PicoCam
PicoCam was built as a proof of concept. Its purpose was simple, navigate an area using typical avoidance routines while capturing live wireless video/audio and transmitting it to a receiver. The was never really completed because I had other ideas The pictures shown here are of the final version, with working navigation, but I did not bother going the last step to get the live video to display (even though it will work). (more…)
TrackerBot
You would think I have a template for "room-navigating" TrackerBot evolved from the recent PicoCam robot I created. After I had finished PicoCam, I decided I wanted to try something with tracks. TrackerBot and PicoCam share similar intelligence, with TrackerBot having some slight improvements. The general idea is that it will navigate a room using a variety of sensory input for obstacle avoidance. There are 3 Cybermaster touch sensors, 1 DIRP light sensor and 1…
BigWheel
Big Wheel (BW) was an experiment at building a robot that uses the HailFire Driod (StarWars) large wheels. It's job is simple; build an autonomous robot that can navigate any area while avoiding obstacles by not hitting them in the first place. To do this, BW uses a DIRPD sensor to "see" left, right and center. This allows BW avoide obstacles from 3 views before actually hitting them. (more…)
TiltBot
Sept. 06: Pete @ Techno-Stuff has just sent me another new sensor from Techno-Stuff. This time it's a Accelleration / Tilt sensor. Instead of going into great detail on how it works, I will quote from his site: " The Accel Sensor lets your robot measure it's acceleration. The sensor can also be used to measure tilt. This is a two channel device that lets you measure acceleration or tilt along two perpendicular axis. Acceleration…
FireBot
One of my early projects was to build a fire extinguishing robot. I did this using the parts I had at the time. It was based on a walker platform and used a pneumatic circut to "blow" the fire out when detected. It worked reasonably well with the provided light sensor. Recently, I discovered the PIR (Passive Infrared Sensor) from TechnoStuff. This sensor was built to detect infrared heat and seemed to be a good…
LEGO Related Links
I have compiled a list of links to clubs, resources and other cool stuff NXT and Mindstorms Related Blogs .. a Lego Mindstorms NXT Community The NXT Step The NXT STEP Blog brings together news and information related to the LEGO Mindstorms NXT system. BNXT Lego Community / Market / MOCs LUGNET, the worlds largest online Lego community. If you want info on Lego, go there. RTL Toronto. The local Robotics / Train club in…
Building Robots with Lego Mindstorms
A while back, I received an email from Mario Ferrari informing me that he was going to send copy of his new book, Building Robots with Lego Mindstorms. When I received the book, I immediately cracked it open and skimmed all the sections. My first reaction was that the book being some 600 pages in length contained a plethora of information similar to that of other Lego Mindstorms books written by other Lugnet members. Once…
Official Guide to Lego Mindstorms
The Official Guide to Lego Mindstorms by Johnathen Knudsen. I found reading this book to be quite informative. I have spent much of my time building and programming Lego Mindstorms. The book covered this area from the basics right up to higher level development. There were many pictures, step-by-step instructions and code samples as well. I learned a few tricks from the code samples in this book.
10 Cool Lego Mindstorms Ultimate Builders Projects
Having participated in the creation of this book, I have to admit some bias to the review. 10 Cool Lego Mindstorms Ultimate Builders Projects contains 10 original Lego Mindstorms creations. The model I submitted is DominoBot. It was a great challenge to build and create the building instructions for this model. The book contains step-by-step instructions on how to build each of the 10 robots. The book should challenge the intermediate enthusiast and contains some…
Chameleon 1.1 / MapServer JavaScript Dynamic Tree Legend Widget
A while back, I was given a challenge to integrate a dynamic JavaScript-based legend into Chameleon The following information is my take on creating a Widget for use in a MapServer / Chameleon implementation. If you are not sure what Chameleon and MapServer are, then the following info may be of little use to you. To learn about these online mapping tools, you can find more at the DM Solutions - MapTools website. First, the…