Where to a Lego NXT kit for less? Take #2

Their BOE-Bot is fairly adaptable, and works with the BOE-Board, which I'd recommend unless you want to own your own breakout board for the BS2 chip and connections to everything.

Or, if you have a BOE-Board, you can put it on any of a number of "body only" kits. I'll unashamedly add a remind that's what Budget Robotics does. It's just the basic hardware. Because the robots are larger (7" diameter, multiple decks, etc.), and made of rigid PVC, they are easy to make work with any controller or board. Or, if you just want to add a couple of servos to a base of your own, there are servo brackets and stuff available separately.

For a while I played around with some "no cut" designs using stuff found at hardware and home improvement stores. You still have to drill, but at least you don't need to cut down a piece of wood, metal, or plastic to size. I just walked the aisles and found several things I could readily adapt, including stuff like plastic electrical receptacle boxes and what-not.

-- Gordon

I think it depends on what you want to do with these. For LEGO I'd start at Lugnet. For VEX they have a forum, and often other forum members will mention an only resource they like. I usually spend 10-15 minutes quickly reading through messages, and bookmarking anything of interest into a "pending" folder. Then later on I'll cull through that to find things that are interesting.

For general robotics most of the sites these days are fairly shallow blogs or forums people have set up just so they can pimp up some Google ads. I prefer a more narrow approach. For example, I've been playing around with the Arduino microcontroller lately. Doing a search on that yields a lot more useful links. It just so happens that since the Arduino is basically designed for robotics and other small-scale automation, many of the links are about amateur robotics.

-- Gordon

I'll also suggest looking at the robotics club sites, such as this one for the Atlanta Hobby Robot Club (okay, full disclosure, I'm a member):

And of course if you're ever near any of these club meetings, be sure to go. There's no charge to attend AHRC meetings, membership is mainly to offer financial support to the club and to be able to vote for officers.

No argument from me!

The short answer is that the Lego Corporation only listens to the customer when they start to loose money. Once they start making money again, they develop a case of selective listening. Many industries work this way, but it is a real shame.

-Wayne

Ain't nothin' wrong with that ! :-)

I've been a big fan of the BOE-bot body in the past. The BOE-bot uses servos that have been modified for continuous rotation. There are other alternatives, but as you steer away from Parallax products, you loose the benefit of the great Parallax documentation.

-Wayne

Have you had the opportunity to look at the PICaxe range?

It's bang-for-the-buck is fantastic. Very simple programming interface and excellent programming interface, the option for flow chart programming is great for the novices and kids. Another product with good documentation and great support forum.

regards, Colin

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