Subject:
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RE: interfacing PCs with LEGO?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Sat, 21 Aug 2004 13:27:22 GMT
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Original-From:
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Rob Limbaugh <rlimbaugh@greenfieldgroup.com!Spamcake!>
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Viewed:
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2682 times
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> -----Original Message-----
> From: news-gateway@lugnet.com
> [mailto:news-gateway@lugnet.com] On Behalf Of Joe Strout
> Sent: Friday, August 20, 2004 11:24 AM
> To: lego-robotics@crynwr.com
> Subject: interfacing PCs with LEGO?
>
> Disclaimer: I'm not into LEGO robotics yet, so I am quite
> likely full of baloney. I hope you'll humor me anyway.
>
> Preamble: I'm thinking ahead to when I might get into LEGO
> robotics, and the sorts of projects I'd like to do. I'm a
> software engineer with a background in vision and some
> experience in natural language processing, and I'd like to
> take advantage of those. But those require a "real" computer
> -- and the beefier, the better, as they're very processor-intensive.
>
> I'm also thinking of the number of degrees of freedom I might
> like to have in my robots (four for the hand, one for the
> elbow, two for the shoulder... and that's just one arm!), and
> dividing this by the number of outputs on the RCX. Then
> multiply by the cost (and bulk) of an RCX... ouch.
>
> Then I notice that you can buy a complete, plug-and-play
> Linux box at Walmart for $300, complete with a decent CPU,
> hard drive, power supply, etc. -- just add monitor, plug it
> in, and turn it on.
>
> All this has led me to ask...
>
> My Question: Can anyone point me to resources about
> interfacing an ordinary PC with the LEGO inputs and outputs?
> Instead of an RCX, I'd like to get the guts of a cheap PC,
> stick it in a largish LEGO robot, and have that control
> everything (and program this board by plugging in an ethernet
> cable and simply SSHing to it). Is this doable, without
> going through the RCX? What sort of interface hardware would I need?
>
> Thanks,
> - Joe
Hello,
It sounds like you want to do something more like the open source
"Rodney" project:
http://www.fuzzgun.btinternet.co.uk/rodney/rodney.htm
It's not LEGO, but it is cool and sounds more like what you describe
above--would probably be a heck of a lot cheaper than attempting to do
the same in LEGO.
To give you an appreciation of size in terms of LEGO, check out Eric
Sophie's Jamocklaquat
(http://www.biomechanicalbricks.com/ESLC/jamocklaquat.htm) which uses 41
motors. The robot is as tall as an 8-to-10 year old child.
Rob
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | RE: interfacing PCs with LEGO?
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| Hi Rob, (...) Cheaper, maybe -- but certainly not easier, at least for me. I haven't the tools, skills, or desire to work with metal or fabricate custom parts. I'm willing to do a bit of adaptation to, say, make an RC servo interface with my LEGO (...) (22 years ago, 22-Aug-04, to lugnet.robotics)
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