File Exchange Pick of the Week

December 20th, 2006

How many of us are buying Lego MindStorms kits “for the kids to play with” this Christmas? If so, bring home your laptop for the holidays, fire-up Simulink (and a lot of code gen products) and control your Lego creations with this blockset. Your kids will be delighted, and you can even annoy the family cat with a food bowl guarding robot!

By Doug Hull

Doug first used MATLAB in 1994, could not figure it out until he got some help in 1995. He is now dedicated to making sure that no one else wastes a year of their life not knowing MATLAB like he did.

14:55 UTC | Posted in Uncategorized | Permalink | 5 Comments »

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5 Responses to “Mindstorm Robots”

1. Aravind Seshadri replied on December 20th, 2006 at 20:25 UTC :
   

   Doug,

   As soon as I saw it I was really happy. I was hoping that finally I can buy NXT. I haven’t purchased it yet because I am using Linux and haven’t found any program which can substiute the existing program/interface provided by Lego.

   But apparently this requires a lot of other toolboxes which I cannot affort being a student (I guess RTW/RTW coder cannot be purchased by students.). I am also not sure if this can be implemented on the NXT right now. I guess the author mentions something about the ANSI C/C++ support missing for NXT.

   Am I wrong?

2. Takashi Chikamasa replied on December 20th, 2006 at 21:19 UTC :
   

   Hi Aravind and Doug,

   >I am also not sure if this can be implemented on the NXT >right now. I guess the author mentions something about the >ANSI C/C++ support missing for NXT.
   Your suggetion is quite right. Currently, RTW-EC generated code can’t be embedded into the real NXT since NXT lacks ansi-C/C++ development environment. However, LEGO recently released NXT firmware source code as open source, thus please wait for somebody develops GCC based ansi-C/C++
   development environment for the NXT.

   I am really sorry that this demo requires a lot of tools,
   if you had them, you could simulate your robots on
   your designed bmp track in 3D. Desinging bmp track is pretty
   easy even for the kids!

   Takashi

3. Aravind Seshadri replied on December 21st, 2006 at 11:25 UTC :
   

   Takashi,

   Thank you for the clarification. I just found out that there is something called as NBC/NXC
   http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/

   But it lacks the user interface. Still looking for something which has a good user interface.

   I hope your blocksets are useful for other who have the required tool boxes.

   -aravind

4. panweichen replied on October 11th, 2008 at 18:26 UTC :
   

   hello,

   My name is Pan. I am sending you this E-mail to look for the possibility to use Toolbox to controll the Lego Mindstorms without change Standard firmware.when I use Matlab toolbox to write program for Lego mindstorms,do I really need Embedded code?I have look web page and find solution to use Matlab toolbox for NXT,but I must upload third-party firmware.it mean,I must install these software to upload new firmware for NXT.I just want to use Simulink Based Code for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Embedded Control.so do you have any idea or method to use Matlab Toolbox control LEGO
   MINDSTORMS NXT without Embedded code?

   Thanks for your help.

5. Todd replied on October 27th, 2009 at 17:59 UTC :
   

   Additional information and a link to download free MATLAB and Simulink LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT code can be found at – http://www.mathworks.com/programs/mindstorms/

These postings are the author's and don't necessarily represent the opinions of MathWorks.