UNV
April 2007: Your first question is probably "what does UNV stand for?". Well, its nothing special - I simply could not come up with a name for it, so what better way to tag it then simply unnamed vehicle. After receiving a bunch of the new tread links, I wanted to create something grand with them. Scouting the web, I came across these multi-purpose robots (see below) that can be outfitted for police / bomb…
About This Guy
2018: Years ago I had a lot to say about my hobby being specific to LEGO (Mindstorms / Technic). Since then I've had a bit of a dry spell in the LEGO world as I delved into the Arduino / microcontroller world and all things IoT - which has consumed my imagination as I built weather / garage opener and many other "IoT things" for my house. However, I still manage to slip the odd LEGO project…
Reviews – Mindsensors Magnetic Compass
The folks at Mindsensors were kind enough to send me over this Magnetic Compass sensor to test. The sensor serves the useful task of providing the NXT with an indication of its heading angle from magnetic North to the NXT. It uses orthogonal two-axis magnetic sensor from Honeywell (HMC1052) and provides digital communication with NXT. Click the image below to see a video showing the compass in action. I did a brief test of this…
Reviews – Mindsensors MotorMux
After building my original
NanoBot
While waiting for the NXT system to come out, I decided to try my luck at making tiny robots. While Googling, I stumbled across a Yahoo newsgroup for NanoBots based on the MegaBitty controller. I have always been interested in making compact Lego robots, but for obvious reasons, they can only be so small. So, I decided to try my luck and NanoBots. Although I am not sure of the exact definition of a NanoBot,…
DominoBot NXT (ver1)
May 2006: Update: DominoBotNXT has been enhanced. See DominoBot2. For those who do not know about the Lego Mindstorms Developer Program (MDP), back in January of 2006 Lego was seeking assistance from the Lego community on their next generation Mindstorms product (NXT). Approx 9600 people applied to become one of the 100 MDP's. In late February, I received an invitation to participate and of course jump at the opportunity. For a few months, the group…
DominoBotNXT w/MotorMux
This page is dedicated to the further enhancements that I have done to DominoBotNXT. For more info on the original DominoBotNXT, have a look here. One of the drawbacks of the original was that due to the 3 motor limit, it had to backup to properly place dominos. This was because the domino-placing component was tied directly to the drive wheels. So, as it drove forward, a domino would make its way to being placed…
Review – TechnoStuff PIR (Passive Infrared) Sensor
ne of my early Mindstorms 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…
Review – TechnoStuff DIRPD Sensor – Review
One of the my challenges was to build a bot that could effectively avoid obstacles before it hit them. My first attempt was to use the Lego Light sensor and the RCX to do this. The RCX would send out IR pulses and the Light Sensor would be used to read them and, based on how long they took to get back to the Light Sensor, could determine proximity. This worked realively well, with the…
Sets
Below is a list of some of my collection. It consists primarily of Technic and Mindstorms medium to large sets. It does not contain a listing for all the parts that I have accumulated over the years. I estimate that I have over 50,000 parts in my collection. Set Number / Name Pcs. Own Total Pcs. 3800 Ultimate Builders Set 316 1 316 3801 Ultimate Accessory Set 45 1 45 3803 RIS Upgrade Kit 65 1…