Edit: Added Changelog

New and improved, twice as tasty and fewer calories!  LEGO has published version 1.29 of the Mindstorms firmware.  There is as of yet no information available regarding changes since 1.28.

Stay tuned for more information.  Meanwhile you can download the new firmware right here: [LINK].

Changes from 1.28 to 1.29:

• We have free up more user available memory.

• We have made very minor changes to the color detection algorithm
• Overflow error on floating point corrected.
• Handler error related to specific use-case within datalogging corrected.

Edit: An English product page is up now, you can check it out here: [LINK]

I posted earlier on my blog about the new motor MUX that is being made by a Ukrainian company, HOLIT Data Systems.  I’ve since been able to have a chat with one of the guys behind the site that is selling them.

The technical specs are rather interesting.  From the picture you can see there are 3 motor ports, a connector to the NXT and one to daisy-chain up to 62 more of these devices to each sensor port.  In my original article I mentioned you could connect up to 189 motors to your NXT, I was wrong.  That should be 756, of course, seeing as there are 4 sensor ports on a brick.  I can’t imagine having 189 motors connected to my NXT, let alone 756.  That’s not counting the 3 normal motor ports.

The motor MUX comes with a CD with all the software and instructions necessary to start using it.  Right now it’s all in Russian, which is great if you speak Russian.  However, fear not, they will translate the blocks to English shortly.

• The 1s block is for configuring the motor mux, such as setting the address.
• The 2nd block is a “lamp block”, which I assume would be useful if you connect a little light to the motor port instead of a motor.
• The 3rd block is a normal motor block.
• The 4th block is a move block that controls multiple motors at once.
• The 5th block is an encoder reading and resetting block.

I do have a roughly translated description of the I2C commands and messaging specification which I will publish shortly. Once I have some hands-on experience I will let you know! A ROBOTC and NXC driver will be published shortly thereafter.

Here is the link to the mux’s product page: [LINK] (translated). They cost about $70.

Here is a cool video of the motor mux in action: [LINK].

As you can see it’s pretty trivial to daisy-chain them.  I believe it is also possible to connect normal I2C sensors as well, with the exception of the LEGO Ultra Sonic sensor.

Edit: changed the links to the product page to a more up-to-date one.

I’ve been lucky enough to have had the pleasure of trying out the new Firgelli Linear Actuator (LA) for a little while now and it’s awesome.  It’s based on one of their pre-existing LAs and is completely NXT compatible.  It connects to the standard NXT motor port like a regular motor and has encoders, too.  The LA comes in two sizes, 100mm and 50mm and extend at an unloaded speed of about 12mm per second. 

The thing that struck me the most is the accuracy of it.  With 200 encoder ticks over the entire length of the LA for the 100mm version, you can position the end point with a 0.5mm accuracy.  You’ll have a hard time trying to duplicate that level of accuracy with the regular motors. 

I took some pictures of the 100mm version next to some studded beams so you can get an idea of how big it is in its retracted and extended positions.  You can click on the images for a larger version.

There is an easy to use NXT-G block available on the website that has built-in stall detection to protect the LA.  Danny Benedettelli has written an NXC library for it and you can expect a driver to be included in the next release of the 3rd Party ROBOTC Driver Suite.

For more technical details, have a look at the datasheet which you can find here: [LINK].

I’ll be posting a video of my little test robot in the next few days on my blog, so keep an eye out for that.

We recently picked up one of those Aquasaurs kits for the kids – which lets you hatch and care for some neat little aquatic fish (or shrimp) that date back to pre-historic times. After reading the instructions we got everything set-up and all was good, until we read the part about the temp of the water needing to remain between 72 – 80F. Problem is, we tend to keep our house around 70ish, and during the day, we have our automatic thermostat drop the temp to more frigid temps (to conserve you know!). We quickly realized that these things would likely not get past the larvae stage at those temps. For the first two days, we had the tank propped up on the stove under the halogen lights to keep the water warm. However, over time, they would heat the water too much and need to be monitored / turned off for periods of time.  We needed to come up with a longer term solution.

One option would be to simply go out and drop $$ (insert cost here – I don’t know) on a aquarium heater – but that would be too easy.  I’d rather take my $300+ extra NXT & temperature sensor and make them work for a bit. Now you ask yourself, how the heck would the NXT heat the water.  Well, that’s where dSwitch from Dexter Industries comes in. Interestingly enough, the dSwitch did not come to me with the intent of using it to heat the Aquasaurs tank. It was more like irony and good timing that I just received the dSwitch and we got the Aquasaurs going.

For a full description and pictures, visit my site at www.plastibots.com.

Hey folks,

It’s been a while since I last made a bot.  My latest is DualGrip - NXTRover (or DG for short).  I wont go into great detail as all info (with videos) can be found at my site http://www.plastibots.com, but DG has both tracks and wheels and uses an acceleration sensor to determine when it is climbing and deploys the
drive system to angle itself to engage the rubber wheels.

The NXT 2.0 retail set comes with a new color sensor.  It is an analog sensor rather than I2C like the HiTechnic color sensors.  The LEGO color sensor requires the firmware that comes with the retail NXT 2.0 set (version 1.28).  The firmware that comes with the recently released NXT 2.0 education software (version 1.26) does not include support for the LEGO color sensor.

NXC and BricxCC now support the new color sensor in the pre-release (aka test release) build that you can download via the following URLs:

http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/test_release.zip

http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/beta/nbc-1.0.1.b36.tgz

http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/beta/nbc-1.0.1.b36.osx.tgz

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s hard to program when you’re dosed down with cold medicine and you keep coughing over and over again until you’re not only sick you’re sick of coughing.  That’s me right now, unfortunately.  Fortunately, I’ve been able to string together enough coherent thoughts and coordinate my fingers sufficiently to upload another update to the not-yet-officially released b36 version of NXC.

Read the rest of this entry »

Several people have posted questions on the nxtasy forums asking for help connecting to their NXT via Bluetooth using the Bricx Command Center (BricxCC).   

First, make sure you have the latest test release of BricxCC.  You can always download it from this link:

http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/test_release.zip 

Extract the zip over your existing BricxCC installation. 

Read the rest of this entry »

I have uploaded a new test release of BricxCC and NBC/NXC tonight (11/30/09 at 9:00pm CST).

http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/test_release.zip

The biggest change is support for enums.  At the moment NXC does not enforce types on enums so you can define a variable of an enum named type and then assign to that variable any integer value rather than only enumerations that are a member of the named enum type.

http://bricxcc.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/bricxcc/tests/enums.nxc?revision=264

Read the rest of this entry »

National Instruments has just released the

LabVIEW Education Edition,

http://digital.ni.com/worldwide/bwcontent.nsf/web/all/D281AF3F29196D83862576470065AE02

the best stuff I’ve ever worked with in the context of LEGO robotics. The features are so fantastic that we have succeeded with few efforts in implementing a Kalman filter to our infrared/ultrasonic indoor GPS system for the 2D-positioning. The very first tests are very rudimentary, but all this is extremely promising.

Note also that the latest 3D sound localization robot also has been programmed with the brand-new software.

http://www.convict.lu/Jeunes/RoboticsIntro.htm

Hey everyone,

 As you probably have noticed, the forums were down for the last few days.  From what I can gather the ISP hosting nxtasy.org, aplus.net, has recently been sold to a new owner.  As part of the sale, sites hosted on a shared server are all being “upgraded” to a new datacenter in Florida.  There are messages from many disgruntled aplus.net customers who have experienced numerous problems as a result of this move.

http://forum.aplus.net/showthread.php?t=481

“Aplus.net is currently upgrading customers to an enhanced hosting platform which will allow you to take advantage of a variety of new services over the coming months. The upgrade is over halfway complete and has been successful overall.”

“As with any platform change there have been a few bumps along the road though. If you are experiencing account problems during this process, we would like to apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.”

“We recognize that many of you use this forum to express your frustrations. However, due to privacy concerns we will no longer address account issues on the Aplus.net forum. If you need additional account assistance, please email escalations.support@cs.aplus.net and a member of the Aplus.net escalations team will follow up with you.”

I began a series of strongly-worded emails with the above email address on Monday.  Yesterday evening I finally received a response.

“Good evening, I’m the Escalation Manager for Aplus.net and will be taking over your issue from support to make sure we have our migration team take a look into this tomorrow.  Since it’s the holiday we will email you updates unless your request otherwise.  Our teams will be working tomorrow so we’ll get you an update throughout the day as soon as we have it.”

As of Thursday, 11/26/2009, at 6pm CST the forums are back up and running again. Hopefully aplus.net will get their act together and avoid breaking them again as they continue their “upgrade” process.

John Hansen

I am sure I am not the only one who has run out of sensor ports before on their NXT.  Well now you need not worry about that problem anymore.  HiTechnic brought out their long-awaited Sensor MUX today.  It’s not just a port splitter but it also takes care of polling the sensors for you, so it will work with I2C and analogue sensors.  You can have up to 4 of these SMUXs connected to your NXT in all.  The following sensors are currently supported:

• Analogue (EOPD, light sensor, gyroscope, sound sensor)
• Lego Ultra Sonic Sensor
• HiTechnic Compass Sensor
• HiTechnic Colour Sensor, both the new and the old one
• HiTechnic Accelerometer Sensor
• HiTechnic IR Seeker Sensor, both the new and the old one

I’ve had the pleasure of owning one of these beauties for a few months now, so I could work on a ROBOTC driver for them.  I will be releasing a new version of my suite later today, so keep an eye out on the project page.

HiTechnic have come out with a new sensor today.  This time it’s a sensor that will allow you to control your brick with one of the PF remotes.  The  IRReceiver can be used with both the PF IR Remote Control and the newer PF Speed Remote Control.

It would allow you to use your PF remotes to control your NXT motors in a very precise way.  How about a robot that won’t run into a wall, even if you accidentally steer it towards one?  I’ll be building mine into the holonomic drive robot I’m currently working on to allow manual control for demoing purposes.  I can’t wait to get my hands on it!

There have been a number of reports that a fresh install of the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT software on Snow Leopard (Mac OS 10.6) fails.  From LEGO support comes the following instructions for a work around:

“Copy all files from the Mindstorms CD to a folder on your desktop. Open that folder and look under “Parts”. Locate MindstormsUnivEdu.pkg or MindstormsUnivRet.pkg. Right-click and choose “Show Package Contents”. Navigate into the Contents/Resources directory and delete the “preflight” file. Close this package and run the meta-package from the [folder on your] desktop to install Mindstorms NXT.”