[vox-tech] robots and mindstorm

[David Margolis]

I own and have read O'Reilly's Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms.  I
haven't forked over the $200 bucks to get the kit yet, but I saw this book
on sale for $17 at borders and it looked so neat that I took it home.
Well I read the whole book in two sittings because it was SO DAMN
INTERESTING.  The book is very good, and covers Not Quite C along with a
way to program in (gasp) Visual Basic.


So here are my reasons for not plunging in.  1. Time 2.
Money 3. I don't know how I can hide such fun toy stuff from my 3-year-old
in our little house.

But I'm ready when you guys are.  I think we should have a meeting about
this topic.

The only Linux downside is I don't know the status of whether or not the
little infrared beamer (which zaps your code, firmware, or whatever else)
to the lego _brain_ (RCX).  This infrared device connects to the serial
port, so it shouldn't be impossible to get working.  I don't remember if
I've read any linux success stories or not.

I think it's amazing that this post went out because I was basically on my
way to buy the set.

Who on this list is working with this stuff?

One of the things I want to work with is the audio component.  You can
program it's little 8-bit sound engine with some cryptic sound language
that looks kinda like cell phone ring programmable gibberish.  I think it
would be fun to have it play little songs while it did whatever it was
doing that you told it to do.

Dave



On Tue, 25 Jun 2002, Matthew Holland wrote:

> Pete,
>
> No firsthand experience, but I can tell you that your assumption is
> correct.  There is a language called Not Quite C by a guy named Dave
> Baum <http://www.enteract.com/~dbaum/nqc/>.  This guy has published a
> couple of books on Mindstorms, though I don't know if they're any good.
> I also have a book that you may have heard of -- Robot Builder's
> Bonanza, 2. ed, Gordon McComb -- which has a couple of of chapters on
> Mindstorms, including a cursory treatment of NQC.  The book is pretty
> hokey in places, but it has some useful info.  You'd be welcome to take
> a look at it if you'd like.
>
> Matt
>
> On Tuesday, June 25, 2002, at 08:01 PM, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
>
> > does anyone here play with lego mindstorm?
> >
> > let me rephrase that -- does anyone here play with lego mindstorm *under
> > linux*?  i assume there are open source tools to download the firmware
> > and program the RCX.   i'd like to chat about your experiences.
> >
> > pete
> >
> > --
> > GPG Fingerprint: B9F1 6CF3 47C4 7CD8 D33E  70A9 A3B9 1945 67EA 951D
> >
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