Subject:
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Got my NXT on Wednesday
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.us.smart
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Date:
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Sat, 8 Jul 2006 16:44:40 GMT
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Viewed:
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3921 times
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(I've been trying to post this message since Thursday, but still can't figure
out how to do it by sending an email. Here goes trying with a web-post.)
I just got my NXT in the mail yesterday. I just thought I'd post some
impressions ;).
Shipping & Handling
-------------------------------
It came in a box about 3x the size of the lego set and the box was crushed in on
one side - yikes! I opened it up and the Lego set was also crushed in. Opening
the lego set and I found the corner that was crushed in contained all the
sensors and motors - double yikes! Thankfully none were damaged as far as I can
tell... The external packaging was haphazardly taped up. All in all, I get the
impression lego has people working double-time to ship as many of these as they
can as quickly as possible.
Quickstart
-----------------
The set comes with a quick-start package with about 1/10th of the pieces in it
and a little instruction book. It claims you can put together and have a working
robot in 30 minutes. I futzed around with the NXT brick and the other
electronics for about 10 minutes, then I built the quick-start robot in another
10 minutes for a total of 20 mins - talk about instant satisfaction! The
quick-start bot uses two motors to run two wheels and has a caster third-wheel.
At the end of assembly the instructions have you run a simple built-in demo
program that drives the robot forward, rotates it 180deg and drives it back. The
accuracy was pretty impressive, though I didn't do extensive testing. There is
a third motor integrated into the frame but not connected to anything. At the
end of the paper instruction book it tells you to install the software and I got
the impression the software had further instructions on things to do with that
third motor.
The quickstart bot didn't use any sensors (other than the motors rotation
sensors).
On-Brick-Programming
-----------------------------------
Before I got the set, I'd heard about this and thought it was probably going to
be useless. I started playing with it and immediately liked it and... was
immediately disappointed in it. If you've ever played Roborally you'll be quite
at home. You even have exactly 5 program slots to place your five actions. The
sad thing is two of those slots are for actions and two are for wait-fors
(sensors or timeouts) and the fifth is either "loop" or "stop". Further, the
actions are too limited. They assume your bot has the motors and sensors all
connected to standard ports and configured to act in standard ways (forward
drives motors B and C - always - no options). You can't even select to drive
single motors. And your timing options are pretty limited too.
Last, editing the program is almost non existent. You enter the program from
slot 1 to slot 5. You can only edit it by going backwards and un-placing options
from slot 5 back to slot 1.
In conclusion, the idea and basic UI is a great idea. You could really test your
bot on-the-fly without needing a computer, but the implementation falls severely
short in but a few key ways.
Software
--------------
Next up, I installed the software. My desktop machine is running Window2000 and
I knew this was supposed to only support windows XP. I wasn't very happy about
this, but I decided to give an install a try anyway. It promptly told me it
wouldn't work on my machine, but it let me proceed and... guess what? No
problems! It worked seamlessly. The USB drivers worked immediately, the software
loads and runs just fine.
I'm a programmer by profession and have a strong interest in the promise (not
yet realized) of effective GUI programming. The last mindstorms environment was
a joke. This new environment is good, even very good, but upon close inspection
it isn't going to support general purpose programming. It lacks two critical
things: Arrays or data structures of any kind. The only thing you can have is
individual number and string variables. And, it lacks real custom functions. You
can make your own custom blocks, but as far as I can tell, there is no I/O for
those blocks. So they are effectively macros - better than nothing, but
insufficient.
But, thinking about it, using Not-Quite-C for the old mindstorms, I was able to
do most things just fine without such things. I know we could do a lot more with
at least arrays if not full recursive functions, but we did do a lot before. I
do get the impression that the new environment supports anything we could do in
Not-Quite-C before...
Minus my grumblings, I think most non-programmers will get a lot out of the new
environment. It is powerful, easy, and looks very clean and polished. It is
interesting, I went to check out the full LabView out of curiosity (from whence
the lego environment was spawned) and, though it does have arrays and functions,
it doesn't look half as polished and elegant as the lego environment...
Software Instruction Manuals
-------------------------------------------
Most of the assembly instructions are not on paper this time. They are only
available inside the lego program. The system is well-integrated with the rest
of the environment and is, quite frankly, pretty cool. There is event he
suggestion that you'll be able to download new models in the future. My only
complaint is you can only see "one page" at a time. When working with the paper
manuals I am often glancing at the next few steps and pulling out the pieces
I'll need and skipping ahead (sometimes to my determent). It is also relatively
slow flipping through the pages even though they are just single images (and I
have a fast computer).
Rex
-------
So, I jumped right in and built the most complex model - the bi-pedal humanoid
robot called "Rex". Wow! What an incredible model! For the new NXT electronics
being so bulky, this two-legged walker is more compact than anything I ever
built with the old mindstorms. It does a fascinating job of shifting its weight
over each foot as it walks. Its hands and arms flail about in a useless, but
entertaining, fashion driven by the third motor. Unfortunately, like all bipedal
robots I've seen out of lego, it can't turn - it can only go forward and
backward.
Lack of Remote Control
-----------------------------------
There doesn't appear to be any way in the software to remote-control the unit
which is a shame. BrickX did a great job of that. On the NXT brick itself you
can view all the sensors - works great, but there doesn't seem to be anyway to
run any of the motors manually (other than the on-brick-programming which won't
let you do one specific motor at a time).
Overall
------------
I'm pretty excited about the new NXT set. I'm hoping a firmware upgrade or 3rd
party alternative makes the on-brick menus a little more functional, and I'll
probably give up on the graphical environment pretty quick, though I like it
quite a bit, but the hardware seems pretty good. I was worried about the bulky
nature of the new electronics, but given how studless construction works, it
doesn't seem like much of a problem overall (speaking of which, there are a few
6 and 4-stud beams in the set - so it is only 99% studless!)
...
I'm looking forward to the next SMART meeting to start and play NXT with
everyone!
-Shane
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Got my NXT on Wednesday
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| (...) Agreed. Although if it had full strong parsing ability, you could use the string variables as arrays. But yeah, I really miss (&, for somethings, need) arrays. Data structures I can do without (or roll my own with arrays). (...) As I'm sure (...) (18 years ago, 8-Jul-06, to lugnet.org.us.smart)
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