Mindboards

today is exactly a year from when i pulled out my mindstorm for the first time. heres the story.
I was bored so i started watching TV. then my dad came over and said "hey why don't you pull out your brothers old mindstorm kit". So reluctantly i turned off the TV went down to the basement and took out the mindstorm. I will post a picture of my first robot soon but basically it could go around a loop in my house and lift heavy objects. After that i was really excited and kept doing it ever since. so when are your mindstorm anniversaries and what's there stories? (ps. my brother got his mindstorm 3 years ago and didn't like it so two years after that i pulled it out. so that means that 1 of my mindstorms is 3 years old.)

Ah, my story of how I got to know LEGO MINDSTORMS starts back in late 2002. We were moving, and our grandparents offered us a place to stay in their house until my Dad found a new job. It was unfortunately a whopping 10 months before my dad got a new job, and we got a new house (the one that I'm in right now as I'm typing this). Near the beginning of that stay, my grandad got out a Robotics Invention System 2.0 kit. He at first intended for my older brother to use it, who built a couple of robots, and programmed them, until he quickly lost interest, and abandoned it. Then seeing that the kit was vacant, I seized my opportunity, and went wild with it, building several different robots from the kit, and programming them. I was very enchanted by the kit, the software, and the whole idea of LEGO creations that aren't idle. Heres a picture of me with the Inventorbot from the kit that I kept disassembling and reassembling all day throughout our visit: My grandad had observed how much I enjoyed this kit, and decided to let me bring it home after my dad got a job. So, I brought my first LEGO MINDSTORMS kit home October 17th, 2003(two days before I turned seven!). And throughout the years I've aquired more sets, sensors, accessories, and expansion packs. And over the years of seeing my robots advance, I don't think that my grandad has regreted giving the RIS 2.0 to me for one single second.

My MINDSTORMS adventure started at school, in 2007, where I was involved with the Smartbots program. In 2008 I continued the Smartbots program, and in 2009 I had the chance to participate in the RoboCup Junior Dance and our team (the Lollibots) came 4th in the state and recieved a Judge's Highly Commended award. In 2010 I went in the RoboCup Junior Dance again but this time my team (the JediBots) came 3rd in the state, but missed being 1st by 1/8th of a point! Christmas 2010 & Birthday 2011 combined I recieved a NXT 2.0 set. That was the year I discovered NXTLOG, MindBOARDS, BricxCC etc.

I got my first Mindstorms kit (NXT 1.0) when I was 7. I'd played around with the Spybot earlier, but all those "missions"/junk they advertise was really boring, and the only fun thing was driving the robot. (Not anymore of course, now that I can program it using a text based language, but no where as awesome as the NXT.)

So anyways, I played around with the Mindstorms software a bit, and thought it was all beyond my age because the box had a number that said "9+". It got put away for 2 years.

Then, when I was in Grade 5 (age 9), my dad persistently insisted I try it again. So I did. And I liked it. I did less than half an year's worth of NXT-G programming.

Then I discovered the BricxCC website. I looked around and learned about something called 'NXC'. It wasn't too confusing to set up BricxCC. I learned a bit of NXC from the Tutorial PDF which came with the software, and created a few programs. One of my first real programs was a translation of the NXT-G helicopter program to NXC. (You can see version 1.0 here.) In fact, most of my early programs were translations of NXT-G into NXC. (Such as the NXT Claw Car with Game Controller.) Some things were quite difficult to translate - the file i/o and "calibration". But I figured it out in the end.

After that, I learned C++. (Not the classes, and all the OO-stuff; only the C-like parts of C++.)

Well.
My school had 6 NXTs. I was using them for a special project, but 1h a week was not going to make anything extroadinary happen.
So my parents bought me a shiny new NXT for my birthday (about the time nxtasy went down)
I tried NXC and found it easy to learn and have now started to learn c++

I've only been playing with the NXT for about 3.5 years now and with other robotics related stuff a year longer. I started playing with Technic LEGO about 32 years ago but had a dark age from about 1993 until 2008. I still have all of my old Technic LEGO and am now the proud owner of 11 bricks, one of which has a broken screen and another without a functioning speaker. I also have another that is really truly broken (not part of the 11) but I keep that one to show people what's inside.
I have a collection of about 8 LEGO robots that I keep in tact just for doing demos at events, so they don't change much between the months of March and October (I do about 1-2 demos a month). The worst thing about this many NXTs is battery management; I only have two LEGO chargers and one (fast) 8xAA battery charger. I am currently waiting for a little shipment from LEGO that will change that *grin*.

You younger kids are really lucky to have had the opportunity to start with robotics at the age that you did. I know this sounds like an old man talking but when I was a kid it was much harder to get access to relatively cheap electronics that were incapable of the amazing things you can do with today's technology.

I once heard a very to succinct statement made by a technology trend watcher at a seminar: "Technology is anything that comes after you're born." I guess he meant that all the stuff that's there already when you come into this world is just, well, your world, you've never seen it without. It must be truly fascinating for the people in their 80s, 90s or even older who have seen so many things change. We live in truly amazing times, but I guess each generation can say that

- Xander

mightor wrote: of the amazing things you can do with today's technology.

That reminds me: I'm porting a K&R C program written in 1985-1987 for a 4mhz processor by my dad to work in C++ on my PC

Times have changed

I bought an NXT 2.0 when they first came out and haven't done nearly as much with it as any one else on this forum. However I was heavily in to LEGO Technic back in the late '80s-early '90s I started with set 8043. I was (am) obsessed with motorizing things, and when I learned that i could add a 4.5v motor to the buggy model in that set I had to have it (and still have the motor, but the wires and battery box are long gone). I frequently got other sets like city cars and space police, but loved the Technic theme. My next big set was 8044. Which introduced me to pneumatics. Like most I went through a dark age between about from about age 16 until i was 23. My last big MOC before my dark age began was a LEGO version of a 1:48 scale Boeing B-29 Superfortress. All of the props were spun by the motor and it had manually retractable landing gear.

In 2003 Spotted the Hot Flame RC Car And instantly fell back into love with LEGO building. Now that I have a decently paying job, and a wife who loves to feed my addiction my LEGO collection has exploded with a lot of Power Function elements. I still spend most of my time building simple chassis with PF but I'm beginning to feel a draw to Mindstorms. Here is a cut and paste of Peeron set listing as you can see a majority of my sets are less than three years old, also I have many PF, pneumatic and specialized elements from the LEGOLAND Germany stores:

SetNum Name Pcs Figs MSRP Year [Click to reverse this column] Qty
8700 Expert Builder Power Pack 26 0 ? 1982 1
6641 4-Wheelin' Truck 80 1 6.5 1987 1
6381 Motor Speedway 185 5 23 1987 1
6357 Stunt 'Copter N' Truck 158 2 17 1988 1
8034 Universal Building Set 188 0 ? 1989 1
8840 Rally Shock n' Roll Racer 220 1 ? 1991 1
8838 Shock Cycle 243 0 29.75 1991 1
8815 Speedway Bandit 77 0 ? 1991 1
8539 Manas 442 0 90 2001 1
8376 Hot Flame RC Car 244 0 80 2003 1
7017 Viking Catapult vs. Nidhogg Dragon 225 2 20 2005 1
7020 Army of Vikings with Heavy Artillery Wagon 312 7 30 2006 1
8287 Motor Box 279 0 90 2006 3
7895 Switch Tracks 8 0 16 2006 1
7021 Viking Double Catapult versus the Armoured Ofnir Dragon 505 3 40 2006 1
8275 Motorized Bulldozer 1384 0 150 2007 1
8292 Cherry Picker 726 0 60 2008 1
8297 Off-Roader 1097 0 120 2008 1
8293 Power Functions Motor Set 30 0 90 2008 3
8295 Telescopic Handler 1182 0 90 2008 1
8258 Crane Truck 1877 0 150 2009 1
7632 Crawler Crane 962 4 130 2009 2
10194 Emerald Night 1085 3 100 2009 1
8265 Front Loader 1061 0 80 2009 1
8264 Hauler 575 0 70 2009 1
8259 Mini Bulldozer 165 0 10 2009 1
8262 Quad Bike 308 0 40 2009 1
8263 Snow Groomer 590 0 50 2009 1
8048 Buggy 314 0 40 2010 1
8047 Compact Excavator 252 0 25 2010 1
8046 Helicopter 152 0 20 2010 1
8053 Mobile Crane 1289 0 100 2010 1
8043 Motorized Excavator 1123 0 200 2010 1
7938 Passenger Train 669 3 130 2010 1
8041 Race Truck 608 0 60 2010 1
8049 Tractor with Log Loader 525 0 60 2010 1
8069 Backhoe Loader 609 0 60 2011 1
8067 Mini Mobile Crane 292 0 25 2011 1
8070 Super Car 1281 0 120 2011 1

To feed my addiction so more, my wife recently bought me a 4watt solar panel from Dexter Industries. And for some reason I really want the new Renewable Energy set for the Mindstorms. At the moment all of my stuff is packed up in crates on it way to Texas. It will be about seven weeks until the crates arrive there and of course my priorities will be getting back to work and making the new house livable for my family. But when that is done, I will get to split my time between working on LEGO models and getting my 1968 Mercury Cougar running.

mightor wrote:I know this sounds like an old man talking but when I was a kid it was much harder to get access to relatively cheap electronics that were incapable of the amazing things you can do with today's technology.

When I was a kid we had to make our own silicon using sand from down the beach.

bullestock wrote:When I was a kid we had to make our own silicon using sand from down the beach.

My ancestors used butterflies.

title text wrote:Real programmers set the universal constants at the start such that the universe evolves to contain the disk with the data they want.

And, of course, I'm the one who programmed the being that set the universal constants.

All these stories are truly inspiring.