Subject:
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Review: " The Unofficial Guide to LEGO MindStorms Robots"
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Tue, 23 Nov 1999 22:26:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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937 times
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I was given a book called "The Unofficial Guide to LEGO MindStorms
Robots".
The book is published by O'Reilly and authored by Jonathan B. Knudsen.
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/lmstorms/ (click on "Book serialization")
As I started to make my way through the introduction and the Index, I was
impressed with the wealth of information being presented.
My first thought was "this book should have a disk with it." Quickly I
discovered that there was direction to a URL where I could download a zip
file that contained all the programs that were used as examples. That was a
great relief as I really hate to type programs.
Then I jumped into my favorite part, building the robots. I had a
little trouble adjusting to the black and white photos, but I found them to
be clear and easily viewed for construction purposes. As usual, I started at
the back of the book and built "Minerva". Minerva is a three wheel robot
that seeks a dark brick or hockey puck, picks it up, turns around and
deposits it an equal distance from Minervas' starting point. Minerva uses
some very clever gearing to perform maneuvers with only two motors. I have
always used the RIS programming. so I was very impressed with the chapter on
NQC. I had always heard that many things could be accomplished with NQC
programming and Minerva was a great opportunity to see new tasks in action.
There are two other robots to build and program. Additional chapters
deal with additional complexities to hone further programming skills.
Chapters also cover Visual Basic, LegOS, and pb FORTH. There are chapters
about making your own sensors and using an additional RCX for robot games.
Every chapter has a list of URL's for resources available on the net.
This book brought back the excitement I felt when I first worked with
the MindStorms set. I have spent many hours with it and I still have much to
learn from the books content.
--
Bob Fay
rfay@we.mediaone.net
The Shop
http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Bluffs/7900/
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