Mindstorms NXT poised for hacking
Posted by Matthew
I am a huge fan of the original LEGO® Minstorms™. The platform seems to be dead lately, in spite of the FIRST LEGO® League and ongoing hacks of the RCX. Personally, building custom sensors and hacking on BrickOS were the only things that attracted me. The standard components and programming enviroment were better suited for children, but too complex and boring to keep their attention.
However, LEGO® Mindstorms™ NXT is poised change everything and bring the joy of hacking to less experienced LEGO® users through 3rd party support! Everything has been revamped and a team of four major Mindstorms™ community members contributed to the new design. NXT corrects several major downfalls and encourages hacking.
A new intelligent brick and microprocessor
The original RCX was an ugly yellow brick with a slow 16-bit microprocessor. LEGO® Mindstorms™ NXT includes a brand new brain based on a 32-bit microprocessor. I’m sure that modern technology has also made the processor significantly faster. Say goodbye to integer overflows and hundred clock-cycle calculations! The NXT also has more memory. Hopefully there is enough to bring significant amount of logged data home.
There is a large dot matrix display and “real” speaker. Spectrum analyzer? Voice recording and playback? Will the processor be powerful enough to decode mp3s?
The NXT has three motor outputs similar to its younger cousin. LEGO® has included four sensor inputs, though. If you take a close look at the brick, then you will see input 4 is not labeled. Originally I thought this was the only input that supported active sensors, but the light sensor seems to be active as well. Any ideas?
Three servo motors
Three whole motors this time! These motors are the real deal. They feature embedded rotation sensors with 1 degree precision. This means no more attempts at forcing higher precision on the stock rotation sensor through gear ratios! (Or build compatible sensors with better precision or a high precision angle sensor). Hopefully, these motors will allow direct access to rotation information and function as unpowered rotation sensors as well.
Better sensors
The NXT includes the usual touch and light sensors. It also sports a microphone sensor. The ultimate accessory is the ultrasonic sensor. Finally LEGO® has provided us with a reliable way to measure distance.
SNOT Design
SNOT stands for studs not on top. With the RCX, you are forced to lock the RCX in place using the standard LEGO® studs. This made it impossible to change the batteries and difficult to reach the buttons. With NXT and SNOT, the technic-style connections are significantly stronger and leave more of the NXT brick exposed.
6-wire RJ11 type digital input/outputs
Ever try to make a LEGO® wire connector thingy? Ever to try to solder something to the standard braided LEGO® wires? Trust me it is not easy. With the NXT, LEGO® used standard RJ11 connectors. This should make custom sensors much, much easier! In fact, LEGO® is encouraging 3rd party sensors.
LabVIEW
National Instruments’ LabVIEW is a development environment used by professionals. Personally, I have used LabVIEW in several electrical engineering lab projects and interviewed at several companies that use LabVIEW to program custom robotics equipment.
LabVIEW is also the heart of NXT. It is a block-diagram based programming environment similar to the original Mindstorms programming environment. However, it should allow for custom blocks and low-level access. LEGO® could in fact lock these features, but they will be necessary for 3rd party sensors. Custom blocks would also allow younger generations to benefit from advanced DSP or control system code designed by experienced engineers.
Bluetooth
Ever play with one of Sony’s bluetooth racers or control iTunes from your cell-phone? Giving your robot commands from your cell-phone or pda will be more fun and much geekier. It’s time to find my bluetooth dongle.
Price
Again, LEGO® Mindstorms™ will be the cheapest, most functional robotics kit available. No other kit has “back-emf” motors, bluetooth, and sonar for $250USD.
Community
The Mindstorms™ community today is fairly dispersed about the Internet. The only real colaboration is FIRST. Online communities today are much stronger, and this gives LEGO® a second chance to develop something great.
Linux Support?
Mac OSX is supported, but Linux seems to be left out. LabVIEW works in Linux and hopefully a driver/software port will not be too difficult.
Either way I am sure going to lose hairs on this. Hopefully the Linux community can work something out.
Hacking LEGO® Mindstorms™ NXT
As you can see, LEGO® has done a much better job of satisfying Mindstorms’ wide variety of users. They have released a call for 100 great developers. The chosen few will have access to the NXT platform six months before its final release. I have applied and can always hope. If I am not chosen, the LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Users Panel better have some interesting hacks started by August of 2006.
Jason Calacanis’ CES 2006 Photos
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Added Jason Calacanis’ CES 2006 Photos from flickr!
So far, and I’m still waiting until next month to get my hands on akit, it seems Lego blew it again! The beast has 7 ports, 3 with stepper motor power, the rest with simple 2-wire digital and 2-wire analog compatible with the old RCX gear. I’m really hoping that, under a half-dozen TORX screws, I’ll find all the other ports typical for something as relatively powerful as an ARM-7 core-based controller, a place to hang 64 or so binary I/O lines to optoisolators and then to whatever I want, and a place to hang a few decent DACs and ADCs. I don’t want to be stuck with trading off an input port for an externally-powered 4th stepper, or building touch sensors out of resistor ladders right out of a 1960 LINC handbook (OKI, gthat design was for an ADC, resistors in series with the junction between each resistor tied to the naked base of a germanium transistor. if you overcome the resistance enough, you flipped the bit associated with the transistor, if your signal still was strong enough after the next resistor, another bit got flipped. Crude,cheap, ugly, works, maybe get 64 input switches out of 2 of your ports?
Lego thought the RCX didn’t sell well because it was too complex to program. And I can see why LabView will go over well with teachers and the really young set. BUT they forgot about their core customers - or seem to - I’m really hoing I open the brick to find the preprogrammed ports where Lego’s own expanders plug in to supply us with enough ports for my pet project, that only requires 12 motors or so, an add-on 802.11n camera, about 20 simple touch inputs and pulse/latched outputs, and with luck, a revival of the Lego pneumatics system.
while all the good stuff is going on, Lego Shop-at-home leaked to me that all the bagged bulk parts are being discontinued, so youll have to buy by the kit to get what you want. Call and ask for more bulk parts - hey, it’s a toll-free call.
Well, got my kit and…. well, er…. without yet breakig into The Box, it seems like Lego has opted to waste most of the I/O power of an ARM-7, and most of its abilities to handle things like SD cards, “reasonable” amounts of memory (hey, my 1965 PDP-8 had 4 K-words core and i nfinite paper tape I/O) for jobs like music and displaying stuff on the screen, funneling a Whole 7 ports!!!(sarcasm to the nth) through an 8-bit I/O controller - that’s the bad news. The good news is that anyone with a “spare” computer meeting Lego spece has the ability to Bluetooth (and, possibly by making the USB port a “Master” by adding some code and a 5 V. supply along with a GenderBender, bolted to an 802.11a/b/g card… allow the spare computer to take over the “heavy” work of things like resolving webcam output (on that same 802 card)etc.
AFAIK, the most crucial piece of hardware we need, and this is a MUST is a HUGE MUX or MUX set for both input and output.
First, I want to have 4 or 5 32-bit words of binary input and the same for output… 128 or more recievers and transmitters for things as mundane as turning things on and off gto reading meaningful robot-speed pulse chains. Yo Lego, think BINARY, don’t abandon us to MUXing with 1965-technology like analog/digital resistor stacks if we want four switches on one input!
Second, I want to be able to control not 3, but 16 of Lego’s super-accurate steppers. The power is there! remember the ARM-7 chip ran the Palm PDA line until abougt 2 years ago! Use the Force Leg… Let’s make it 18, 5 on each input.
Now, with all that I/O capacity, the next problem is memory - which means either an ingternal expansion (I said I hadn’t looked yet to see what’s built in) OR really running the robot from either Bluetooth (too limited) or a cobbled 802.. card to and from that spare computer retired because 1 GHz isn’t good enough anymore. (I find ‘em on the street every 6 months or so).
Without these adaptations, NXT becomes just another RCX, a toy robot where the fun is seeing how much you can do with next to no capacity, and, hey, hand-compiling programs is even sorta fun. When you stop, anyway…
Using the existing hardware o its maximum potential, NXT becomes more than a toy, it becomes the best all-around hobbyist small robot controller. Lego makes a fortune selling extra MXT modules as our lives become as filled with neat little electronic mice, capable of doing as promised in the famous ORIGINAL RCX ad, placing a vase on the table, then returning with a flower… While others lift eyeballs to the door and ask who’s there, and the loveable cats in our lives have a playmate whenever they want one.
All we need is access to the real power of an ARM-7 and computer s so “underpowered” they dn’t even sell ‘em anymore….
You rock but NXT arm designs for FLL would be better sucky RCX TURN OFF!!!!!
I love you.
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