Remember the MinuteBot Baseplate Kickstarter project? It was funded successfully, so the base plates have been turned into a real product. I’ve received a few plates last week as part of the pledge I made to the project. I’m quite satisfied with the quality of the product. They’re strong and hold LEGO pieces well. Obviously,...

The LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Discovery Book is now available on Kindle. It’s also available as a PDF or EPub. You can get the Kindle edition directly from Amazon. Instead you can buy the “Ebook Bundle” from the publisher. The package includes a PDF file (Computer/iPad), a Mobi file (Kindle), and an Epub (Sony reader...

This project is based on my universal balancing robot code. These small balancing robots are fun, but I wanted to make something that more closely resembles a real Segway. Alpha Rex gives sends ‘high-level’ commands like steering and speed to the Segway via Bluetooth. The Segway program turns these signals into movement. In the video,...

Some great ideas don’t make it to production stage. But the MinuteBot Baseplate did, and it looks promising. By popular demand, they chose to change the color from red to light grey. These should soon be available for purchase on their website. A few of these are coming my way, so I hope to review...

In this post I would like to share the reports of the RiSE workshops held in Ghana, 2011. RiSE stands for Robotics Inspired Science Education. The following excerpt from the report describes briefly what RiSE is about. The mission of Ghana Robotics Academy Foundation (GRAF) is to design accessible and innovative programs that will excite...

This book (by John Baichtal et all) shows you how to combine the Arduino with LEGO NXT Components. As far as I can tell, this will teach you how to replace your NXT controller by an arduino — not combine them. Still pretty cool! From the description: Make amazing robots and gadgets by combining two...

For advanced MLCAD/LDVIEW/LPUB4 users, here’s a patch that comes in useful when you make LDRAW CAD instructions for LEGO models with many arrows and sub models. If this doesn’t sound familiar to you, you won’t need this. I’d be surprised if more than 25 people on this earth used it, anyway. Download it here: GhostArrowsV1....

I got this set a while back and last week I finally found some time to build it. While building I couldn’t resist adding some extra features. I added 4 motors in total to make this car drive and steer with the Power Functions remote control. The video shows each of these additions in detail,...

A new third party LEGO electronics developer has just released the Upcore G1. The device can be used to control Power Functions over Bluetooth. This way you can control your LEGO creations over Bluetooth from your smartphone – without the need of an NXT. Upcore G1 can control up to 3 motors with proportional speed...

NASA Astronaut Don Pettit gets creative with an educational LEGO kit aboard the International Space Station. The instructions are clear: don’t follow the instructions. Making your own foam satellites is made easy. The only requirement is that you’re aboard a satellite…