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Subject: 
Re: New Syngress Dark Side Mindstorms book!
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.starwars, lugnet.books, lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Mon, 11 Nov 2002 18:57:26 GMT
Viewed: 
14543 times
  
Hi Dean,
  Thanks for the reivew.  Sorry for the long overdue response.

In lugnet.starwars, Dean Hystad writes:
Authors on the "10 Cool LEGO Mindstorms Dark Side Robots, Transports, and
Creatures" are:
Kevin Clague, Soren Rolighed, Miguel Agullo and Hideaki Yabuki.

The models include:
1. Super Battle Droid - A 2 legged weight shifting (ankle type) walker

Kevin Clague

Actually it shifts weight at the knees.

2. Orbital Devense Cannon - Neat looking, but I'm not sure what it does yet.

Soren Rolighed

Guess I have to build one.
3. Imperial AT-ST - Very nice Technic realization of this 2 legged walker.

Kevin Clague

4. Go-Rilla - A shorter and supposedly faster 2 legged walker.

Kevin Clague

This one has the center of mass close to the center of shift rotation, so it is
less work to swing the batteries back and forth.  The robot can therefore shift
the weight faster and therefore stride faster.

I've tried to optimize this and make it faster, but I cannot.

5. X-Stormer - A 4 legged walker that looks somewhat like the AT-AT.

???

6. Droid Transporter - A wheeled vehicle I'm probably need to build to fully
understand.

Soren Rolighed

7. Draigon - A 6 legged walking dragon

Kevin Clague

8. Scorpion Assasin Droid - A neat looking 4 legged walker with an
interesting gait.

Hideaki Yabuki

9. Ludic Ordinance Unit (LOU) - A funny little automaton that plays guitar.

Miguel Agullo

10. Imperial Hound - Mibo with only one motor.

Miguel Agullo

<snip>

I found two small errors in the first robot.  The parts were in the correct
place, but were installed in the wrong order.  The problems were easy to
figure out and simple to fix.  This sort of mistake easy to make when the
building instructions are created using MLCAD.  I haven't built any of the
other robots, but a quick scan of the instructions didn't turn up any
glaring errors.

Oops, that's my fault.

<snip>


I was dissappointed that there wasn't more content relating to robot design
and LEGO building.  If this is to be a companion book to help people get
more enjoyment out of their DSDK, it would have been nice to give them a
stronger foundation for going off and creating their own designs.

Dean, I couldn't agree more.  I would have loved to add more descriptions on
how it worked, not just how to construct it.

We had to hack out a bunch of verbaige just to make the book fit the goal for
number of pages.


For LUGNUTS it is a very enjoyable book.  It's filled with examples of how
to use those "worthless" parts that come in Technic sets today.  I am
impressed with how much these folks did with so little.

;-)

It took me quite a while to get the hang of living within the DSDK
constraints.  There were a few calls to LEGO to make sure exactly what parts
were in the kit.  The parts list at the back of the Constructopedia is wrong!
It was a big deal when we confirmed that we had two 8 tooth gears instead of
just one.


Dean Hystad



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: New Syngress Dark Side Mindstorms book!
 
Authors on the "10 Cool LEGO Mindstorms Dark Side Robots, Transports, and Creatures" are: Kevin Clague, Soren Rolighed, Miguel Agullo and Hideaki Yabuki. The models include: 1. Super Battle Droid - A 2 legged weight shifting (ankle type) walker 2. (...) (22 years ago, 31-Aug-02, to lugnet.starwars, lugnet.books, lugnet.robotics)

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