Lmst

Looking for a fun indoor project to try during your Christmas break? Have a LEGO Mindstorms kit? Then you might want to try building my Viper Printer v3.0!

It's a EV3-based dot-matrix printer.
https://www.joshrenaud.com/family/archives/2021/06/revisiting-my-dot-matrix-ev3-lego-printer.html

Models and Python code here:
https://github.com/Viper-Bots/viper-printer

#lego #mindstorms #ev3 #fll #legomoc

Junior hat meinen alten Lego #Mindstorms #NXT ausgebuddelt und würde den gerne benutzen, leider hat die Software ebenso schon etliche Jahre auf dem Buckel und ist Windows-only.

Mein erster Gedanke war Open Roberta, aber das bekomme ich irgendwie nicht zum Laufen. Der NXT wird zwar erkannt, beim Download eines Programms auf den Baustein bricht die Verbindung ab, leider ohne aussagekräftige Fehlermeldung. OS ist Debian Trixie.

Weiß jemand zufällig einen guten Trick?

FOSS Advent Calendar - Door 8: Programming LEGO Robots with NQC

Today we explore NQC (Not Quite C), a wonderfully nerdy and lightweight programming language for the classic LEGO Mindstorms RCX robot brick.

Inside the RCX lives a tiny 8-bit Hitachi H8/300 CPU running at about 16 MHz together with 32 KB of RAM. Even with this extremely small hardware budget, the RCX can handle multitasking, read sensors, control motors and communicate via infrared. It feels like pure retro embedded magic.

NQC lets you write C-like programs on your computer and upload them directly to the RCX. It is minimalistic, fast, easy to learn and perfect for anyone who loves old-school robotics or wants to revisit the early days of DIY programming before Raspberry Pi and Arduino existed.

Working with NQC is a wonderful reminder of how much creativity is possible with almost no resources. Watching a tiny 32 KB robot happily execute parallel tasks still feels incredibly charming today.

Pro tip: If you still have an RCX somewhere, power it up. These yellow bricks are more alive than you remember once you start programming them again.

Link: https://github.com/BrickBot/nqc

Which small robot would you build or revive with the RCX?

#FOSS #OpenSource #Linux #CLI #Terminal #NQC #Mindstorms #LEGO #RCX #Robotics #Embedded #RetroComputing #NerdContent #AdventCalendar #Adventkalender #Adventskalender #TechNerds #STEM #Programming #Fediverse #FOSSAdvent #OpenTools #Robotik #OldSchoolTech

@leon_p_smith
‘Mindstorms’ is full of quotable text, here’s just one:

“Imagine that children were forced to spend an hour a day drawing dance steps on squared paper and had to pass tests in these ‘dance facts’ before they were allowed to dance physically. Would we not expect the world to be full of ‘dancophobes’?Would we say that those who made it to the dance floor and music had the greatest ‘aptitude for dance’? In my view, it is no more appropriate to draw conclusions about mathematical aptitude from children’s unwillingness to spend many hundreds of hours doing sums.” — Seymour Papert (p. 43)

#mathematics #ITeachMath #MathematicsEducation #MathEd #MathsEd #SeymourPapert #Mindstorms

@leon_p_smith
Yes, I think programming can be a good way to learn mathematics (and more).

Seymour Papert wrote about this in Mindstorms (1980).

I was fortunate to learn Logo and turtle programming on a modest home computer in my early teens. I don't know which was cause and which was effect, but I still like geometry and programming today.

For those not familiar with Mindstorms, a good summary is at
https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/mindstorms-what-did-papert-argue-and-what-does-it-mean-for-learning-and-education-c8324b58aca4

#mathematics #programming #Logo #TurtleGraphics #ITeachMath #MathematicsEducation #MathEd #MathsEd #SeymourPapert #Mindstorms

Hi there! We are happy to announce that we made nxt-as available on #SourceHut! It's an assembler for native RXE files on #LEGO #Mindstorms #NXT. It is yet unfinished but already pretty usable. Can't wait for it to be checked out and have feedback!
https://git.sr.ht/~g518c/nxt-as
#LegoMindstormsNxt #Rust

Ich müsste mal wieder mein Lego #Mindstorms 2.0 auspacken und den RCX mit seinem Infrarot-Sender am PC auf Immer-noch-Funktion testen. Die Entwicklungsumgebung zickte damals schon auf Windows XP mit jedem SP mehr, auf Win98 lief sie am besten. Das sollte sich heute in einer Win98-VM ja elegant lösen lassen.

@beli3ver Lego #Mindstorms mit der sehr guten grafischen Entwicklungsumgebung für den Controller-Baustein hat mich damals angefixt. Gibt’s leider so nicht mehr, aber soll ähnliche Produkte von anderen Herstellern geben. Gerade die Robotik-Kombination aus Hardware zum Anfassen, Formen und Beobachten und steuerbarer Software hat mich damals beeindruckt.
(War im strengen Sinn kein Mädchen, aber find’s trotzdem mitteilungswert.)

@nighthawk

I saw this on Kickstarter, looks closer to basic electronics than robotics, might still be interesting

SparkBlocks: STEM blocks that click onto LEGO bricks, via @Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/blockandcode/sparkblocks-stem-blocks-that-click-onto-lego-bricks

#Mindstorms

Our now 7-year-old is having an absolute blast with the Robot Inventor set this school holidays. So glad I snatched it up back then. I wish at some stage there'll be #Mindstorms content here again: https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/mindstorms

Can you help this project to extend the useful life of Lego Mindstorms?

(Boosted from @laurensvalk but in case the instance is blocked where you’re reading this.)

https://fosstodon.org/@laurensvalk/114743346787502504

#Lego #Mindstorms

Random thought: #LEGO #Mindstorms #RCX(!) to LEGO #DUPLO adapter plate/housing.

A few months ago, I announced our initiative to save #LEGO #MINDSTORMS. It's high time for a progress update!

You might have seen hundreds of code updates recently, so now is a good time to demonstrate where we are.

This is clearly not the most impressive EV3 robot you've ever seen, but we're excited about the progress we've made on motors, sensors, and the EV3 brick.

One of the next big steps will be to enable USB communication with the brick. This is necessary to download and run programs.

A new step in my LEGO sorting machine: After 4 years, I have finally extended the EV3 code so it can handle errors. And package it as a Debian archive
for easy installation. On the other hand, it has become clear that the EV3 has run its
course and needs to be replaced. More details in my newsletter:

https://ml.streamhead.com/preview/445139/emails/150600515716121693

Want to receive these updates in your mailbox? Sign up here:

https://subscribepage.io/sorting-updates

#lego
#legotechnic
#raspberrypi
#ai
#buildinpublic
#mindstorms