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I'm glad to see Lego continuing this line of logic - it's amazing what can be done with these mindstorms with the proper tools. When I was much younger (about 1
by benzofuran 14y ago
I'm glad to see Lego continuing this line of logic - it's amazing what can be done with these mindstorms with the proper tools.
When I was much younger (about 12 years ago), I built a bipedal walker with gimbaled hips and articulated ankles and knees out of two first gen RCX units, and it managed to get me a free trip to ISEF, which in itself was pretty neat. I was using NQC [1] to program them in tandem, which at the time was pretty neat sauce. I've fallen way out of the loop with these, but it seems like Lego is encouraging good work that removes a lot of the stumbling blocks you'll see when using more bare-bones components like raw servos and arduinos.
My only wish was that Lego would start selling 'engineering' sets for those of us that grew up with them to use for prototyping - I got through a few hairy sessions in college using the tub I'd kept from when I was younger, but with the sets these days there's a lot of stuff you don't need. Something like the fischertechnik toys but with lego's distribution and selection of parts. Alas.
[1] http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nqc/ http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nqc/
- jeffbarr 14y ago>My only wish was that Lego would start selling 'engineering' sets Is this is what you want? http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/lego_mindstorms_education_resource_set/2214 http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/lego_mindstorms_educ... 817 Technic parts go get you going. It is marked "Lego Education." I ordered two sets using my .edu email address and no one complained.
- introspekt 14y agoAfter a quick browse I found this: http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/categories/products/university/tetrix http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/categories/products/universi... Certainly closer to real robotics, with servos, metal parts, etc.
- AlexDanger 14y agoWow, how long has this been around? Does it use the standard LEGO attachment system or is it all nuts and bolts? Looks sort of like Meccano.
- introspekt 14y agoIt's actually produced by a Pitsco, Inc. Much like Meccano it's put together with nuts and bolts. There are parts called Hard Point connectors to interface with Lego. http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/tetrix_hard_point_connectors/1646 http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/tetrix_hard_point_co... Looks like a joint venture for educational purposes.
- ja27 14y agoTetrix with an NXT brick is the basis for FIRST Tech Challenge robots, if you want to see some examples of what high school age kids build with it. http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc http://www.usfirst.org/roboticsprograms/ftc
- groker 14y agoI've been looking at this system too. http://matrixrobotics.com http://matrixrobotics.com Interfaces perfectly with Lego and is more Lego like in the way you can build things. Their holes line up perfectly with Lego holes. Pretty cool.
- tellarin 14y agoI wish they had more details on this "design engineering" pack: http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/ev3_design_engineering_projects/2565 http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/product/ev3_design_engineeri... It seems pretty cool.
- benzofuran 14y agoThanks guys - I'd forgotten about lego education, as I'm unfortunately outside of the range of mechanical prototypes these days (ended up as a materials engineer). However, it'd be better if lego publicised these some more!
- nwh 14y agoNQC was my first real world experiences with coding. I remember making a printer with one of the original RCX. It consisted of three motors, two rotation sensors, a pen, and a computer-side script to turn images into black and white "halftone". The output was predictably bad, but I had a lot of fun making it.