Brick Labs

What more can I say… watch it. Gives you a little bit of insight on the Watson project, and what it accomplished.

For more details… IBM Watson. Some excellent videos explaining more of the processes behind Watson, troubles it had, etc.

Many of those videos are excellent. However, this one here (How Watson Works), really shows some of the difficulties of understanding human language from a computers perspective.

Maine Robotics does Robot Camps throughout the summer, for students.

They just published their 2011 Camp Calendar. If you live in Maine, this is a great chance to attend one of the camps, and learn a lot about the LEGO Mindstorms kits, how to build robots, program robots, and solve various challenges.

Campers design, build and program robots during the week and the teachers help
them learn fundamentals of design, engineering, programming, and robotics.

The program is non-competitive and children work in groups of two (and occasionally
groups of three if they choose to). Each group works on projects and missions
assigned at the beginning of the day and continues through the day and into the
week. As they get more skills they have the opportunity to work on their own projects.

You can find out more about Tom Bickford and Maine Robotics here…

UPDATED on 2011-05-25 - Added notes on how to reload the bootloader, and how to ERASE your device.

First off, a quick definition… “Brick’d” (or sometimes “Bricked”) means that the electronic device is now good as a doorstop…. or a brick.

I’ve had this happen to routers before, and my NXT, other electronic devices too.

A recent post on the Netduino forum talked about bricking the Netduino. Chris Walker outlined some steps to take to see if things were truly brick’d, or just having issues somewhere.

The full forum post is here.

The quickest way to test to see if you are truly bricked or not, is to

When you plug in your Netduino, does the blue LED turn on? Does it turn off after two seconds or so?

That means that the Netduino is powering up and its microcontroller is working…

Here is a nice post on how to recover your Netduino, using SAM-BA to reflash the bootloader.

This is also useful if you have an early “beta” of the Netduino Plus (from the September 2010 shipments)… you need to reload the bootloader to use the latest firmware update.

BTW, on the original Netduino, the “ERASE” pad is a little gold square, just below the D0 pin.

On the Netduino Plus, it’s a very tiny silver square, just below the D0 pin. Connect it to 3.3v for about 2 seconds… then follow the steps above for the SAM-Ba bootloader.

This 3D scanner is designed to scan a design made out of lego blocks. The results of the scan appear at aproximately 3:30. It scans by positioning its probe above the apropriate block, then reading how many times it is able to lower the probe before it is stopped by a block. The scanner outputs the data into a text file, so that it can be used in other programs.

Here is my redesigned robot now with no more modified parts, we coukd say he is now ‘pure’. I have posted a prototype development video it is now available but it is 9min long so watch only if interested on how i made wall-e pure! ,, This is the best ‘show me’ video of all my Lego Wall-E NXT – it’s wall-e at it’s best – it no longer has modified lego gears – it has eyes featuring emotion moves – it runs an updated nxt-g program using the new PFE block for better PF motor control – it has no commercial music – and you don,t here me talking !! Part listing can be found in this ‘tutorial’ forums.trossenrobotics.com Thanks for watching sharing and commenting. SUBSCRIBE to my channel to learn when i post new videos Email me for any questions related to Lego.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Chapter 8 from the book LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT One Kit Wonders. This chapter introduces building and programming instructions for a fully autonomous grabbing vehicle. What looks so simple in the video isn’t all that simple. How do you program a robot to find the closest object in range? How do you grab and lift it with just one motor? You’ll find all of this in the book. The creative minds behind the NXT Step blog (thenxtstep.com) are back with a brand new collection of innovative robots. LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT One Kit Wonders is packed with building and programming instructions for ten exciting robots. The book dives headfirst into the creative thrill of robot-building with models like Grabbot, a robot that finds, grabs, lifts, and moves objects autonomously; Dragster, a super-fast drag racing vehicle; and The Hand, a simple robotic replacement hand to protect you from those dangerous cleanup jobs, like picking up your brother’s dirty gym socks. To further fire your imagination, you’ll also learn how to build a self-parking car model, an M&M sorter, a punchcard reading robot, a bike, and a realistic BobCat. Step by step building instructions make it simple to construct even the most complex models while the detailed programming instructions teach you how a NXT program really works. All of the models in the book can be built with just the basic NXT Retail kit; there are no extra parts to locate or buy. Armed with the knowledge you gain from this book, you’ll be inventing your …
Video Rating: 4 / 5

This should be the first project on YouTube that is based on the new NXT Temperature Sensor (9749). The reading range of this “giant” thermometer was intentionally limited from -15 to 60oC to facilitate the design of this construction. However, the actual reading range of the digital NXT Temperature Sensor is much wider (from -20 to 120oC or from -4 to 248oF). Reading resolution is one decimal point (eg 24.4 degrees). The new Temperature Sensor has a long metal tip (about 64mm). The total sensor tip length, including the plastic “nose”, is about 77mm. The difference with the rest common sensors (such as lignt, US, sound etc.) is that cabling is fixed, meaning that there is no connector socket at the back of the sensor. Cable length is about 51cm. Programmed on the new NXT-G 2.0 (with Data Logging), while the NXT Brick firmware was upgraded to V1.26 (instead of 1.05). web.mac.com
Video Rating: 4 / 5

Lego Mindstorms NXT ExoForce Devastator Robot conversion. All sensors and motors attached. Only minor modifications were necessary. www.squidoo.com

A Container Crane from a single NXT set, designed to grab, hoist, move sideways, lower and release IKEA box containers.
Video Rating: 4 / 5