The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Inventor’s Guide

I recently posted about an updated version of the leJOS NXJ language that was released, and I’ve also recently learned that a second edition of Brian Bagnall’s book Maximum LEGO NXT: Building Robots with Java Brains is being published this September. You can pre-order the book at Amazon.com, which currently has the following description posted:

Featuring updated instructions for the improved leJOS NXJ software, this accessible manual is the perfect guide to LEGO Mindstorms NXT, an incredible new kit for building and programming your own robots. Using Java, the most popular and easy-to-use programming language available, this manual helps engineers and amateurs alike design and build their own customized robots, programmed however they desire. Complete with a diverse set of projects, building tips, programming codes, complete 3D-rendered building instructions, and hundreds of illustrations, this useful handbook is the perfect complement to the LEGO NXT kit. The NXT intelligent brick’s Bluetooth capabilities are introduced as well as the newest available parts, including the gyro and the RFID sensor.

I’m looking forward to the second edition, Brian!

There are numerous books that cover the NXT set, but many of them have different focuses: building, programming, custom sensors, etc. So if you’re looking for some NXT books that would interest you, how do you know which ones to get or even what is available?

To address this problem, I’ve put together an Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Book Repository that lists most of the published NXT books that I’m aware of. The repository—at www.booksnbots.com—includes a brief description of each book along with other basic information and links to Amazon.com.

Leave a comment here or email me if you have any suggestions for improvement on the repository or other comments. I’d love to hear what you think!

If you’re a Java fan, you will be excited to hear that version 0.6 of leJOS NXJ was recently released. This release finally brings full Max OS X support as well as a number of other fixes and new features. You can download it here.

Looking for a contest that demands more complexity? Then the official MINDSTORMS NXT NXT Building Challenge is for you. In this contest, inventors are required to create an NXT robot that uses two NXTs that communicate with each other. That’s why this is called the “NXT NXT” building challenge. You have until Monday, June 30 2008, to submit your creation to NXTLOG, where you will find the complete rules.

The recent 2008 FIRST LEGO League World Festival has brought a flurry of postings and pictures on the news section of the MINDSTORMS website. How many teams participated, you say? The April 21 post mentions, “Eighty one teams from around the world participated in the 10th FIRST LEGO League (FLL) World Festival this past weekend at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta.” Below is just one of the pictures, which shows a winning robot that landed the “Green Man Group” first place in the Robot Performance Award.

Make sure you check it out!

I’ve mentioned a particularly funny NXT movie to more than one person over the past couple of months. While this movie has been around for a little while, it’s worth bringing up again. So here’s the link:

 http://5×5m.com/files/mindstorms/

Enjoy…

As mentioned in a previous posting, I’m having a book signing at a Barnes & Noble in Austin, Texas on Saturday April 19th. The signing starts at 2PM.

Although previously I mentioned bringing two robots from The Inventor’s Guide with me, I’m now planning on bringing one robot from the book—Tag-Bot—and one from the NXT set: Spike the walking scorpion. The robots will be sitting on a table for the duration of the event, and Spike plays that role quite well. Tag-Bot, on the other hand, is supposed to run around like crazy. In any case, the two bots should give people who are unfamiliar with MINDSTORMS an idea of what they can create with the NXT set.

Hope to see you there!

Earlier I blogged about the official Biped Building Challenge, and just recently the winners were announced here on the MINDSTORMS website. The winners are as follows:

Champion’s Award: “Bipedal Dragon Prototype” by billy259.

Robot Design Award: “NeXTBIRD (or MODEL 05)” by NeXTSTORM

Robot Performance Award: “Little Bigfoot” (shown below) by Mister.Tux

Creative Use of NXTLOG Award: “The helpi’vefallenandican’tgetup! biped” by jayko543

Congratulations to the winners and all the robots that received an honorable mention!

The official MINDSTORMS website has upgraded NXTLOG to version 2.0. You can read the announcement here. One of the main improvements is that users can now upload video of their robots. Previously, there was no way to include video, and I’m glad to see that this has been resolved. Check out the new NXTLOG here and start uploading some of your creations!

The ULMN Inventor’s Guide uses the retail version of the NXT set, known officially as LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT. However, there is also an educational version of the NXT set, known officially as the LEGO MINDSTORMS Education NXT Base Set (see below). Unfortunately, while the robots in my book can be built from the pieces in one retail NXT set, the educational NXT Base Set does not contain all the pieces necessary to build those same robots.

If you own the NXT Base Set and would still like to build the robots in The Inventor’s Guide, there is a solution. The Education Resource Set (shown below) is a $69.00 “expansion pack” of sorts for the NXT Base Set. This resource set includes nearly 700 pieces. By combining the pieces from the NXT Base Set and the Education Resource Set, you can successfully build all the robots in The Inventor’s Guide. To ensure this, I have checked the bill of materials for the robots in my book—Zippy-Bot through Golf-Bot—and compared it with the combined contents of the Resource Set and NXT Base Set.

I must mention that while you will have the correct type and sufficient quantity of pieces using the NXT Base Set and Resource Set, you will not have all the same colors of pieces as found in the retail version of the NXT set. But that definitely won’t stop the robots from working!