Do you prefer The RCXor the NXT? 

With the RCX going out and the NXT replacing it there is one place that I know of that you can buy it for $299.00 (Not including Shipping) It makes sense, An Out Dated Lego mindstorm that they have Stopped making, would (Or I think) Be a lot more, But it isn't! Get it while supplies last. Click Here

 Click here to find a RCX (while supplies last)

I for one am going to start looking on Bricklink for some cheap RCX's and other Lego mindstorm's parts. I have bean building with Lego's since I was about 5 so I have bean building for a long time. And soon there won't be any more Lego RCX's up for sale and if you don't have one well then start looking for the NXT (I'm recommending the NXT I have used it and it works really well)  I don't know much about the NXT but I know for sure that it will come with three motors, 571 pieces                                          (147 pieces less than the RCX) and PC/MAC compatible programming software, An intelligent brick with bluetooth touch. Also a touch sensor, A light sensors, An ultrasonic sensor and sound sensor.

Click here to go to a website for the NXT

http://thenxtstep.blogspot.com/

Click here to buy new Robolab 2.9!

NXT V.S RCX  This is in .pdf if you can't read it you can download it Here

This Robolab 2.5.4/2.9.3 will convert CM into degrees, This program hasn't been tested on a RCX though. Conversion Program

Watter proof motor?

In the Police boat Lego set there is a watter proof motor! I for one am going to buy it and then my friend an I will build a Submarine! if the Submarine works we will try to get a small video camera down into the submarine so that we can see what the submarine sees! we also thought of using an Ultrasonic sensor to navigate the Sub but since we are trying to build this Sub out of Lego's only we would have to put an NXT or something in there to use the Ultrasonic Sensor. If we did put an NXT into the sub we would control it with Blue tooth hook-up for a computer (Click here to see a Blue tooth hook-up for a computer) I'm not sure how we are going to do the Video camera in the sub yet so any ideas are welcome. Just go to the "Contact me" page and submit your idea.

Click here to watch a video with the new watter proof motor!

I bout a set from Lego Land in Mall Of America MN. It was an accessory setaccessory set to the Mobile Crane. It has a different Motor and battery box than the traditional Motor and Battery box.

The motor I got looked like this:

Pros to this motor:

1. It has two axle hook-ups so that you could have two axles in there at the same time, But with the traditional motor you would have to have a connector piece to hook up another axle to it, Then on top of that the traditional motor only has one axle sticking out of it to build on.
2. It moves VERY fast! I hooked it up to a gear box and it made the gear box go pretty fast! (At least faster than the traditional motor would make the gear box go!)

 Cons to this motor:

1. It is bigger than the traditional motor.
2. It will be harder to hook to a robot.
3. And it will need geared down A LOT!

The battery Box I got looked like this:

Pro to this battery box:

1. It's smaller
2. It can be hooked up to a robot easier than if you were using a traditional battery box. 

Cons to this battery box:

1. It can't be hooked up to a plate without using beams of some sort, etc.
2. It's harder to use then the traditional battery box on account of that the switch being harder to turn off the motor that is hooked up to the battery box. Unlike the traditional battery boxes were all you have to do is push down a switch and it turns off. With this motor you have to slip the switch almost exactly into the center of the shaft.

Click here to buy an IRRD sensor!

The IRRD sensor shows how close you are to an object.

The Infrared Relative Distance sensor (IRRD) is a sensor for the Lego Mindstorms Robotic Invention System?
The IRRD sensor senses when it is close to an object, and gives you an indication of how the distance is changing. Your program can use this information to avoid collisions, find an object, or make decisions on how far away the object is.

The IRRD show relative distance, up to two feet.  It works by measuring reflected infra red light. Objects that are close reflect a lot of light.  The Light sensor works the same way also. The amout of light reflected also depends on the size of the object and it's color.  Thus the distance measured is relative, not absolute.
The IRRD can be used as a simple proximity detector (IRPD), with trigger distance set by software.  Advanced programs can have multiple responses dependent on the distance.

The sensor uses TV remote control technology.  It works by sending out infrared light, and looking for IR light reflected back.  Infrared is like normal light, except you can not see it with you eye. There will be no visible indication when the sensor is operating.

NOTE:  This product uses the same Infra-red technology that the RCX uses to communicate with your PC.  When the IR Proximity Detector is in operation, it may interfere with communication between the RCX and PC.

       Therimon

With just the RCX, IRRD sensor, and a simple program, you can build a musical insturment that plays musical notes depending on the position of your hand.  This type of insturment is called a Therimon.

You program the detector just like the Lego light sensor.  Use the Light Sensor block in the Mindstorms program environment to cause program branches.  The IRRD returns eight different values depending on what it sees.  In the example below, the RCX will produce four different tones depending on the distance to your hand.  This example could be expanded to six tones.

The IRRD sensor can detect walls, or the floor.  Here is a picture of a table top robot, that runs around  on the table, without falling off.

The IRRD sensor can also b used as a scanner, as in this robot by Volga Aksoy.

Specifications

• Size: 2 bumps by 4 bumps.  Height is one and one third bricks.  (one brick plus one flat plate)
• Size:  1.25 x 0.625 x 0.575 inch.
• Mindstorms electric plate connector on bottom.
• Mindstorms value.  (Distance to 8 x 10 inch white paper rectangle)
  • 0      No object detected
  • 10    Object is 21 to 24 inches away
  • 25    Object is 15 to 21 inches away
  • 41    Object is 11 to 15 inches away
  • 56    Object is 8 to 11 inches away
  • 72    Object is 4 to 8 inches away
  • 88    Object is 0 to 4 inches away
  • 100    Interference from another IR signal.
• Power required:  8.2 volts,  6 mA.     (Minimum Mindstorms battery voltage is 8.2)

---

Technical Description

The IRRD sensor  uses the same technology found in a TV remote control device.  The detector sends out modulated infra-red light, and looks for reflected light coming back.  When enough light is received back to trigger the detector circuit, the circuit changes binary state.  Light from the LED is a continuous string of bursts of modulated square waves.  The carrier frequency is 38 KHz..   A microprocessor generates the bursts, and sets the output voltage.  Hysteresis is created by the firmware.

The relationship of Mindstorms Value to distance is reasonably linear.  Here is a graph of a typical IRRD sensor, showing distance to a standard 8.5 x 11 inch sheet of white paper.


 

The amount of infrared light reflected depends on the distance, size, and ?color? of the object.  Distances shown above are for a white wall.  The distances are less for objects that are smaller, or reflect less infrared light.
The darkest object observed was a textured brown plastic wastebasket, first detected at 10 inches.

Maximum range for different colors:

• 24 inches  -  White wall
• 24 inches  -  Red paper.
• 20 inches  -  Black paper.
• 19 inches  -  Dark wood door
• 10 inches  -  Textured brown plastic.


Maximum range for different size white paper object.

• 24 inches  -  2 x 3 foot rectangle.
• 21 inches  -  8.5 x 11 inch rectangle
• 17 inches  -  6 x 6 inch square
• 13 inches  -  3 x 3 inch square
•   7 inches  -  1 x 1 inch square


Values and distances may vary slightly between sensors, due to manufacturing tolerance.
 

2007 First Lego League - Google Search

 

Educational Robotics

 

LEGO Education Store ROBOLAB 2.9 Upgrade (site license)

 

LEGO Education

 

LEGO Shop At Home

 

LEGO.com Building Instructions Home Page

 

LEGO.com FAQs How can I personalize my NXT

 

LEGO.com Factory Design Homepage

 

LEGO.com MINDSTORMS NXT Home

 

LEGO.com Search Results

 

NEED's TRANSLATING!

 

nxtbot.com blog

 

RCX - Google Image Search

 

The Challenge

 

The NXT STEP - Lego Mindstorms NXT Blog

 

What's Your Nano IQ

bricklink

BrickLink Reference Catalog

 

INV for the temperture set

 

Set that has a temperture sensor and other good parts

 

Toy Brick Brigade - BrickLink.com

Have you ever done the First Lego League? Well this is my story of my first year in FLL.

The Lego regional tournament by Zachary szewczyk.

2006

We moved to St.Peter MN in 2005 after our dad got transferred from Canfield Ohio, Our dads in the army so we moved around a lot.

I thought that I wasn’t going to like it here not knowing anyone and all, so me, Zach and my Brother Sebo took a Lego class, I guess hoping that we would meet some other people and because we both liked Lego’s a lot. So we took the Lego class, we met Hans one of the future Lego team members, and Deb my future Lego coach.

We took two more Lego classes and when the start of the school year came Deb asked me to join the Lego team. I accepted without hesitation, not knowing what I was taking on.

We had nine team members when we started. Our team name was the survivors;  our team number was 69; and when we started we had me, Zac, Kelten, Brenney, Hans, Josh, Devin, Jonas, Nathan, and Daniel. We had to wait till the start of the school year to get the FLL (First Lego League) official team mat. So we waited and then when we finally got the mat and the Lego’s to build the challenges we started building the board. a three two by four’s and a big sheet of plywood is what we used to build the mat. The board was pretty big, it had nine challenges all built out of Lego’s.

We did eight of the nine challenges: the Sub, the artificial reef, the shipping  container, the crates, the pipeline, the flags (transect mapping), and the protective structure. There was one more challenges on the board called the gray fish (we probably ran down the gray fish a majority of the time). I’ll tell you a story of when we ran the gray fish down. Most of the time when we would run our robot one of the arms was to big and it hit the gray fish or the robot just wasn’t lined up right so it would go in weird directions. Now the transect mapping was the hardest challenge on the board, though some of the other team members would disagree with me, but that is what I thought. For the flags to count you had to push them up, but we would push one up and then go to push the next flag up and the last flag would  fall down. When we did the flags we had an arm that reached out and went up and down t get the flags. A full row of flags all of the flags in that row up was worth 45 points, one flag up out of any roe was worth 30 points. When we programmed the flags we used robolab. Robolab icons were motor A forward motor A backward. There were stop sign icons that would say motor A stop, Motor B stop, motor C stop or motor ABC stop and that would stop all motors. The dolphin was worth 25 points if you pushed or pulled it onto your side of the board. The dolphin was hanging over each side of the board in what represented a fishing net, so wich ever team got to it first and got it onto their side of the board would get the points. The pipeline was a pipeline with part of it hanging out so our robot would have to go over to it and

push it in; then we would haft to push the flags on the end of the pipeline up. The crates and the shipping container were both the same challenge, I think. So for the shipping container and the crates we got 45 points: for the shipping container and 5 points for each crate in base (base was a green spot on the mat were we could touch our robot, change our arms on our robot without losing any points that is a crate) but the only thing was that every time we touched our robot out of base we would lose a crate that is the judge would take it away and we wouldn’t get the 2 points. The artificial reef was worth 45 points and it was pretty close to base so we did the artificial reef and got it most of the time. For the artificial reef to count we had to pull it into a lighter color blue on the board.

The sub was probably the second hardest challenge on the board because the research vessel that it was on a swivel base so it was very hard to consistently get the sub. For the sub to count, we had to pick it up off of the research vessel and put it onto the blue on the mat. The artifacts was a red box down by the third row of flags. The artifacts were inside a black line, and we had to pull it out of the black line to get the points. The protective structure was down by the first row of flags (there are three rows of flags). For the proactive structure to count, we had to push it over so that it covered the pump.

When we built the board we had to put on what is called a dummy border for the dolphin to sit on so that it wouldn’t fall of. When we went up against another team we had two boards stuck together so that the dolphin could hangover the side onto each table, we would have to do as many challenges as we could in two and one half minuets. The team with the most points at the end of the two and one half minuets won that round.

               Building the board only took us a few hours but that was nothing compared to what we had in store.

Once we built the board we started building the challenges for the board it probably took us two or three meets to finish the challenges for the board we met twice a week for two hours so once we were done building the board and the challenges we brainstormed for an ideal robot but we couldn’t agree on a robot, so we divided up into four teams. I worked with Brenney, and we tried two or three designs before we chose a robot to work on and before we decided wich robot we would work on, we decided on trying a robot called the acrobat: it had big weels and couldn’t turn very well, so we switched to the roverbot. So we ended up working with a roverbot, and we decided to try to conquer the sub mission; so we started programming, but in the end we didn’t do the sub because we didn’t have a rotational sensor to measure our robots wheel rotations, so we had to go with the looks of our robot not skill (not that the roverbot has much skill). So when we finely picked a robot it wasn’t mine and Brenneys, it was Hans Daniel’s and Jonas’s robot that got picked. It was  really big at first. It had small wheels a huge base, and it was mildly fast, and it had only one place we could have a motor and it was in a bad place to build any arms to put on for any other challenges. I suggested that we rebuild some but no one thought it was a good idea. So, we didn’t, but when Deb suggested that we rebuild some everyone thought it was a good idea (Deb is our coach) It was kind of frustrating but I put it behind me and moved on (kind of) . Once we had picked a robot I thought that I would not have anything to do but I was wrong I would help with a lot more. Programming was next on our list of things to do (not that we had a list) so we started programming. I’m not sure witch challenge we started working on so I cant tell you that but I can tell you that the flags were the hardest challenge to program.   

 We tried to do all of the challenges in two and one half minuets.

      We worked on our robot a lot, and we met at the community center for two hours. I’m pretty sure if you didn’t count sleeping as being home we would have been there for longer than we were home! Maybe. So we worked and worked some more and some more after that and maybe even some more after that on our robot and on our programs that told our robot what to do and on our skit props and lines. By now the regional Lego tournament was coming up so we started getting nervous (at least I was) and then that fateful day the Lego regional tournament was here.

     So we went into the school (all the Lego tournaments were held in a school) and we registered so the judges knew that we were there and then we went to find our pit/the place were we put all our stuff, practiced our runs on the board ate lunch hung out when we didn’t have anything to do tweaked our programs, maybe took a nap, and just fooled around.

I’m pretty sure our first run on the board was at 10:00. so, 10:00 came and we went to the board to get ready.

The announcer asked if we were ready we said “yes” He asked the other teams “yes” they said and the count down starts 3 2 1 LEGO, and Nathan pushed the run button and it was pretty much hands off from here on out. So we watched  and waited to see if all our hard work had paid of, it did scored 137 points that run though in our other runs our score didn’t increase it got lower and lower in our other two rounds but we worked on other things more such as our robot and our skit we had to pick one subject to base our skit on so we decided to base our skit on fish farming. We went back to our pit and we talked about our run so it was not so good but we didn’t have much time to think about that because we had technical judging next so we went over there and waited for our turn in the technical jugging. we waited and when the other team come out we got ready to come in, the judges said to come in and the we shut the door then they started asking us about our robot design then one of the judges asked who was going to talk about our robots programming so me and Nathan went over to explain how We programmed our robot we explained our programming and then we went to watch the rest of our team talk about our robot design then we left and went to eat lunch.

After we got done eating lunch we went to the gym to play some basketball before we went to do our skit so we played basketball for awhile, and then we went to get our skit stuff from our parents cars, kelten and me went to get our skit props wile the rest of our team did something else. After we got our skit props we got ready to go in to the skit room to get jugged on our skit so once again we waited for the team before us to come out so we could go in.

The skit was not related to our board challenges but we had to do it. When the other team came out we waited for the judges to call us in.

The judges called us in and we shut the door behind us and we set up our props.

And your time starts.. now said our judge, and Brenney says, “I wonder what’s on TV tonight this is L-E-G-O news with Kelten tonight on Lego news we have a special report about fish farming. Fish farming is becoming very controversial because of reported negative effects on the environment. Lets go out to Zac in the field for a special report on fish farming. Thanks Kelten I’m here with Nate a fish farmer.” And we started our skit. After about 4 minuets we said our last line and the judges started asking us some questions about our skit and how we did our research on fish farming. We answered there questions on our skit and their questions about our research then they said we were free to go.

When we got back to pit we talked about our skit and sat around waiting for announcements on who is going to the state tournament who got first second third and fourth, who got the teamwork award who got the design award and who got the programming award. And so finely it was time for the awards ceremony, to start and we went in and the people started talking and some awards were handed out and the winning two skits were preformed and they started giving the rest of the awards out: the teamwork award went to some team that I forgot there name, and then the judges said; and the design award goes to team number.. 69!!! The St.Peter survivors!!! and we went down to claim our award.

Then the judges handed out a few more awards and then they said and the programming award goes to team number.. 69!!! the St.Peter survivors!!! “Yes; I heard Deb say and we went down to claim our award.

And the judges announced who the state tournament qualifiers are for each division, one is the sharks with some number of points and the St.Peter survivors!! We stood up and went down to shake the guys hand again, After he announced the division 2 and

division 3 and the award ceremony was over, and Deb went to get our medals, and we went back to our pit to clean up and to get our pictures taken. After that we went down to Godfathers pizza and got pizza and had something like a party.         

THE END