Old School Touch Sensor Multiplexing on the NXT

I find that I am often using this approach for getting more touch sensors on my NXT without using multiple ports.  So, for the sake of prosperity, I wanted to keep a record of the setup. If you are have a set of Cybermaster Touch Sensors hanging around, you can multiplex them for use on the NXT.   Years ago, these sensors were quite rare, but now they can be readily found on Bricklink for…
Read On »

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…
Read On »

Climber

Climber - One day while browsing the LEGO Mindstorms site, I noticed some pictures about a show in Germany. LEGO had built 2 cool wall climbing robots to help market the product. I was amazed at the design and capabilities that they had and wanted to find out just how hard it would be to build something like this and have it actually work. It was quite a challenge. Building the components was the easy…
Read On »

DominoBot 2

DominoBot 2 was my take on re-creating my original DominoBot. After I had finished the original, I found ways to make it more efficient and better at what the original did. I also did not have the limitations of the parts supplied with the RIS and UBS sets. One of the parts that needed re-designing was the mechanism used to force domino's out of the chamber. The original tended to have difficulties at times. I…
Read On »

WallFollower

Wall Follower was one of those "proof-of-concepts" robots.  The intent was to build something small and compact that was fast and versatile.  Wall Follower can navigate around a room, on a table, in a maze, whatever. It is built from one of the basic robot platforms in the Mindstorms Contructopedia. Motion is done by 2 motors, each of which can steer by removing power to one. The main sensor is the DIRPD sensor (grey) mounted…
Read On »

Spaz

Spaz is my take on the famous LegWay robot first built by Steve Hassenplug. The version here is not quite the same as Steve's, but more like the one built by Philo called "Yet Another LegWay". The difference being, I did not have the special distance sensors that LegWay uses. Instead, Philo built a version that uses the regular Lego light sensors. (more…)
Read On »

RopeClimber

Rope Climber has been built for the rtlToronto Lego Robotics Event - Rope Climbing.  In a nutshell - build a robot that can find and climb a rope.  Sounds easy right?  Not!  In the tradition of rtlToronto, there are some interesting rules to make this more challenging.  First off - the robot must fit within a 8x8x8 square on start.  The trick - the rope is hanging 12 inches off the ground.  The robot must…
Read On »

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…)
Read On »

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…
Read On »

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…)
Read On »
12