Mindstorms NXT 2.0

A flyer in today's (6/27/2009) mail included a description of Lego's Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kit. It includes a color sensor that is labeled RGB. The old kit had a light sensor, that really was seeing infra-red. Should be interesting. It looks like it either has three lamps or three detectors. Don't expect that it will be a leg up this FLL season. Expect it will be just short of required in 2010.

The nxtblogspot had more information on the NXT 2.0 Color Sensor.

It can be used in Color Sensor Mode. Using the standard software, it can detect six colors: black, white, red, green, blue and yellow

It can be used in Lamp mode: It is possible to control the colored LED on the sensor, by setting it to either green, red or blue. In this mode, the light intensity would be just around the same brightness of the old Light Sensor.

It can be used in Light Sensor Mode. In this mode, it acts just like the old light sensor: it returns a value from 0-100 where 0 is darkest, and 100 is brightest. In this mode, it is also possible to pick a desired LED color (again, red, blue or green).

(Information from the Junior Mindstorms Developer Program, JMDP)

Rescued HTK Blogs

Content disappeared during the redesign of the HTK site. Thankfully, Google cached some of it.

Why didn't we win the FLL programming award?

NXT-G MyBlocks and SaveAs can be trouble.

Copy and Paste is too easy and a look at the WaitForLight block.

Parameterized NXT-G Code solves a common problem when a new robot goes backwards.

SAMS Severe Acute Mars Syndrome

November 2003 at the Sandburg regional event.
January 2004 at the Minnesota State FLL event.
RoboLab programs used by SAMS at the MN FLL competition.

JAPATA

1999 A GEMS team wrote these RoboLab programs before learning how to write a SubVI.

Courses/Presentations

Minnesota Educators of Gifted Talented (MEGT)

February 2009

Why Johnny Can't Program was an attempt to prove that programming is very simple, yet solving even simple problems is difficult. I don't think it impressed anyone.

NXT-G Programming 101 Class 2007

Slides for a 3.5 hour course with 3 Labs. Temporarily here, until it shows up on www.hightechkids.org. The build diagrams for the class robot are here.

Robotics - GEMS

April 2000

Robotics - a GEMS presentation and RoboLab programs presented at Augsburg College.

Doug Frevert