PROGRAMMING CAN BE FUN

How to control LEGO® Mindstorms devices

Thomas Muellerthomas _ @ _ tmspecial.com

Outline

timeline hardware software programming advantages/disadvantages resources questions

Timeline

2006

NXT

Code PilotRCX

Scout

1995

Dacta

1998/991990

Control Center

Hardware

RCX 3 inputs/3 outputs 8-bit Renesas H8/300 microcontroller 32K RAM IR communication

Hardware

NXT 4 inputs/3 outputs 32-bit AT91SAM7S256 processor 8-bit ATmega48 microcontroller 256 KB flash memory, 64 KB RAM 4 KB flash memory, 512 Bytes RAM USB communication

Inputs (sensors)

touch light sound ultrasonic infrared color compass acceleration gyroscopic

Inputs

buttons Bluetooth 3rd party devices

game controller

Outputs

electric motors sound display Bluetooth

Software

Graphical NXT-G RoboLab Microsoft Robotics Studio

Assembly Next Byte Codes (NBC)

C Not Quite C (NQC) Not eXactly C (NXC) RobotC

Software

Java leJOS

.NET NXT#

IDE Bricx Command Center Microsoft Visual Studio Eclipse

NXT-G demo

Bricx/NXC demo

Fat Boy

Pinball machine

Slot machine

Advantages

very affordable for a robotics set can be combined with 99% of all

other Lego parts huge community

FIRST LEGO League had over 10,000 teams with over 100,000 participants in 2007

Disadvantages

price ($250 MSRP) not backwards compatible

different sensors/motors

Resources

General LEGO

http://mindstorms.lego.com/eng/Black_Destination/Default.aspx Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_NXT

Software Bricx

http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/ http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/

Microsoft Robotics Studio http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/robotics/default.aspx http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Robotics_Studio

Resources

3rd party hardware http://www.hitechnic.com/ http://www.mindsensors.com/

Community FIRST LEGO League

http://www.usfirst.org/community/fll/default.aspx?id=970 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIRST_Lego_League

LEGO user group of Los Angeles http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LUGOLA/

BrickShelf http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?q=nxt&stype=dfic http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/search.cgi?q=mindstorms&sty

pe=fi

Questions

Contact

Thomas Mueller thomas _ @ _ tmspecial.com http://www.tmspecial.com/downloads/Lego Mindstorms NXT.pptx