FLL in New Zealand!

FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is quite a well known robotics competition held in the U.S, and many international teams compete every year. However, if you live in New Zealand, an alternative has arrived -Kiwi FIRST!

Kiwi FIRST FLL has started a pilot year for the popular U.S FLL competiton in New Zealand, and registrations will begin to be taken from the 10th July. A 24 team pilot tournament will be taking place on the 12th December at ACG Strathallan.

The challenge, Smart Move, has been introduced with the question "Can FIRST LEGO League teams transform the way we look at transportation?"

For more information, regularly check: http://kiwifirst.org/

Updates...

I'm back after a few months of exam preparation and complettion, and while I have been inactive a few events have occured...

NXTLog

1) The NXTLog Climate Connections Challenge winners have been announced! Have a look here at some of the amazing creations that will inspire your FLL team. This is a great resource for inspiration - check out NatoNX's entry - he made his own challenge mat from scratch! All winners of this challenge can be found on this page

2) The NXTLog People's Choice Building Challenge is out! This challenge is unique - as you create it! The prize? The winning projects will be used as 'official' NXTLog challenges! All projects must be tagged with "peopleschoice", and all entries need to be submitted by the 20th June. Have a look at all the challenge details here

MINDTORMS NXT 2.0

As we all know (and anticipate!), the MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 kit is soon to be released. The NXTStep is probably the best source for new information on the kit, have a look here for past and present articles

HiTechnic

The HiTechnic IR Seeker V2 is out, but currently not available on the LEGO online. It includes a few new features that can be viewed here. This sensor will be required for the Robocup Soccer challenge... see below.

Robocup Junior New Zealand

The Robocup Junior New Zealand competition is open for registration! Hopefully, my to-be-created team will enter this year's challenge, and I will update our status on this blog before and after the competition (5th September for our region, Auckland). Find out more about the challenge here

LA's NXT Guitar

Are you ready to Rock!? Well now you can play all of those amazing or just plain cool guitar riffs with LinearActuator's NXT Guitar!

The guitar can play up to 12 tones, or can be configured to play a mixture of tones and chords thanks to it's neck slider.

One of the two NXT bricks controls the 4 touch sensors, the other brick controls the rest, and both bricks communicate with each other via Bluetooth to produce MINDSTORMS Music!
LA's NXT Guitar consists of:
- 4 Touch Sensors
- 1 Light Sensor
- 1 US Sensor
- 2 NXT bricks
- Lots of TECHNIC pieces!

Further details are available on NXTLog here

Use more than one motor per port on the NXT!!

While playing around with a few #8528 Converter cables for the NXT, I realised that the cables might have another application other than allowing you to use RCX sensors and motors in your creations. After finding a few NXT Servo motors, I began my experiment:



First of all, I connected two servo motors together using two of the converter cables, with the brick-like plugs connected in the middle. By spinning one motor, the other also turned - so creating a simple generator. This is fairly simple physics, and was only the beginning.

I tried out the different orientations that each plug could have with one another, and discovered a useful piece of information - by connecting the RCX style plugs in opposite directions you reverse the ploarity of the motors - so one motor will spin clockwise, and one anti-clockwise. See the Table below:

Note: The direction of the cable is the opposite of where the cable conects to the RCX plug

This is still fairly simple, but can be quite interesting for beginners to the NXT.

Next (pun intended ;-)), I connected a third converter cable to the other two, so that I could plug the two motors into the NXT but use only one port. Then I wrote a simple program using the standard on-brick programmer on the NXT brick to power motor port A. This was a success, and both motors were powered.

The downside to this?  The built-in rotation sensor in the NXT servo motors will no longer work while using a combination of these converter cables - so all measurements must be in seconds (e.g. power motor port A for 10 seconds). Also, I wouldn't recommend using more than 4 motors on one port,  but I am not too sure as to what would happen if you did, as I don't want to risk my NXT brick just yet!

But there you have it - it is possible, and fairly easy, to have more than one motor per port on the NXT, without having to make homebrew cables. And as you get 3 of these cables in the NXT Education kit, it is also quite practical.

LEGO TECHNIC Design School

While looking through some old files, I found a link to the LEGO TECHNIC Design School, which can no longer be accessed via the LEGO TECHNIC website. However, the Design School is still up and running, with 3 lessons on TECHNIC basics, which are quite useful to read when constructing a MINDSTORMS robot.

The 3 lessons available are:

TECHNIC 101 - The basics - quite literally. Talks about the LEGO measurement of 1M, etc, and goes over each of the TECHNIC pieces available and what they are used for

Gears 101 - More interesting and definately worth a read if you are still fairly new to gears and how they work. Can also teach an old dog new tricks ;-)

Stability with LEGO TECHNIC - Shows you how to make stable structures for your creations

Each lesson also has a quick quiz at the end for users who are logged in.

The TECHNIC Design School can be found here, and it can be found by searching for it using Google.

New Temperature Sensor!

Now available via LEGO Education is the NXT Temperature Sensor!

Quoted from the LEGO Education Website:

"This digital temperature sensor can be calibrated to measure both Celsius and Fahrenheit using the NXT Intelligent Brick and the LEGO® MINDSTORMS® Education Software v.2.0"

The sensor currently costs $40 USD, and I would recommend getting both the sensor and NXT-G 2.0 at the same time, because as well as saving on postage and packaing costs, you also require NXT-G 2.0 to use the sensor (according to above quote)

NXT-G 2.0 Edu out now!!

NXT-G 2.0 Edu is now available through LEGO Education!! Here is what the description says:

"This powerful, easy-to-use software for programming and data logging is icon based and incorporates Robot Educator, a step-by-step guide with 46 tutorials, from beginner to advanced levels. Data-logging functionalities, including graph viewer, make it easy to collect and analyze data from sensors. The software incorporates a comprehensive digital user manual. The software is Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Vista compatible."

LEGO Education

Can't wait to see the new datalogging feature? Try this MyBlock from Guy Ziv at NXTasy!!!

--> Datalogging block at NXTasy
--> Link to NXT-G 2.0 page on LEGO Ed