Kleekbots try out

[rbnnxt]

Hi there

I've had a bit of a lull on the forums, but in the last few days I have started playing with the Kleekbots system, principally because they introduced a very good sale price, which I thought was worth taking up.
For those who haven't come across it, the system lets you remotely control a NXT robot via a web page. This can either be on a PC or on a smart phone, iPhone or Android. One or two simple robots are provided, but I wanted to try out my own. The system basically allows you to initiate up to 8 different programs (named k1 to k8). It also has the facility to stream video from a web cam onto the web page. It only really allows fairly rudimentary control, particularly as there is quite a time lag (which can be rather variable) beween initiating a program and the command actually being carried out on the NXT. I wanted to try out one of my exisiting robot projects which produced an autonomous tracked vehicle with a runway which sorted coloured balls into 4 separate bins. By removing the colour sensor and replacing it with a webcam I could view the colour of the next ball to be processed. I could them manually select between programs k1 and k4 on the remote interface so that the vehicle could move to the appropriate bin before dumping the ball. In order to do this, I needed some interaction between the programs, and I achieved this be writing variable values from one program to a datafile on the NXT which were then read back by the next program to be run. The whole think is a bit klunky, and not as sophisticated as the original autonomous version, but it is quite fun, and whets my appetite to see what more can be achieved by this system.

I have made a video of the system inoperation which you can view on youtube.
http://youtu.be/AO89Xwn_N1I

Robin

[rbnnxt]

I've now added a second video, with a modified robot using an iphone camera.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nWq0_kqv-0
Full build instructions are also now available on my website
http://r.newman.ch/lego go to page ten.

Robin

[littletim979]

i like kleekbots - my only wish is that it would keep going when you hold the buttons and not make you have to tap the buttons over and over. besides that i like it