like the droid developer kit, which has a scout brick in it, which has some sensors, and a motor. It is also controllable from the RCX. There are a few similar bricks, all of which are MUCH cheaper that the RCX brick (like half price. I have seen the droid kit on Ebay for as little as $30.
Slackware: old school feel, new school gear.
We don't have to stop at the Book. You can use this nifty little JAVA SDK to create a LEGO Robots that do all sorts of stuff. Infrared Communication, Voice Recognition, and Robotic Vision Oh My......
JavaTM Technology and Lego Mindstorm Robots
Robotics Developers Kit
Here is the Lego FAQ with a section about LEGO plural.
There have also been several previous discussions on Slashdot about this subject.
Personally I don't care about the "LEGO" versus "lego" trade-mark business. The problem is more about the difference between the American English and British English languages. To an English person, the word "LEGOS" looks and sounds completely wrong and stupid. And even if it could be pluralised it should probably be "legoes" to maintain the "oh" sound at the end.
Lego is the media used to make things, there is no such thing as "a lego", it is like making electronic devices from "silicons" instead of "silicon chips" or a house out of "concretes" instead of "concrete blocks".
I copied this sig from someone else (but where did they get it from?)