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New Lego Mindstorms Dissected

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the go-my-robotic-army-destroy dept.

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.

8 of 136 comments (clear)

  1. I'm curious what else is in the box.... by Lxy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I enjoy working with my Mindstorms set, but I've run into a serious limitation. The parts that come with the Mindstorms kit just aren't sufficient for building anything cool. The Technic sets are long gone. The best I could figure is that I'd have to buy a whole lot of Mindstorms to get enough gears, shafts, and standard bricks to build anything really nifty. Obviously cost prohibitive, but at least I'd have a lot of RCX bricks.

    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?

    --

    There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
    :wq
    1. Re:I'm curious what else is in the box.... by Moofie · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Where are you folks finding LEGO bricks that AREN'T compatible with one another?

      --
      Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
  2. No thanks, Vex is more fun. by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I tried the lego route and moved on to the VEX platform. the VEX is easier to transition to real processing hardware as the sensors are really stinking easy to interface to, all metal screw/nut construction allows you to build more permananent setups and prototypes.

    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.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  3. What about cube/mesh/tree topologies? by argent · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Each brick can communicate with three others? Well, those three don't need to communicate with the same three, do they? You should be able to create a cube topology by forwarding messages to set up an 8-way system, or even set up a hexagonal mesh or a binary tree for an n-way topology. For example, you could have a forebrain-hindbrain "backbone" with two intelligent "limb" processors off each "brain"... or even build a version of Bob Forward's "Christmas Bush".

    1. Re:What about cube/mesh/tree topologies? by naoursla · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There is a guy at Microsoft in the Windows Mobile group who has interfaced his bluetooth enabled camera phone to the NXT brick. He has instructions for replicating his bot at wimobot.com.

  4. Lego Robot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Check out this guy's lego robot, controllable in your browser. http://turbogfx.homelinux.org/legocam/ It's got a video feed and you can drive it all over his house.

  5. I think I speak for us all when I say... by minuszero · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Dude!
    I wanna be a kid again!

    Well, I for one bow down to our new Lego robot overlords...

  6. Re:BrickLink for spare parts!:I'm curious what els by hmbcarol · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It was on Slashdot many moons ago. It's at http://acarol.woz.org/. I'm VERY close to having a significantly improved design posted. Enjoy...