The Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms Book

Lego may just be another toy to many people but the release of the MINDSTORMS Robotics Invention System revealed another side to the company. Working with MIT, Lego has developed a tool for teaching people about the basics of programming and robotics and it's also a cool toy for the technically inclined. There's a lot of material on the CD-ROM that comes with MINDSTRORMS but you'll quickly find that you want to do a lot more than Lego suggests. Jonathan Knudsen has written a book that does just that--showing you what to do next.The Unofficial Guide to Lego MINDSTORMS is divided into three sections. The first shows you how to use the programming tools that come with MINDSTORMS to develop your own robots. It's not just code: Knudsen shows you tricks of robot construction he learnt while researching the book. The MINDSTORMS programming environment isn't enough for building more complex robots, however, and Knudsen introduces three third-party languages and toolkits that help create more complex actions. These are NQC (Not Quite C), pbFORTH and legOS. You also learn about using Lego's own MINDSTORMS SDK with Visual Basic and how this can be used to control a MINDSTORMS robot directly. You don't even need to be a Windows user to get the most out of this book as the legOS system is designed for Linux and other Unix users.This is an excellent book for the hobbyist (and the serious robotics researcher) who wants to get more out of a MINDSTORMS kit. From adding your own hardware to replacing Lego's operating system, you'll find everything you need in here--and if it isn't you're sure to find it on one of the book's comprehensive list of web links.--Simon BissonRead More