Dryw Filtiarn

A little update: I just finished the RS485 communication (sensor port 4 <-> sensor port 4) between the two NXT's in the warehouse robot. I though I had solved it yesterday already, but for an odd reason when I turned of my NXT's and started them again, the whole communication failed again. This time I'm sure I've got it functioning properly. I'm now moving over to the building robot again, to finish the programming on that, which is mostly focussing on placement accuracy, which might turn out to be trick to get solved again, but I'll see. More info later.

I tend to say that both are equally complex. The programming itself isn't much of a deal, neither is the building of the construction itself. The complexity is mostly to be found in the combination of the two, because the software and the hardware (the construction) need to work together in order to achieve the level of accuracy needed to be able to achieve the goal. So if the robots are not capable of fine movement (mechanically) you won't manage to realise this, and if the software isn't capable of handling the fine movement (programmatically), you can't realise this either.

The storage indeed is something like a high-bay storage. The warehouse consists of 45 base-plates with grooves in them which hold the parts in rows of 16. The entire warehouse is 5 base-plates stacked and 9 next to each other. A video can be expected of it as soon as it works, then things will start to make sense. To update on the status, I left the building-robot programming for a bit now, in order to do some experiments for the warehouse robot. I'm attempting to get a communication going between the two NXT's involved in that robot through the sensor port 4 communication (RS485 for the people who know what I'm talking about), that way I can avoid getting a too complex web of NXT's communicating over blue-tooth where one NXT will be both a slave to the main controller as well as being master to it's supporting NXT. If I manage to get the wired-communication going by use of the sensor port that would mean I would only need 4 NXT's communicating through BT. This would be the setup: Controlling computer <--Blue tooth--> NXT1 (Master controller) NXT1 (Master controller) <--Blue tooth--> NXT2 (Takeover robot) NXT1 (Master controller) <--Blue tooth--> NXT3 (Build robot) NXT1 (Master controller) <--Blue tooth--> NXT4 (Warehouse robot, master NXT, front side of the robot) NXT4 (Warehouse robot) <--Wired sensor 4--> NXT5 (Warehouse robot, slave NXT, rear side of the robot) The first 4 blue tooth connections are up and running, now I'm hoping to get the final communication to the last NXT working as well.

A short update to the project. I've managed to get 3 of the NXT's programmed now, which will now allow me to retrieve the parts from the middle robot (seen in my last video update) and place these parts in the model. Currently I have some minor issues with the calibration of the building robot, so in 99% of the tries the building robot currently fails to place the part correctly in the model, but I expect this to be solved later today. Once I get everything working reliably I will make a new video showcasing the building process. As soon as I get the building part of the factory fully functional I will program the last robot, which is the one in the warehouse. That robot is relatively easy compared to the other two, so it shouldn't take as much time to get them programmed, although I will have a challenge there to get the 5th NXT in the communication setup. This is how the NXT's work together: ========================================================= | Computer (sending building instructions step by step) | ========================================================= | ============================================================================= | Master NXT (also responsible for build platform & Takeover robot rotator) | ============================================================================= | | | ================================== | | | Warehouse robot (Front section)| | | ================================== | | | | | ================================== | | | Warehouse robot (Rear section) | | | ================================== | | | | ============================== | | Takeover robot | | ============================== | | ============================== | Build robot | ==============================

Batteries won't be an issue, all the NXT's will be running on the rechargeable batteries and permanently connected to an AC socket. But indeed the idea is that the factory will be running all day long. That is, it will probably run in 2 sessions, one in the morning and one after noon, both lasting for a couple of hours. Also to give myself some relaxation during the event and time to eat ;) In regards to whether I work in an factory, nope, I'm a web front-end developer at an IT company. But I have worked in several production plants so some of the inspiration comes from there indeed.

Here is a short update, while I'm still waiting for the parts to arrive, hopefully they'll come in tomorrow... Anyway, in the meanwhile I have been working on completing the middle robot that goes in between the warehouse and the actual robot that will be building the models. This one will take care of receiving the parts from the warehouse and aligning them so that the building-robot can pick them up and place them in the model. This robot will also take care of rotating parts so that parts can be used in the required orientation. More updates will come as I further complete parts of the factory, which will likely be near the end of this week.

Just wanted to say, that after about a year of absence I have returned and will try to keep up with the forum and most importantly keep up with building Lego (have been in sort of an darkage for about three quarters of a year).

Time for me to give this topic a boot up it's ***. Unfortunately since the last status update on this factory idea no results came out and I have abandoned the project. The good news currently is that I have started working on a new factory again a few months ago and I'm currently working hard to get it finished as it is to be revealed/displayed at LegoWorld (Zwolle, NL) in October! At this time I have no recent photo's or video's of the progress I'm up to at this point, but these will be made soon again when I get a couple of elements of the factory model completed to satisfaction. What I do have though is a couple of video's from early testing, one made at home when I was giving the factory a trial run, and the other one as it has been displayed on a small local Lego event in August. It's first trial run at home: How it functioned at the August event. A note to the video's... The video's are showing a grabber attached with which it handles the boxes on the sliding floor element. This grabber was just temporary for the August event so I could do some event-condition testing (events always tend to mess up complex technical constructions due to warmth and moisture) and had at least something to display. Immediately after the event the grabber was replaced with a building head which is quite comparable to the original version in my previous attempt to build a factory: Some statistics about this project: * 5 NXT's controlling 13 motors * 2 meters in length * 40 centimetres wide * 26 centimetres high (not counting in the booms of the robots) * around 25.000 parts (rough estimate) * handles 103 different parts (11 part types * 8 colors + 3 part types in 5 transparent colors) * stores a total of 1648 parts in it's warehouse section More information, photo's and video's will come soon... Hopefully by the end of the week my orders will arrive so I can complete some elements of the factory this weekend... Waiting for over 2000 parts to come in...

I'm not having any issues running MLCad and the other programs on Windows Vista 64, I think Windows 7 64 will also run it just fine. You also mention ldraw027.exe, which isn't the one you would need to get started anyway. Have a look at this page on the LDraw site: http://www.ldraw.org/GetStarted-Win.html At the "How do I install LDraw" section you will find a link to: ldraw_setup_2006q3_full_J.exe Which is the installer that installs LDraw, MLCad all the tools needed for rendering and the parts library. The installer should work just fine on 64bit Windows.

That's one excellent model! Nicely compact, great detailing and finish. Now build a plane to fit it :P

You perfectly captured the looks of the female ambulance employee ambulance. It's immediately recognizable to anyone who knows the dutch ambulances I think.

I noticed the prices are still wrong, I would expect that by now you would easily have had the time to change them to the correct prices. Next to this, I start wondering what it is about the locations you work from. So far you have been advertising in Drachten and Lemmer in The Netherlands as well as an apparent pick-up address in The Hague? With this I start to be rather confused on where you're working from.

I believe that both are quite similar, although the NXT software is somewhat more powerful and has more features, which in some cases makes it a bit harder to work with compared to the RIS software. This difference is of course mainly due to the fact that the NXT is far more advanced then the RIS was.

The prices for which you offer the sets don't seem to make any sense to me. How can it be that you offer the Market Street and the Cafe Corner for €130,- (which seems a fair price to me as they are/were around €150 at Shop at Home), while you also offer the 8262 Technic Quad for €95,- (Shop at Home price: €29,99)? Also the price for the creator Townhouse doesn't make any sense to me being priced at €130,-, while you buy it at Lego Shop at Home for €64.99). To be honest, I don't trust this at all, it's a bit odd to see this come out of the blue and being promoted on various LUG website (LowLug, BeLug and here), while there is very little actually on offer and the prices for most of the things being offered are ridiculous. And another oddity in this is that you explicitly mention on the website that you deliver to The Netherlands and Belgium, while here you seem to promote it to a wider range of countries. Not even talking about the above post with inconsistency in where you can retrieve your order.

I entirely agree on that it's fine for kids and certainly is better then the software that came with the RIS. But for ME it's just a piece of crap. As you could have read I'm a programmer and for that category of people the visual programming thing isn't general the way they want to work.

The v2 software is still crap I believe. I'm a programmer by profession as well and I can't work with this visual programming thing. Just give me raw code to write and I can manage a lot better. Although I must say that the software definitely improved, it's more stable now at least. I should be doing a proper check to see it's full potential, haven't done that so far.

In theory this would be possible, though it would require some custom software to be written to control the IR tower. Technically it wouldn't even matter that much if you would be using the old tower or the newer USB tower. The only catch between the different towers will be that the range for the USB tower is shorter then with the old tower. I must say that I see a challenge in this and I might attempt to build some software to see if it would be feasible. If so it would be possible to have autonomous control of the PF straight from a PC. It is ofcourse also possible to control PF by use of the RCX (with a bit of code that was published on lugnet somewhere) or through the NXT with the custom IR transmitter/receiver module from hi-technic.

As some above already explained, the friction pins haven't been invented for nothing. If you want to see why, just try a somewhat larger technic model, but rather then using the usual friction pins, use the gray frictionless ones. You will very likely notice that the model isn't as sturdy after all.

It's a very common part among all series Lego produces. And as said before, it's the common connector for a lot of things not connected by studs. I have no clue how many I have personally, but I think I should be having around 10.000 of them. And YES I actually managed to run out of them at times (when I was too lazy taking things apart and sorting the parts again).

The new color sensors aren't even up on S@H yet, so I think you'll have to wait for a bit till the get available through Lego. I think chances are slim that people will part out the NXT 2.0 to sell again at this time.

Looks good so far, can't wait to see it finished :)

I think it's not unlikely that the clutchgear went bad. I have quite a load of them by now and there's quite some difference in the amount of torque they need to actually slip, some slip quite easily while others won't slip even with an XL PF motor and stalling the drivetrain.

The color sensor that comes with the NXT 2.0 is NOT the sensor Hi-technic used to make! It's a higher quality one, which is able to detect more colors and more accurately. I have heard though that Hi-technic will come with a new color sensor that will beat the one of the NXT 2.0 again which has an even wider range of colors that it can detect.

I must say that the new style panels have been used excellently in the new truck and some other models. On this model I definitly don't like them, mostly the doors look way to flat with the huge 5x11 flat panels. To be honest the model looks more like a MOC then a set from TLC.

If the chains are too loose they tend to not roll around the gears entirely smoothly, I've noticed this before as well. In general this shouldn't be too much of a problem though :)