Beam Shooter

This was one of my favorite projects of the year, and I finally got it up to flickr.


the rest of the pix on my flickr page, along with some basic description under some of the pix.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/1brick/sets/72157622975485392/

It can shoot REALLY far, at least in the scale of LEGO. Maybe one day i'll have be automated. But as a kids project, its best left to some manual labor.

Smart Move Programming

I've been toying with finite state machines with NXT-g for a while now. This one's my latest exercise in using the myriad of functions that NXT-g has.

I've got timers counting down from 150 seconds, Logic blocks for "and" logic, sounds for debugging, loops with logic ends, tons of myblocks, opening and closing files, switches with multiple values, displaying custom images and all that good stuff.


This program is for my the Smart Move challenge in FLL. This is probably the closest I've gotten to actually finishing all of the missions, even though they weren't as hard as they've been in the last few years. (Hundreds of children could probably beg to differ that they were hard). That said, my robot, IROH will get his pictorials when he's ready. Otherwise, i've got the whole program up on Flickr.com/photos/1brick .

Biggest problem with this program? Screen flickering, I need to find a new spot for the display clearing. I'd rather my program not wait .1 of a second before it runs, even though it hasnt been a problem.

AS-ST's!

as promised, i've got some pix..wish they were higher quality but hey ..
thanks to Daniele Benedettelli for the work and inspiration.


there were 5 in this picture and a sixth being built since one of the kids had to catch up ..he missed a class. I was able to download the pre-written program into all of them, and we had a great time watching them walk around. After all that, i tried getting the kids to write the program using NXT-G, man this was tough. It was hard to get the 'magic built in limit switch' working right. The theory was there, but i hadnt had enough time to test it before giving it to the students. It should've been easier than what it was, but you can definitely see the speed limitations of NXT G under the speed of NXC.

heres some more small thumbnails of the robots, which all got some custom treatment from each kid.




















As you can see, i've got some imaginative kids. Most had enough to build the full model, but some had the retail kit limitation. Others had the educational kit and the resource kit together so all their beams were grey instead of white. what a great project.

A room full of ATSTs

My robotics classes are winding down, but i thought i'd share an experience

For my BYOB (Bring your own bot) Advanced Robotics class, I decided to use Daniele Benedettelli's 'Creating Cool Mindstorms NXT Robots for the second half of the class. For the first half i wanted to touch on structural building and touch on making state machines using NXT-G. The kids came up with some great robots and i really wish i took some photos before those robots got taken apart (save for one that was built using my parts). And despite some technical issues with Version 1.0 of NXT-G, we were able to get some basic SUMO programs using a finite state machine.

So on to the second half, I really wanted to keep the theme of getting a strong structure and have them program using state machines and such. We built the ATST out of the book and it took about 1 and 3/4 classes to build verbally. While very difficult, this can be quite rewarding. Since my kids were at a level where they all understood the parts, speaking in LEGO was really easy and i didnt have to backtrack to explain parts. But man, what a great feeling to have 7 NXT at st's walking around at the end of the class. The kids had promised to take their creations home and seriously modify them. I cant wait to get some shots of possibly modified Atsts.

The challenge now is to convert Danielle's NXC program to an NXT g Program. There's already a nice 'servomotor automagic built-in limit switch' already made by LEGO in their Education NXT (software) set. And i think i can manage some of the walking machines, but since there's no real support for array's, a lot of the number plugging will be manual. I'll see about posting when i get that ready (preferably before class next Tuesday).

So next week..watch out endor..atsts are coming

An ambitious contest

The very cool folks at NXTLOG put up a rather ambitious contest this month.
they want us to build bipeds

Nxtlog Biped challenge

I've tackled this idea before twice and its pretty complex. At least the way I tried. 6 motors, 2 Nxt Bricks..12 batteries and I even cracked a motor (had it sent back and all that ...go Customer service!). But there have been those who have put up some great robots, single motor up to only 3 motor bipeds. Lets see what the community can do with this one!