Skip to main content

Lego Mindstorms NXT - A Great Gift!

Listen to Lego Mindstorms NXT - A Great Gift!

My wife and I think we did the coolest thing for Christmas this year...and we think our son agrees. In lieu of the Nintendo Wii hs "really, really, really, really, really wants", we gave my son Lego Mindstorms NXT for Christmas. This is a starter kit which contains tons of special Lego parts and, most importantly a computer "brick" and a variety of sensors (light/color, ultrasonic, touch, sound) which can be used to build programmable robots of all shapes and sizes. My son had attended the short Legoland course on Mindstorm and also did a week-long Summer Camp where he got to design his own fighting robot, so the minute he opened the box Christmas morning he was off and running.

On Christmas Day he built the first of 3 included robot plans and we quickly had them doing all sorts of things, You first assemble a basic robot and then run it through a series of demos to learn how all the sensors work. Then you build a more complicated robot, complete with grabber arm that can do a variety of tasks. We programmed it to sense when a ball was placed in front it it, advance to the ball, pick it up, turn around, return to its start location and release the ball on sound command. We were also able to program this same robot as a "line follower" (a common robot competition task where the bot follows an unbroken black line as fast as possible.) Finally, I was able to program it to the one thing I really wanted to try...robot that would wander around the room, sense when it got too close to something, back up and turn away from the obstacle and continue on its way. Using the included software and the the things we learned from building and programming the demo robots made this an easy task.

The last several days have been spent adding new features, testing them out and my son even dismantled the original robot and retrofit an existing (and much cooler looking) Lego model with all the robot parts.

I think the NXT is going to used a lot more than the Wii and I also think it provides much more fertile ground for imagination and learning. My son has been so engaged and so thoughtful for the last several days that I am sure we made the right choice.

If you have an avid Lego builder in your family around the age of 10 or above, I think Lego Mindstorms NXT would be a great gift. If they really like it, they can even join Lego robot competitions as part of the First Lego League.

Lego Mindstorms NXT at Amazon.com





Send your questions and comments to techiq@welchwrite.com or call the Listener Line at 818-804-5049.

Join me on these networks:

Douglas on FriendFeed | Douglas on Twitter | Douglas on MySpace | Douglas on Facebook | Douglas on LinkedIn

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Tiny Wow - Tools That Solve Your Files Problem - Convert to/from many file formats [Shared]

A nice collection of quick, online tools, to convert to and from a variety of file types. Just the site to keep in mind when you need to shuffle one type data into a new system. — Douglas TinyWow & Your Privacy Don't you love finding a great online tool-set that claims to be free, let's you build and interact the way you want, only to be denied access if you don't pay for an account(or sign up for an account). Our site is free. We don't limit. We don't even take sign-ups. Might we take sign-ups one day? Sure, we probably will(but not any time soon). When we do go down that route, what we will NOT do is trick you into spending your time using our tools, only to be denied access before you can download what you have just spent your precious time creating. TinyWow is free. We don't have ads, we don't sell data. We currently have no plans to monetize. Why offer these tools for free? We operate two tech websites: Alphr & TechJunkie. We thought our use

Elsewhere Online: AT&T's Spam Filter Gets A Bit Too Aggressive

This story from TechDirt lays out yet another reason I recommend that folks DON'T use the email provided to them by their ISP. My typical recommendation right now is to get a Gmail account instead. It also points out why I want to manage all my SPAM on my end, without pre-filtering from an ISP. I will gladly manage my spam if it helps to insure that I see as many of my "real" messages as possible. Again, Gmail's tools work pretty good in this regard. Having an alternative email account also insures you will keep the same email, even if you decide to leave your current ISP. Witness all the folks holding onto AOL accounts just to keep their AOL email address. Thank goodness at least that is free now. AT&T's Spam Filter Gets A Bit Too Aggressive You can certainly understand why ISPs offer spam filters. It's a service for users who don't want to be totally bombarded with spam. But what I've never understood is that these ISPs rarely give the user a

15 Creative Ways to Use ChatGPT by OpenAI via MUO [Shared]

ChatGPT by OpenAI is a powerful AI chatbot that can give you an answer to just about any question you have. It's almost as if Google was a person you could have a conversation with.   It's open to the public for free during a trial period, so you can try it out today. The only question is, what should you ask it? Besides getting ChatGPT to do your homework for you, there are plenty of interesting ways to use it. Here are some of our favorites. Read 15 Creative Ways to Use ChatGPT by OpenAI via MUO An interesting link found among my daily reading