Mindstorms NXT

EpicentrE · Post by **EpicentrE** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 1:25 pm

Don't know if anyone else here is a big lego fan like me, but I've just discovered the new version of Mindstorms; Mindstorms NXT.

For those of you who dont know, Mindstorms included a brain with ports for 3 motors and 3 sensors. There were touch, light, and rotation sensors, it was all compatible with all other lego stuff, and it could be programmed by there own (very limited) software on PC. I had great fun with it, and made some really cool things, for example;

I made a robotic hand which lay on its side on the table with 3 motors, the bottom 2 fingers were linked, as were the top 2 and the thumb, and the third motor lifted the thumb and 2 upper fingers upwards. I also made a glove with sensors in it to detect what position your hand was in, and programmed it to play, scissor paper stone! It worked really well and was great fun.

The main problem with mindstorms is that firstly, the motors used were just standard lego motors, therefore they had no sort of feedback meaning you needed to use a sensor port per motor used if you wanted to record any type of movement, making it quite limited. Also, the sensors, wern't great, the light sensor wasn't very accurate and was affected far more by ambient light than it should've been, meaning even if it was pressed up against a surface it could sometimes read the colour incorrectly.

This new mindstorms however, NXT, has 3 ports for special lego servo motors (which can rotate constantly aswell) which also have built in sensors for positioning, just like normal servos, or the motor can be left unpowered and it can just be used as a rotation sensor. It also includes 4 sensor ports this time, and comes with an improved light sensor, sound sensor, ultrasound and touch sensor, aswell as a vastly upgraded programming suite.

I'm very excited about this, you should be able to, in theory, use the origional mindstorms and this new one together on an invention, meaning 3 servo motors, 3 normal motors, up to 3 touch sensors, 2 light sensors, infrared and sound sensors all in one model, and (also in theory) it should be possible to make the 2 units communicate in some way, for example by having a motor from one unit rotate a disk with different colours around its edges infront of a light sensor from the other unit, then whatever colour it stops rotating on activated a program in the other unit. or just have the 2 units seprately handling different parts of whatever it is that invention is doing. Anyway, as you might have guessed, I'm quite excited

shame it dosn't come out till september

Website is at http://mindstorms.lego.com/ if anyone else is interested! I better start planning what I'm gonna build!

bobblebot · Post by **bobblebot** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 2:16 pm

I had the old mindstorms and love it, so this one should be good. Unfortunately I probably won't be able to buy it for ages after it comes out as I am attempting to raise over ?2000 for a new laptop

Currently I am on about 70 quid

I like the idea of combining the two though. Should be good!

Post by **petec** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 7:51 pm

?2k for a laptop - pay more than 600 and youre being robbed...

Anyway, I've got the old mindstorms and had a lot of fun with it combined with pneumatics....where did you think Thunderpants came from

The biggest problem I had with it was the size of the main unit. It was huge - partly down to the 3000 AA batteries it seemed to need. Hopefully that will be addressed by NXT as well. I see it can use bluetooth - nice touch.

In the US, there used to be fights on the side at some battlebots events between Mindstorms robots. I've always thought there is some potential there, but I never have the time.

bobblebot · Post by **bobblebot** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 8:19 pm

petec wrote:?2k for a laptop - pay more than 600 and youre being robbed...

Yes I know it is a little excessive

(especially since my current one was ?400). Its the new Apple MacBook Pro. Apple stuff has always been very expensive though (although in my opinion, worth it). Besides, it gives me an excuse to start up my own web design business to raise funds, which is something I have wanted to do for a while now.

Anyway, this thread has inspired me to dig out my old mindstorms stuff, and I have spent most of the afternoon having fun building and destroying various different robots. I had forgotton just how much fun it is

EpicentrE · Post by **EpicentrE** » Sat Jun 03, 2006 9:33 pm

petec wrote:In the US, there used to be fights on the side at some battlebots events between Mindstorms robots. I've always thought there is some potential there, but I never have the time.

I believe it was called battlebricks, I gave it a go once aswell (long before I started ants) and made a pneumatic lifter, whcih had a built in pump etc, and was pretty cool, except it moved really slow and took about an hour to rotate 360 degrees

but the lifter was cool, could lift up my VCR.

I was looking at my old mindstorms stuff the other day and was wondering wether it would be possible to chop the bototm half off the RCX (where the batteries go) and just use a 2-cell lipo of some variety, but never really got any further with it.

I cant wait for NXT anyway, I'm going to experiment more with the programming this time than I did before, try to make stuff to do simple tasks, like drive around finding things then do something with them in some kind of order

Andrew_Hibberd · Post by **Andrew_Hibberd** » Sun Jun 04, 2006 7:57 pm

I had a terrible childhood, i had static lego

Will look into this though as i always wanted the orginal mindstorm set.

Adam Hargreaves · Post by **Adam Hargreaves** » Mon Jun 05, 2006 9:39 pm

i blew up my lego technic motor by putting 18V through it (two 9V batteris in series). I use my technic in my ants now. I too always wanted Mindstorms, but never got it

tom of technology · Post by **tom of technology** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:52 pm

i got the new lego nxt for Christmas it was great but could have done with a more versatile connection setup between brick (literaly a BRICK) and the motors and sensors.I have found a great program for palm for controlling the nxt with blue tooth Works just great on my z22 (through IR instead)

leo-rcc · Post by **leo-rcc** » Wed Mar 28, 2007 3:56 pm

I agree with Tom about the brick, it could have been a lot smaller i think. I too have a nxt setup at home and i think its great. it works very nicely.

malivoirec · Post by **malivoirec** » Sun Apr 01, 2007 8:53 pm

Bought 2 (greedy). Anyway, a group of high tech idiots (before anyone asks yes that includes me) have built some autonomus bots that battle each other using the software. I know that its been done before but not with extra components. Our current champ uses a full pressure aroplane retract that can flip 20 kg (thats all our scales go up to.)