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!

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: Akiyuky, Yiharua, 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. 

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:

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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. 

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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.

Happy New Year!

As we ring in the New Year I want to look back on some Highlights from 2012!

• Changed the name of this blog from Mindstorm Maniac to NXT Geek.
• Hired a new contributor to help me keep this blog updated.
• Started our first Annual Trial Truck Competition.
• Celebrated NXT Geek's first birthday  

 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)

The Circulator

 

Mobile Skid Steer Arm

R.O.T.A

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

Johnny 5

 

 Ferrari 458 Italia

 

Jeep Ambition 

 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!

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!

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

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.

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:

•  February 2012 - Name changed to NXT Geek 
• June 2012 - I became a beta tester for Mindsensors
• May 2012 - I moved 
• August 2012 - Ryan became a contributor to the blog
• Throughout the year creations such as: M.V.F.B, The Circualtor, Mobile Skid Steer Arm, and 4 Motor Multiplexer where featured on various blogs that helped this blog get noticed. 

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 Entry Pageviews 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

Entry Pageviews 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

Entry Pageviews 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 ;-)

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

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.

Source: LEGO Mindstorms