Subject:
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Re: Mindstorm/CyberMaster Swap
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Tue, 15 Dec 1998 00:15:46 GMT
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Viewed:
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1651 times
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> > completely hooked on Mindstorms, and the thought of a more advanced set
> > for "grown ups" is very exciting... Can someone enlighten me on this
> > subject...
>
> Mindstorms _is_ the more advanced set for grownups. Cybermaster is designed
> with "play" in mind -- build the predesigned sets, and make them do things.
It is but the Cybermaster does have some useful additions that I wish had
made it into the Mindstorms RCX. The Cybermaster motors have built-in
tachometers that can be used to report trip distance and rotational speed.
The third motor output (and only this one) has the the ability to report
motor current (in mA approx) which makes it possible to do stall detection.
This can save using an additional touch switch to indicate "end-of-travel".
And, of course, the real biggy is that Cybermaster communicates with the PC
using radio rather than IR. This doesn't suffer from directional/line of
sight problems in the way that the RCX system does.
The downside is that the CM motors are built-in to the brick and so it is
normally only suitable for making some sort of mobile robot. Neither does it
have a communications mechanism to allow it to send messages to other CM
bricks; the MS RCX can send simple integer messages to other RCXs using the
infra-red port. It also only holds one program (cf 5) at a time and 4 (cf
10) concurrent tasks. I also believe that the program space available is
smaller but I'm not sure how significant this is.
The two lots of supplied software are quite different but I don't think that
really matters. The RCXCode "visual programming" language of MindStorms is
virtually useless if you want to do anything anywhere near useful. The CM CD
has a lot of multi-media stuff geared to kids but it is (for the first time,
anyway) entertaining and does have a number of model plans included.
Assuming you're going to end up using one of the programming methods
prescribed in this newsgroup/list then I'd say the CM software was better
(since the MS stuff is next to useless).
The end result is that the choice between MS and CM is not a "no brainer".
It really depends on the sorts of things you think you're going to want to
do. My choice would be to buy both, but then I can afford to blame this sort
of extravagance on my son.
In addition to NQC there are a number of other "add-on" programming
environments for both MS and CM. You can find quite a few on the MindStorms
web ring:
http://members.tripod.com/~ssncommunity/webrings/legoms_index.html
My particular pet (because I wrote it) is Bot-Kit which can be found at:
http://www.object-arts.com/Bower/Bot-Kit
Best regards,
Andy Bower
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Re: Mindstorm/CyberMaster Swap
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| (...) You can do stall detection this way? How can this be done using NQC, say? I've brought up this issue in this discussion group earlier, but noone knew how to do stall detection, or so it seemed to me. Fredrik (26 years ago, 15-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)
| | | Re: Mindstorm/CyberMaster Swap
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| (...) Any of you have confirmed this? Some time ago in a few test I've made the only I could read with MotorCurrent() was if the motor was running...(?) Laurentino Martins [lau@mail.telepac.pt] [(URL) (26 years ago, 15-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Mindstorm/CyberMaster Swap
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| (...) I -- and I am making this up based on no facts that I know of -- think it might have something to do with FCC licensing and radio frequencies/power. (...) Mindstorms _is_ the more advanced set for grownups. Cybermaster is designed with "play" (...) (26 years ago, 14-Dec-98, to lugnet.robotics)
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