This September 21-23 the Seattle Robotics Society is holding Robothon 2007. While this even isn't restricted to Lego, it is a great event for NXT bots, with all sorts of competitions:
Check out the website here.
Brickworld 2007 was this past weekend in Chicago, and while I wasn't able to attend there is a photostream over on Flickr that has some great pictures. Hopefully some more will get put up when people return home, but right there are some great shots of the very impressive Space layout. The sheer number of mmini-figs and models is great. Check it out on Flickr.
» Read more: Brickworld 2007
HiTechnic has just announced that they are taking orders for their IR seeker sensor. This nifty device not only can recognize an IR source, but also tell what direction its in (as long as its not directly behind the sensor). It looks like it has 5 different IR sensors in it, which it uses to give a position reading between zero and nine. Should be a very useful addition to anyone trying to make a seeker type bot. Order yours here for 38.99.
Sivan Toledo continues to come up with some very intresting homebrew add-ons for the NXT. His latest is control circuit to handle a stepper motor salavaged from an old scanner. Stepper motors are the ideal acutator for an NXT device, because as the name indicates they turn in small steps, not just on or off. This means that instead of having to build in an encoder, and try and get a staright DC motor to turn the approriate amount, with a stepper you can tell it to turn 90 degrees, and it will turn exactly 90 degrees, everytime. Steppers also tend to have higher torque, and lower speeds, reducing the need for a complicated (and power robbing) gear train. Unfortuantly they are also more expensive, and much harder to control, so they aren't the standard NXT motor. Sivan shows how you can interface one using some custom circuitry. Check it out here.
» Read more: Using a Stepper Motor with the NXT
After lots of fiddling and a few blown chips I managed to get the solenoid valves working my NXT. When I first got my NXT two of my biggest problems were the lack of actuators, and the lack of linear acutators. I've since learned through design tricks to overcome most of these issues, but I kept trying to think of a better way. Then a few months ago I came across a manifold of pneumatic valves. They had fittings on them that was the proper size for Lego tubing, and I thought they would be an excellant fit. Only problem was, how do i get the NXT brick to control the valves. Turns out after lots of research and a few Digikey orders, it was actualy quite easy. Read on for the whole story.
» Read more: Pneumatic Valves
You may have noticed the lack of postings lately, thats due mostly to two things. One I just bought a house and thats kept me away from Lego. The other has been a general lack of intresting NXT news lately, looks like things have been picking back up this week though.
I recently picked up a PCF8574 Sensor building kit from Mindsensors.com. I was looking at their site with the intent to just get a few cables that I could cut up and maybe a socket or two to use with my breadboard. However I saw the kit and decided that with its included NXT cable socket, as well as a little PCB and everything needed to use a PCF8574 all for only $14 it seemed like a good idea, and I must say I'm quite happy with it. This was one of the first things I tried with the kit, as it has eight outputs and the LED digit has eight inputs it seemed like a perfect fit. I wired up one output to each LED in the display and then using some software I can have the NXT display any number I want (as long as its less than ten that is).
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