Surveillance 101

There are many different types of surveillance robots;
stationary robots-
mobile robots-
and even flying robots-

       

My Bot - Surveillance 101

 I recently built my own stationary wall-mounted one to record a party we held in our home.  As you can see, it doesn't look like much, but it is capable of rotation on the Z axis, and tilt on the Y axis.  It is secured to a coat rack with rubber bands, and stabilized with rubber wheels.  The camera, (not shown in pictures,) is just a web cam which rests on the top of the robot.  Live video from the camera is passed through the usb cord into a computer which stores the data for further use.  The program for Surveillance was very simple because I had only an hour to build it.  It ran two loops; one controlling the tilt, and the other, the rotation.

For more pics please go HERE.

Oglesniper II

Ok folks, the plans for the great fire shooting machine have been found. King Armendon's mechanics have built the "tank" as it is called in the plans, and I now present it to you (quite informally.) For the details on how this was achieved, I have started writing out all the events that took place between the invasion and now, and publishing them in the Legoton Press.

for more pics please go here.

Follow up: Thanksgiving

This information is no longer available. To view what used to be here, please visit the Legoton Press (my other blog.)

A report on Legoton

This information is no longer available. To view what used to be here, please visit the Legoton Press (my other blog.)

Oglesniper

| Oglesniper 1 is a tank with an automatic rubber band gun. The gun can tilt up and down, as well as discharging two rounds of 24 rubber bands. The tank moves with two PF XL motors, and is remote controlled using the PF IR system. The Battery Box, through the IR system, directly controls the driving and gun tilting motors, while communicating with the NXT using my PF to NXT light system* to trigger the gun.
| The gun's "rounds" are just 24 tooth gears attached to a motor each. When the NXT senses that one motor has completed a full rotation (thus emptying it's round,) the second motor is used for firing instead.
| For more pictures, click HERE.

The Twin Paddler

The Twin Paddler is a remote controlled floating vehicle. I built it out of a twice used milk-shake bottle, two NXT motors the PF IR system and a lot of assorted Technic pieces. I sat it in the bath tub for an hour and it didn't ship any water. I've run it out on the lake for a while and there doesn't seem to be any thing wrong with it. The handling is very good, it doesn't tip much, and overall I would say it is a good NXT boat. For a few more Pictures click HERE.
There isn't really any thing else to say about the Twin Paddler, so I will have to cut it short. Until next time, so long!

Mission Hexawheel Exploration II

Mission Hexploration is under way.
The object; To navigate through enemy territory under the guise of a toy, and come back with useful information in the form of pictures and video.
The means; A fully autonomous NXT robot with a bluetooth and camera enabled phone, mounted onto an X and Y axis turret. (At the present I am using the PF IR setup for the turret, but everything else is autonomous. This could be substituted for the IR Link sensor from HiTechic to make the robot fully autonomous.)
Other info; click HERE to see this bot's predecessor; the Hexawheel Explorator I, or HERE to see more pictures of this robot.

Music Bot

Are you interested in music? Well, if you are I have built an NXT music maker!
Yes it really makes music, the knob on the right controls the tone, while the knob on the left controls the volume. Pressing the orange button in the middle starts the sound, and releasing it makes the sound stop. For more pictures, click here.

A few minor creations

I know these are not built using an NXT, but I thought I would post them anyway.

A new form of Lego clockwork

I have seen many analogue clocks on NXTLog; Some of them complex,


And some of them very simple.


Many of them have second hands, but very few have them coming out of the middle along with the minute and hour hands.
I have recently discovered a very simple way of doing this.

All you need is a turn table, a four wide differential, and some other assorted parts. The hand attached to the turn-table is the hour hand. The hand connected to the differential is the minute hand. And the last one counts the seconds.
So there you have it. A much easier way to build the hand part to a clock. Make sure to give me credit if you use it in your design.
For more pictures, click HERE.

The Marble Express

This project was just an experiment. The hypothesis which spawned the Marble Express was, "Marble contraptions are easy to build." The test thoroughly disproved this theory.
But, although relatively hard to build, the Marble Express was fun to build and play with. I made it into a sort of game, the marble goes up the long right track, and when it gets to the top, it rolls down into the lifter. The lifter is remote controlled and you have to tilt it so that the marble rolls down to the slide on the left, which allows the marble to roll at terrifying speeds back to the start where it gets picked up by the track again.
The goal of the game is to keep the balls in play for as long as possible.
To see more pictures, click HERE.

The Sorting Machine

I built this machine to sort 4x4 Lego cubes. They move slowly down the ramp onto a conveyor belt which moves the brick under the grabber. This then moves the brick onto the Sorting Belt. The Sorting Belt moves the brick out from under the claw and in front of the light sensor. The said sensor will detect color and tell the Sorting belt which side to dump the brick off of. This process repeats itself until the ramp is empty. You are left with two piles of of different colored bricks.

You will find more pictures of the Sorting Machine HERE.

Try-bot a sumo version

The robot:
I built this robot as a sumo version of the NXT 1.0 tribot(base).
all I did to the tribot was add a lifter to the front and move the US to a better position.
I also limited my piece usage to allow NXT 2.0 users to build this bot.

The RC opponent:
I purposed in my mind to not stop work on the program for the autonomous bot until it could beat a human controlled sumo at least 2 bouts out of 3. To accomplish this goal, I built a robot using the Power Functions system.

The Board:
The board was built using a 2' x 2' x 1/2" piece of plywood. I tacked a white sheet to it and with a compass drew a black circle. Electrical tape stretches, so I used that to go around the circle.

I don't know how to post .rbt or .ldd files, so I'll link to NXTLog where you can find them.
You can see more pictures here.

Robo Arm T-1000

Robo Arm T-1000 is a heavy duty, 5 DOF (counting the hand,) remote controlled robotic arm. it uses every single NXT and PF motor I own (6 in all,) two PF receivers, the NXT, the PF Battery Box, and the pneumatics add on set from LegoEducation. Plus a lot of other parts and pieces of Lego. The NXT powers the arm rotation and pneumatics. The PF IR system controls the elbow, wrist, hand, and lights. The lights are used to communicate with the NXT via the light sensor.