There where some special highlights that I wanted to show

First the LEGO Mindstorms Harlem Shake (which I was part of).  This makes me laugh so much!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The next highlight for me was meeting both Jørgen Vig Knudstorp (CEO of LEGO) and Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen (Owner of LEGO) who both tried out the LEGO Wheelchair!

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The other main highlight was spending time with the LEGO Mindstorms team who seriously rock.  Extremely nice people!!

I also got quite a bit of time playing with the new LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set and that is a major cool bit of hardware.  I think a lot of people are going to be happy when that comes out!

Pictures to follow soon!

Woo-hoo, the LEGO Wheelchair and I will be at LEGOWORLD in Copenhagen tomorrow for the 4 day event on the Mindstorms display. If your at the show, please say hi, if your thinking of going, GO! There will be some amazing LEGO models and people to meet!

I will post some pictures and videos of the event very soon.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

I want Evan!

Well people, today is a great day for LEGO MINDSTORM fans, the next generation of the LEGO MINDSTORMS set has been announced and looks flipping awesome!  I have known about this for a little while being an MCP and have been itching to spread the word however could not!

Check out these videos:

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

A brilliant article on the main features and spec can be found here : BotBech

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

If you are in to LEGO Mindstorms and want to learn more about sensors and start making your own, then this kit is the holy grail.  This board has more features than anyone could want.  You can even program the board directly using SuperProc C.

If I had to suggest improvements, I would probably ask for more information on how components work and why you need to use them in the certain experiments (e.g why do we use x resister in this example, why do we use a capacitor between these 2 pins).  I would also love to see an experiment which uses a non LEGO motors or a servo.  I think if you were clever you could setup this board to be many sensors in 1 (temperature, light, LED Array) and free up your NXT ports.

My next plan is to see if I can get a motor or servo working, maybe then moving on to a motor multiplexer.

I would like to thank HiTechnic for giving me this chance to try out this brilliant piece of kit.

Below are images of some of the experiments.

I followed this installation guide from NXT-Python: http://code.google.com/p/nxt-python/wiki/Installation

You will need to install PyUSB, to do this just run “apt-get install python-usb” under root terminal.

I only managed to get this working once I had restored the LEGO NXT 2.0 firmware on to the NXT brick.  I also had to make a NXT-Python config file and enter the NXT’s address in to it (you can find this under settings and NXT version on the NXT).  Information on making a config file can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/nxt-python/wiki/LocationConfig

All of my NXT’s started with 0016.  This should be entered as 2 parts of the address so in the config file you should have something like

[Brick]
name = MyNXT
host = 00:16:XX:XX:XX:XX
strict = 0
method = usb=True, bluetooth=False, fantomusb=False

The video below shows the Mary example running from the NXT-Python samples.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

What next? Well I now have a portable computer driving my NXT which has WIFI support and can run a webserver. It should not be too hard to turn the Pi in to an advance WIFI sensor for the NXT and cost a 1/3 of the price.

Here is 2 brilliant LEGO VIDEO

The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

The first of these was HiTechnic.com who sent me a SuperPro Experimental kit AND a MiniScope.  Both of these products where on my Christmas list for my wife to get me!

So the first of these products allow you to build your own circuits and sensors that can be used with the LEGO NXT (and a whole lot more).  It comes with a handy Experimenter’s Kit Handbook to take you through the basics up to some more advance stuff.  I will be doing a full review of this very soon and hope to build some very neat things!

The second product which has only been released recently is the MiniScope.  This is a full featured dual channel digital oscilloscope with an auxiliary 4 channel digital input option.  This is the perfect companion for the SuperPro because it will allow you to see what your circuits/sensors are outputting on your PC

The second of these wise companies was Matrix Robotics.  They make a metal building kit that is completely compatible with LEGO.  You still use the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT as the brain however you plug the MATRIX Controller (supports 4 motors and 4 servos) into the NXT sensor port (amazing!!).  Don’t get me wrong, I love my LEGO and I believe that you can build most things out of it however, sometimes you wish there was a longer/stronger beam, a more powerful motor, servo support or that you want your model to be indestructible.

So what did they send me?  1 of each of their sets!!!! (yes I must of been a very good person this year!).  My plan is to build a few small models first and then build something epic!! Matrix Wheelchair, a Terminator? who knows!

So who was the 3rd wise company? The popular blog/magazine MAKE who featured my LEGO Wheelchair a few months back.

So what did they send me?  Well to answer that I first need to tell you that for Christmas I hope to get some Arduino stuff including a Mindsensors NXShield which will allow me to control 4 LEGO NXT motors, 4 sensors and 12 Mindsensors servo’s from a single Arduino.  Also the Arduino I hope to get will have ADK support so that I can control it via an Android phone.  Again, I am not moving away from LEGO, I love it however its always good to know what other options are out there that I can use with LEGO.

Knowing what I hope to get for Christmas, you can appreciate how happy I am to get what MAKE sent me:  Make: Lego and Arduino Projects: Projects for extending MINDSTORMS NXT with open-source electronics.  Another item that I had on my wishlist for Christmas!  Again, I plan to do a full review once I get my Arduino!

Well, I am going to have a very busy few months with this stuff!  Many thanks goes out to HiTechnic, Matrix Robotics and MAKE.

Merry Christmas

In November I was invited to go to the World Robot Olympiad in Kuala Lumpur as a LEGO Robotics Expert and to show off the LEGO Wheelchair.  It was being held at the Sunway Pyramid Convention center on the 9th to the 11th of November. This was a huge honour and a chance in a lifetime experience!

Other fantastic LEGO MINDSTORMS enthusiasts where also at the event including:

• NeXTStorm and his amazing boxing robots
• Bazmarc and WallE
• Mathias Paul Scholz with his robot shadow puppet theatre and NXT biker gang
• Mark Crosbie and his SoundMachine
• David Gilday and Mike Dobson with their Guinness world record holding Rubiks cube solvers
• Will Gorman with his 3D Lego maker bot and Mars Curiosity rover
• Lasse Laussen and Ken Madsen with their flying Lego blimp C5

During the 3 day event, I would estimate over 250 children had a go on the LEGO Wheelchair.

we also spent the day with some refugee kids from Burma as part of the Dignity for Children foundation. We got to show them our LEGO models and teach them how to use the LEGO MINDSTORMS system.  At the end of the day, the LEGO Foundation was extremely nice and gave each school some free LEGO (quite a bit actually).   The children really seemed to enjoy their selves

Bazmarc’s beautiful video of the event (watch this!):

Click here to view the video on YouTube.

My Flickr stream:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lego_robotics/sets/72157632219164702/

Mark Crosbie fantastic write-up of the event:

WRO at Thinkbricks.net