Brickley's
Words

I finally got around to upgrading WordPress to v2.0 Looks pretty much the same, but hopefully runs a bit better. Let me know if you find any problems.

Well, TLC have finally announced a new Mindstorms brick. It looks interesting – here are some points:

• no more infra-red, Bluetooth and USB instead.
• Totally different connectors – so all those old motors and sensors are incompatible.
  (Ed: It now appears LEGO Educational Division will be supplying some kind of converter, to allow connection of old style motors and sensors to NXT – see this article)
• No studs, which I don’t like – I would prefer to see both pin holes and studs
• Motors have RPM feedback – no word whether it’s hardware or firmware
• Motors and sensors are BIG. This worries me a little – I’d like a choice of at least a smaller motor
  (Ed: See comment above re: using old motors & sensors)

Anyway, I’ll certainly be getting one. I’m guessing lots of modding and 3rd party peripherals will happen, and TLC doesn’t seem to mind, according to this article. So hopefully it will be at least as hackable as the RCX.

And lastly, this article, which also has a short video demo by Søren Lund, director of Mindstorms. At least now we know Mindstorms is alive and well!

Well, for those that don’t know, I’m an admin and co-founder of JLUG, an AFOL website targetted at a mature audience. And today, the 12yo son of the other co-founder produced a great flash intro for JLUG. But his mum couldn’t get the flash version to work on the site, so they converted it into an animated GIF, read more about it here.

An alpha version of the International LEGO Enthusiast News Network, ILENN, has been announced by Kelly McKiernan. You can check it out here. It is a news aggregator – it grabs LEGO related news from many sources and merges it all into one big site.

And apparently Brickley’s Words is one of the sources!

OK this isn’t new apparently, but I’ve never seen it done in LEGO before so it’s new to me 😉

The idea is to motorise vehicles on a town layout. The method has been pinched from model railroading, where this seems to be reasonably common. Basically, you stick a battery and motor in the vehicle, and metal wire or strips under the road around the path you want it to follow. Then you add a magnet that activates the steering, and voila!

So I’ve come up with a basic chassis, too big for a car, but should be OK for a truck or bus. I think to do a car, you’d need to use non-LEGO parts, probably commercially available internals. My chassis is all LEGO, 7 studs wide, and length is easily adjustable. Vehicle must be long enough for a battery box, plus a couple of studs for the drive and about 6 studs for the steering.

The next thing to think about is stopping at level crossings. In scale layouts this is achieved using an electromagnet under the road which activates a reed switch cutoff in the vehicle. That will be difficult with LEGO, but we may try it eventually. For now I guess they’ll just go round & round.

Anyway I’ll let you know how it goes.