Friday, July 21, 2006
The WiMo NXT - Legos Aren't Just For Kids
Posted by Jon Westfall in "ARTICLE" @ 02:00 AM
"I’d like to introduce the next WiMo to make its rounds around the office which I have codenamed "WiMo NXT". It is built using the brand new Lego Mindstorms NXT. Just like the original WiMo, it talks to the Lego NXT brick via Bluetooth. In fact, most of the code is the same except for the actual protocol used to talk to the Lego NXT Brick. I used this next WiMo as an opportunity to use the new Microsoft Robot Studio (MSRS) APIs that were just released a few weeks ago. The MSRS allows you to build a set of services that can all work together in order to coordinate a robot. Because the MSRS APIs are still in preview, the documentation isn’t all there yet, but the tutorials do a pretty good job at explaining what is going on. If you are looking into the MSRS, I highly recommend playing with the Services Tutorials first! They are generic tutorials that don't need any hardware and give a decent perspective into what MSRS is about. So, by now I have WiMo NXT doing about the same things as the other WiMo using the MSRS. One of the main differences right now is that I am now using the Desktop (or rather, my laptop) as the controller (instead of the Pocket PC). This is how I’ve always envisioned WiMo anyway: Desktop <--> Smartphone <--> microcontroller. "
The next generation of WiMo, for those of you who are following the project. Lego's robotics systems have always intrigued me, and it's interesting to see the WiMo project applied to that setup!
The next generation of WiMo, for those of you who are following the project. Lego's robotics systems have always intrigued me, and it's interesting to see the WiMo project applied to that setup!
