While the Robotic Arm that comes with the NXT looks pretty neat, I must confess I've never built it. It just didn't look all that intresting, and only had a tiny reach. Apparntly Patrick Miles shared my dissapointment with the Lego arm, and therefore built his own. Its got a much better reach and is better weighted and counter balanced. And the best part is he put up some building instructions over on Imageshack.
Archive for July, 2007
A Better Robotic Arm
July 31st, 2007Slow times at Motocube
July 25th, 2007You may have noticed the lack of updates lately, and thats due to two things. The first is a general lack of intresting NXT related news. The big Lego news lately has been the shutdown/not shutdown of Brickshelf, but that is better covered over on other sites. Other than that there hasn't been alot going on. The other reason is that my Lego time has been cut severly as I've started work on a new project, a Bathroom remodel. I've also created a Blog to act as a journal of the project, so feel free to check that out over on www.voidsmith.com. The rest of my free time has been spent working on a bot for the NXTasy Anxt challenge, which I'll post about once its complete.
» Read more: Slow times at Motocube
LeJOS NXJ 0.3a
July 16th, 2007
A new release of LeJOS popped up this weekend. Version 0.3a has a whole mass of changes. The full release notes can be found here, however some of the highlights are:
- USB support
- A flash file system
- Flash native methods
- Java streams over Bluetooth and USB
- The pctools library of nxj tools including nxjbrowse
NXJ is starting to shape up to be a usuable language and hopefully it will eventualy become a real competitor to the likes of NXC and RobotC. Check it ou at the LeJOS page.
New Star Wars Technic Set!
July 9th, 2007
Pictures of a new Lego Star Wars Technic set have been found. Apparntly dug out of a Lego site's cache, they show a new Model, the AT-AT. One-upping all of the other Star Wars models, this one looks to have the new Power Functions motors, which I would assume lets it walk. Of course all of this is just rumor and speculation at this point, and it could be an hoax, but the box art looks legit. Ohh and did I mention it comes with a Light Saber wielding Luke Skywalker mini-fig? Check out the pics at Eurobricks.
ANxT! Nxtasy.org ‘s 3rd Challenge
July 9th, 2007
NXTasy.org has kicked off thier third challenge. Following in the footsteps of the NXTlog 3rd challenge, NXTasy.org 's is also bug related. This time, the challenge is to build an Ant like bot, that can lift an object many times more powerful than itself. The winner will however not be determined just by how much it can lift, but also by how fast it goes, as well as how "Ant like" it is. This is a great idea, as it means that someone with lots of creative abilities can produce a high scoring bot, even if they don't have all the parts required to get the raw lift ability required to win. Check out all the rules over at NXTasy's challenge page.
» Read more: ANxT! Nxtasy.org ‘s 3rd Challenge
Brickworld 2007 Great Ball Contraption
July 5th, 2007{youtube}6X9tZsIKDf8{/youtube}Great Ball Contraptions are one of my favorite type of Lego displays. I've always found this type of Rube Goldberg device fascinating. For those of you that have never seen one, the basic premise is that a bunch of folks get together and each build a module that takes in Lego soccer balls from one end, and spits them out the other, moving them in some intresting fashion in between. With a standard feed rate, and input and output location, you can group up the modules for however many people you have, into one giant contraption. The one at Brickworld 2007 is a great example, and there are some really wonderful modules. I particularly like the one (near the end of the video) that uses a NXT powered truck to carry crates of balls from one location to the other.
[Via Joe Meno's Journal]
