Mindboards

Doug,

Being new to this as well a few months ago, I did a bit of a literature survey and finished up buying four books which I figured might cover the range. I'm a compute professional myself, but also have grandkids who will be starting from scratch in this. I have been pleased with the selection, and did indeed find it covered things from very easy starting to reasonably sophisticated. I bought from Amazon, and was a bit disappointed in the delivery - took nearly three months to get to Australia, which seems strange given their claims.

A lot of books were written for NXT version 1, and I found that even more recent editions often seem more like upgrade manuals, concentrating on differences, things (eg sensors) that are not actually provided in the current product, etc - good stuff to have in an appendix maybe, but it means you have to have a mental filter on all the time to work out what is relevant, and it is sometimes not very obvious.

I don't pretend to provide a comprehensive review, but here are one-liner comments about the books I got.

"The Art of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT-G Programming"
Griffin, Terry; Paperback;
Good and very easy introduction - suitable for young learners

"The Unofficial LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0 Inventor's Guide"
Perdue, David J.; Paperback;
A few interesting models and some good ideas

"LEGO Mindstorms NXT Power Programming: Robotics in C"
Hansen, John C.; Paperback;
Excellent coverage of NXC, but I found it frustrating that it concentrates so much on differences from earlier versions (irrelevant for a new user)

"Extreme NXT: Extending the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT to the Next Level, Second Edition (Technology in Action)"
Gasperi, Michael; Paperback;
Good coverage of hardware principles and suggestions for sensor design

Thanks, ggrinton.

I guess I should ask this: is there a way to program the NXT computer using C#?

C#: only on a PC host and then remote-controlling the NXT via USB or BT (in that case the NXT is running just a communication program, e.g. by NXC).

There is no C# cross compiler for downloading autonomous NXT programs.

But if you are an advanced programmer you may use C/C++ on a different fw directly on the NXT
the fw is called nxtOSEK, you may use the standard gpp C/C++ compiler, e.g. by Eclipse IDE.

But only for VERY advanced programmers to my opinion and experience (me myself am not that advanced, unfortunately).