What extras would you buy?

[iplewis]

Simple question: what are the best things to add to a NXT2.0 (8547) set?

A bit of background, in case anyone's interested. I was lucky enough to be given the 8547 set for my birthday last year. I spent 3 or 4 months designing and making a robot to play connect 4, which was lots of fun. It worked OK, but I was planning to make a few improvements, take photos/video, and start something else. Sadly, RealLife(tm) got in the way, and I haven't done anything with it since. My birthday's coming up again, and I was thinking about asking family and friends to give me some more bits, but I'm not really sure what. My vague thoughts were:

- Sensors seem a bit project-specific, and I don't actually have any specific projects in mind, but I'm open to suggestions.

- 3 motors sort of seems like enough, but I imagine you could always find uses for them. Are there any other types of motor with advantages over the NXT2 ones? Any other kinds of actuators? Can you even buy them separately?

- It seemed to me like the box had quite a lot of beams and axles, lots of joining-peg-things, and lots of weird-and-wonderful connectory bits (though never *quite* the one I was imagining!), but was short on gears/cogs, and had no 'thin' beams (I had to steal borrow a couple from my son's lego ). Can you buy a box with lots of useful technic bits in?

Any other ideas?

Cheers,

Ian.

[mcsummation]

You can get quite a few parts in the "retrograde 2.0 to 1.0" package - http://inanimatereason.com/shop/viewite ... m=NXT21KIT.

To get individual parts, try http://www.bricklink.com/index.asp.

A second NXT brick is sometimes handy.

[iplewis]

You can get quite a few parts in the "retrograde 2.0 to 1.0" package - http://inanimatereason.com/shop/viewite ... m=NXT21KIT.

That's interesting, but I don't recognise most of the part names, and the picture's tiny. Does anyone have a big picture?

[circuitmage]

A nice gift would be a pneumatics set. They can be pricey, but pack alot of punch.

You could then make some neat steam-punk type stuff, and working with pneumatics requires another set of thinking skills.

Here is a video of a crude marble lifter I made last year;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gkZsrrVLok

[iplewis]

Funny you should mention pneumatics - My son was just given a (very old, possibly incomplete) technic set with some pneumatic bits. I've never used them, but I was wondering about incorporating them into mindstorms. I'll have to have a play with them when he's finished...

I like your marble lifter - pointless, but good fun

[circuitmage]

Thanks.

I like closed systems, so having the marble continually cycle was one project. Notice how it shakes, that is due only to the base being abit loose. In my next model I improved that, but did not take a video.

After that, I got some lego chain links, to make a lifter instead, but never got around to doing that. Some day....

[HaWe]

sensor multiplexers, again sensor multiplexers, motor multiplexers, again motor multiplexers, i2c port splitters
;)

[iplewis]

sensor multiplexers, again sensor multiplexers, motor multiplexers, again motor multiplexers, i2c port splitters

Presumably I'd need more sensors and motors first?

[HaWe]

yes, definitely: yes!


for Hitechnic multiplexers: anything of Lego and Hitechnic sensors (including touch sensors of any kind),
for Mindsensors i2c sensors you may try to use i2c port splitters, for analog sensors of any kind use the Mindsensors RCX sensor muxer
for additional Lego Encoder motors: MS NXT motor muxer

For mobile robots I recommend Compass, Gyro, Accelerometer sensor,
for object detection HT EOPD sensor, Mindsensors Cam, Mindsensors IR sensors, additional Lego US sensors
for pneumatic air pressure: pneumatic pressure sensor
for an alpha-numerical input console: Mindsensors keypad
....
depends on what you'd like to build!

[circuitmage]

Here is a way to stack multiple sensors or motors on NXT (RCX style "oldschool");

http://us.mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/Com ... b82969d968


Just found this while double checking this option.