BusterHaus

Very nice build, it looks like you used every bit of space to fit the motors and BuWizz. The use of the small chain to lift the fork is great, it adds to the visual appeal.

Are pneumatics allowed? There's no mention of them in the rules.

"The challenge was to climb a rope 2.5 meters long to reach the ceiling, deploy a flag and return to the ground. 4 motor, 4 sensors explained at the end of the video." Very cool project! The rope detection and grabbing are my favorite part. Was the footage of rope taken from the pixycam?

A custom one would be stronger, although would take much more place.

Nice start! You have some pretty ambitious goals, although I don't think they are out of reach. When I saw the dual drive my mind immediately went to skid steering, but the wheel base would have to be shorter to make turn easier. Are you planning on driving it in the snow?

This is very cool, you made a physical version of the bubble sort. I don't think I've ever seen it before. The Geneva mechanism that uses the chain is excellent, it had me wondering for half the video how it was achieved. By the way, this project would fit very well in the Eurobricks Robotics Forum...

@iLego The first level of customer service won't be able to help you, but for technical Mindstorms questions they can connect you with one of their experts. Not sure if they do it in every case - the one time this happened to me the second-level person didn't sound like regular customer support, more like an engineer.

If the goal is just to pose it, a turntable with a worm screw will probably be your best bet. Edit: added picture. The lower gear is used to distribute the torque over a longer distance.

The small EV3 motor is comparable in size to a PF L motor. It is very precise and will stop at exact positions. You will not need a white clutch gear, as the position is always known and you can use a homing cycle when starting the program to find the rotation limits. The drawback is that the controller brick is bulky in comparison to a PF battery box and IR receiver. You will likely have to sacrifice some of the interior to fit the controller brick and a gearbox.

This post won't give you a solution, but maybe it will help you see the work you are facing. From what I've seen, hoppers/feeders and alignment mechanisms are some of the most challenging devices to create. The solutions often involve two or more mechanical "tricks" combined together to achieve something that looks like magic. @thekitchenscientist mentioned vibration, but you can also have surfaces with different coefficients of friction, static "fingers" that tip the object in a particular direction, screw feeders, star wheels, conveyors running in opposite directions, gravity chutes and hoppers. There's probably a ton of other options in this arsenal of "tricks", and combining them is a whole science. Electronics are often used to test the outcome of the device - for example, a bottle that is placed upside down on a filling line will be detected before getting to the filling mechanism. It will then be knocked out of line and returned to the hopper/feeder. So the mechanism doesn't need to be perfect, as long as you build in a way to eliminate bad results. (At some point efficiency becomes an issue, but that's a different story.) Good luck, this is quite an ambitious project.

Congratulations on finishing it and for sharing the progress once again. Your choice to revisit these older sets gets a huge thumbs up from me - I never built these sets, and in all likelihood never will. Watching your progress and updates is a close substitute.

Cute soccer bot! Are the holonomic wheels part of the expansion set? The non-Lego version of the bot seems to have a 360 degree camera - can the Pixycam be used in such a setup?

@grum64 You'd have to come up with a while new set of tools and methods to speed it up - something like the Grum Yank instead of the Grum Knock.

Very nice project - I like that you showed everything: building, connections and code.

@grum64 I stand by it! I'm one of those people who take a build apart almost as soon as it's completed. It's usually so quick that there's no time to document the process.

When you run out of space on the shelves and need to take models apart to free up space, you can do disassembly updates here.

Can you flash the original firmware back on the intelligent brick? I know Mindstormer uses a custom firmware that I replaced with the original once I was done with the project.

I'm not sure if this applies to all walkers, but in bipeds the flat line helps keep the foot on the ground for a longer time, increasing the portion of the cycle that the body travels over that foot. You can slow down the cycle yet still travel a (relatively) big distance with each step, making the walker advance faster. Having a slower cycle helps increase the stability. If the bottom curve is not flat, the body is dropping or lifting during the step, adding instability to the walker. Sometimes this instability is desirable (if you are counting on it to shift the center of gravity), but it can be quite difficult to control/predict at different speeds.

The controller brick can control up to 4 motors at the same time, each working independently. It can also accept up to 4 independent inputs. You can run one motor while another waits for a signal from an input to start running. Seems like multitasking, but maybe I'm missing something.

@Hanso Please post links to your posts in the following topic and they will be moved here:

This solution for testing linkage patterns is excellent. I like the ease of adjusting the pivot point and the fact that you can draw several patterns on one piece of paper. Will you be using one of the the "classic" linkages for future walkers? The "d#" one doesn't have much of a flat line unless you start playing with the orientation of the whole mechanism.

Awesome MOC, this will be a great contender in this contest. It pushes the limits of rigidity.

It's funny that you complain about them, but I think your photos leave little to be desired. They are sharp, well lit and usually show quite a bit of details. Yes, the reflection from the window is apparent, but unless you're taking them on a cloudy day, it will usually be the case. A curtain should help, but don't turn your shed into a light tent just to improve your pictures marginally.

Hi @xp10r3r, if you are new to robotics and programming, I suggest getting the retail version of Mindstorms and building/programming all the official models. It will get you familiar with programming concepts, the visual Mindstorms programming environment and "language", as well as with some simple mechanisms. The retail version is easier to follow than the education version if you don't have a teacher. Programming takes time to learn, and it may be boring to just look at one concept at a time, but you won't find a better way of learning. A lot of the concepts build on each other, so as tempting as it is to skip simpler ones, you are better off following the steps set out in the official Mindstorms models. One other important note: you will not learn programming in a few sittings. It takes time, so your plan of building an automated warehouse will be on hold for a while. As you learn different functions and concepts, you can note how they can be applied to a future build.

@Mestari When I looked into cables for controlling PF motors with Mindstorms I came to the conclusion that it made more sense to purchase Mindstorms motors instead, and get the full servo features. Cables + shipping came out close to the price of new Mindstorms motors, this was a few years ago.