Sunday, October 20, 2013

Fall Renovation

Lately I have been doing a lot of work on a custom skin for this blog. It isn't 100% glitch free yet or completely finished, but I still wanted to apply the changes so far and see what you think. If you see any problems or would like to give some feedback please do so here. Hope you guys like it!

Saturday, August 24, 2013

LEGO GBC - 5 Modules

Sorry for the long gap between posts, I just have been really busy this summer! Anyway a few months ago I started building a GBC, I didn't put a whole lot of time into it so it took a lot longer than it normally would to finish. After about three months of on and off work I finally finished it! More will be posted below.
I first decided to build a Great Ball Contraption after being inspired by many other great GBC builders such as: AkiyukyYiharua, and LegoGBC just to name a few. I first built the "Ferris wheel" module, then I built the "Mechanical chain" module, after the first two modules were completed I started putting it together. Then I started adding more modules, until I had finished the loop. After that I fixed out all the glitches and created the program for the NXT module.
Here is the video of my GBC in action:
Overall I wouldn't say this is my best creation ever, but it was one of the ones I am most proud of. Also I am planning on making a 2.0 version sometime in the near future which should be A LOT better then this one, so stay tuned! 

Additional information and pictures can be found here

Monday, January 7, 2013

EV3 - The Newest Mindstorms Generation

Today Lego Education released that they have made another generation of Mindstorms, called: EV3

The Lego Education Mindstorms EV3 set.

Here is Lego Educations Offical news release:


January 7, 2013 – Today, LEGO® Education announced the LEGO MINDSTORMS® Education EV3 platform, the next generation of robotics for the classroom, continuing 15 years of MINDSTORMS robotics technology for education. The EV3 platform was created based on feedback from more than 800 educators worldwide and provides relevant robotics curriculum and technology for teaching computer science, science, technology, engineering, and math through a hands-on experience with sensors, motors, programming, and the programmable EV3 Brick. Students can now build and program a fully functioning robot in a single 45-minute class period.
The platform includes customizable curriculum that is digitally delivered and installs directly into the LEGO Education MINDSTORMS programming software lobby. The built-in digital workbook can be used by students to capture their work as they progress through the lessons, making it easy for the teacher to follow students’ progress and assess their work.
The EV3 platform includes Design Engineering Projects, a curriculum package with 30 hours of classroom instruction. The structure of the activities in the Design Engineering Projects curriculum follows the engineering design process used by scientists and engineers in many industries. Using videos of real-world robots as inspiration, the students are given a design brief that challenges them to develop, design, and share their solution. Throughout the process, students learn through combining and applying science, technology, and math disciplinary skills as they engineer their design solution. This structure is designed to help students develop the creative-thinking, problem-solving, teamwork, and communication skills required for success in school and beyond.
The LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 Core Set comes with the EV3 Brick, rechargeable battery, sensors, motors, large brick selection, a new ball wheel, and building instructions. The intuitive software platform for EV3 is based on National Instruments LabVIEW™ graphical programming software, the same technology that powers some of the greatest innovations on the planet, and includes new data-logging capabilities that allow students to collect, graph, and calculate their data. Also available is the LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 Expansion Set, which enables students to build larger-scale, more complex robots. For easy classroom management, both the base education set and the expansion set have storage bins and sorting trays.
LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 is now available for preorder and will ship in the fall semester of 2013. 

More pictures and information can be found here


It looks totally awesome! Although I must admit I am a little disappointed with the higher price, I will still be saving up for one though.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Happy New Year!

As we ring in the New Year I want to look back on some Highlights from 2012!
 Here are a few things we are going to be working on this year...
  • Overall design
  • Blog layout
  • More Gadgets 
  • And more...!
We have built a lot of projects over the past year but here are some of our favorites... (Nxtstep101)
 

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLdZsUTP6qUa_KRFGcNLyY7vJMYvdt0YrbbOwbZKTixHctIQPJY2emtmU4xZmyXumSFlXQ7hzzIXz-B03KoeKz6w64-tGF1wPZOOI966R-AgZ25Qpvkgqvd_ZYLDBxBhRE3G0c4K2pxds/s320/_CSC4730.jpg


 And Ryan's favorite projects from this year...

 

 


 Anyways you have seen a short list of the Highlights, some Future Plans, and some of our Favorite Projects! Now we from the NXT Geeks blog wish you a happy New Year!

Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas

 From the staff at NXTGeek we wish you a Merry Christmas, we've had a great year so far and we want to wish you the best of Christmas this year!

Merry Christmas!

Monday, November 12, 2012

R.O.T.A

After getting my excavator set a few weeks ago and building the models, I started building something I've always wanted to build... A remote controlled mobile arm. After about 2-3 weeks of building and fine tuning I finished. I came up with the name ROTA (Remotely Operated Technic Arm) The programming took an additional day, shortly after I took some videos and put them together so here is the video explaining all the mechanisms:
I am going to split the description into a few sections: Driving Base, the Arm, the Hand, and the Conclusion.

Driving Base
The base is a basic skid-steer base that I strengthened as I built the arm.
The 2 NXT motors are geared down 1:667 and control the driving function. I reinforced the treads due to a slight amount of bending when the arm (weighing around 5 lbs) would try to lift something heavy. The base took the shortest amount of time to build only around 45 minutes with an additional 15-20 minutes fixing all the flaws.

The Arm
The arm was really fun to build but it also gave me the most trouble.
I used 3 linear actuators, two for the whole arm and one for the bend in the middle. You can see the gearing (4th picture) for the two actuators that lift the whole arm. I did not use any gearing for the bend in the middle (5th picture). I originally was going to use two actuators too lift the middle bend but instead I used only one because I needed the other one for the hand. The arm took me about 2-3 hours too build and perfect.

The Hand
The hand also gave me a lot of trouble.

At first I tried using a worm gear for the grabbing function but the worm gear kept on popping off whenever it tried lifting gripping something. So I switched it for the actuator which works like a dream. It also gives it alot more torque when gripping. The hand can spin around by an arrangement of gears that turn a worm gear which turns the turnable connected to the hand.

Conclusion
All in all I really enjoyed building R.O.T.A. I did run into a few challenges though, but I love challenges, they are what keep me going. It is really fun to build with all the parts I got with the excavator. I am planning some more creations and I should be posting more often.


-Michael

Saturday, November 10, 2012

Ryan's Porsche 911

I am testing some car designs and Suspension so I made a Porsche 911. Over all the suspension and other test features worked out nicely with a top speed of 244 RPM (MAX.) it works good. It uses 700-1000 parts from the Super car and NXT kits. It is a fast chassis (1:2) with a light weight frame, the heaviest parts of this model are the NXT, Servo motors, PF battery box, and the PF M motor.
The main picture of the Chassis, you can see the ionic Porsche headlights. 

A picture of the side, you can see the angle of the back.

You can see the steering system, on the left you can see the clutch gear with a M motor spinning it.

The main drive, One motor spins forwards the other spins backwards. The small black gear on the far left is where it is geared to (1:2)


 
This is my video, the best parts are from about 0:00-1:00 then the rest is driving and suspension.

Saturday, October 6, 2012

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NXT Geek!!!

It has been one year since the start of this blog and ALOT has happened since then! Here are the most significant events that have happened since I started:

Every year I will post my blogs stats. (If you think I should do it more often, comment) 

Here are the first year stats: 
October: 77 views 
November: 54 views
December: 39 views
January: 140 views
February: 401 views
March: 462 views
April: 715 views
May: 357 views
June: 1,108 views
July: 1,487 views
August: 1,192 views
September: 1,492 views


Pageviews by Countries

EntryPageviews
United States
3075
Taiwan
450
Thailand
413
Russia
357
Germany
349
United Kingdom
233
France
173
Australia
143
South Korea
93
India
91

Pageviews by Browsers

EntryPageviews
Chrome
2768 (36%)
Firefox
1996 (25%)
Internet Explorer
1769 (23%)
Safari
816 (10%)
Mobile Safari
137 (1%)
Opera
136 (1%)
Mobile
34 (<1%)
OS;FBSV
17 (<1%)
chromeframe
8 (<1%)
CriOS
7 (<1%)

Pageviews by Operating Systems

EntryPageviews
Windows
5746 (74%)
Macintosh
1032 (13%)
iPad
296 (3%)
Linux
287 (3%)
Android
175 (2%)
iPhone
106 (1%)
Other Unix
50 (<1%)
iPod
42 (<1%)
Windows NT 6.1
16 (<1%)
Android 2.3.5
10 (<1%)


Well it has been a first good year for NXT Geek, Hoping for many more to come ;-)


Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Trial Truck Competition Results- Idkwhoyouare v.s. Nxtstep101

Hello, these are the results for the Trial Truck Competition that me and Nxtstep101 competed against each other in. We have the two videos that have the entries for the competition on (towards the bottom.) Over-all it seems like Nxtstep101's won in speed but mine won in design and features. A little about the competition, we had a course of 8 days to make our models and finish them, we had to use only M motors and no more then 4 in the process and we had to try to make the models resembling a trial truck. Although Nxtstep101 did make a Tank I didn't care too much it was just for fun after all.

The Unimog U500


Here is my entry into the competition, it uses four motors (two for driving, one for the turret, and one for the steering.) It also has a gear ratio of 1:24 which was a little overload but I thought it was needed for the use of M motors.

All Terrain Tank

Here is Michael's Tank, it uses 2 M motors (one for the right treads and the other for the left treads.) It has a gear ratio of 3:5 which as for as I could see worked well with the small chassis and lightweight construction.


As you can see we had very different entries but overall I think they both worked out nicely. Thanks for reading and if you have any Questions or Comments just ask them in the comments.

Thanks, 

Ryan

Sunday, September 9, 2012

The LEGO MINDSTORMS Fall 2012 survey

The MINDSTORMS team has decided to start the MINDSTORMS newsletter up again, so they put together a short 9-question survey to see what all of us fans would like to see in the survey. Go and take a few minutes to answer the question. Here is the link:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LMSnewsletter





Here is the disclaimer:
Disclaimer: all information collected will be aggregated and used anonymously. No additional data other than your answers will be collected. LEGO will not sell or distribute collected information beyond the immediate purpose for which it was solicited. You will not receive any emails or other direct communication as a result of taking this survey. In order to effectively use the data collected, please answer the survey only once, but feel free to let your friends know about the survey.