1. Do they come with temperature, motion, pressure or any similar sensor packages?
The Robotics Invention System comes with two touch sensors and one light sensor. You can buy rotation and temperature sensors from LEGO. Beyond that, you'll have to build your own. (I have a chapter about this, including instructions for a Hall effect sensor.)
2. Does the ora book give a pinout on the connectors so custom electronics can be added?
No. Nobody's tried to open up the box to attach stuff directly to the circuitboard, as far as I know. The closest information I know about is at Kekoa Proudfoot's site: http://graphics.stanford.edu/~kekoa/rcx/
3. Are there motor specifications so that motors can be removed/ redesigned/ remounted?
There's some motor information at Dave Baum's site: http://www.enteract.com/~dbaum/lego/motors.html
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Sorry, no, I'm not familiar with those books. The irony is that even though I wrote technical books I read very few of them.
I did enjoy working with Apress. They seem to be a very author-friendly publisher.
Two things:
1. I never wrote for Wrox.
2. My book has been out in a second edition since February:
http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=13 8
Coincidentally, I just published an article on this subject: http://wireless.java.sun.com/midp/articles/picture /
Hi Pat,
You are sexy. And other adjectives.
Good luck with Java 1.5.1.
Regards,
Jonathan
There's a MacOS version of NQC, which is free. And
ROBOLAB has a Macintosh version, but you'll have to pay for it.
You will need a cable for the IR tower, which you can order from Pitsco LEGO DACTA (800)362-4308. It's part number 4119830, $15.
-Jonathan
1. Do they come with temperature, motion, pressure or any similar sensor packages?
The Robotics Invention System comes with two touch sensors and one light sensor. You can buy rotation and temperature sensors from LEGO. Beyond that, you'll have to build your own. (I have a chapter about this, including instructions for a Hall effect sensor.)
2. Does the ora book give a pinout on the connectors so custom electronics can be added?
No. Nobody's tried to open up the box to attach stuff directly to the circuitboard, as far as I know. The closest information I know about is at Kekoa Proudfoot's site: http://graphics.stanford.edu/~kekoa/rcx/
3. Are there motor specifications so that motors can be removed/ redesigned/ remounted?
There's some motor information at Dave Baum's site: http://www.enteract.com/~dbaum/lego/motors.html
The basic approach in the book is to go beyond what's in the box--software from the Internet, new building projects, and that sort of thing.
The book includes these topics:
Coverage of alternate development environments, like legOS, the wildly popular NQC, pbFORTH, and (ahem) Visual Basic.
Robot projects, including building instructions and working code.
Mechanical design and tricks.
Do-it-yourself sensors.
A tag game for two robots.
A light treatment of subsumption architecture, with implementations in NQC and legOS.
Other fun stuff.
I don't want to ruin the surprise about the animal on the cover. I'll just say that it's very appropriate.