The LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robotics Invention System (RIS) is a wildly popular kit for building mobile robots. This book contains all the information you need to get the most out of your kit. Based on hands-on robot projects, the book includes descriptions of advanced mechanical techniques, programming with third-party software, building your own sensors, working with more than one kit, and sources of extra parts. This book goes far beyond what you'll find in the official documentation to enable you to build and program whatever you can imagine. The center of the RIS kit is a small programmable robot brain called the RCX. This book explains the software architecture of the RCX as well as the various options that are available for programming it. The book includes:

• Hands-on robot projects, with complete building instructions and programs. Different aspects of these projects are used to explore fundmental issues of mobile robot design.
• A chapter on NQC, a popular programming environment for RIS. You'll learn how NQC fits into the RIS software architecture, as well as how to write programs using NQC's C-like syntax. Includes copious examples.
• A chapter on legOS, an alternate operating system for the RCX. legOS provides very low-level access to the resources of the RCX, enabling complex robot programming. This chapter describes legOS's structure and includes useful sample programs.
• A chapter on pbForth, another powerful option for RCX robot programming. The chapter includes sample programs in Forth.
• A chapter about building your own sensors. Making your own sensors is economical and educational. This chapter describes how to build several different sensors that will work with the RIS kit.

The book includes numerous illustrations and code examples. Many URLs are listed to serve as an introduction to the thriving online MINDSTORMS™ community.

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The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots Review,  January 26 2000
Submitted by jeff canar   [Respond | View]



A really terrific book. Combined with the Baum book, both should be requisite reading, and packaged with every RIS. I echo other comments about the drawings. Some are much too difficult to follow, and could be improved. Nonetheless, this is a really good reference.

Keep up the great work.


The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots Review,  January 06 2000
Submitted by Wolfram Herzog   [Respond | View]



Hey, this book is what we needed!
A very good summary of all the things happening around the LEGO Mindstorms kit. A very good starting point for your new ideas.

My only suggestion for a next print: Make the pictures of the building steps in color.
The black&white; pictures is really not we Lego users expect (even if the book becomes more expensive)

Wolfram




The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots Review,  January 04 2000
Submitted by Timothy O'Brien   [Respond | View]



Excellent Job!!! Pay him again O'Reilly to play with lego's and write another book!! I love this book, the only problem with it is the black and white photographs. Dave Baum used a rendering program in his book and the models came out with a lot better detail. But I liked this book for its more detailed mechanical designs and notes on the mathmatics of engineering.

Keep up the good work Mr. Knudsen!!

Tim


The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots Review,  December 01 1999
Submitted by richard hellyer   [Respond | View]



Awesome book - I especially liked the mechanical ingenuity of the robots (Minerva eg.) and the comparative simplicity of the programs!


The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots Review,  November 19 1999
Submitted by Klaas Jan Huizing   [Respond | View]



I really liked this book after I'd read it. It gave me a lot of hints, tips and tricks. And, most important of all: I started programming in NQC. It's not very difficult, after having read the book of Knudsen carefully. I am looking forward to more books on the same subject. Preferably by the same author!


The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots Review,  November 15 1999
Submitted by Michael Lewin   [Respond | View]



I love this book. It is mind boggling what you can do with Mindstorms and this book points you in so many directions. One problem; your eyes will quickly fatigue trying to build the examples - the black and white pictures are not for the fainthearted. My son's young eyes were a valuable aid and together we were able to build some really exciting robots based on the examples shown. Congratulations, Mr. Knudsen, on a job well done.


The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots Review,  November 08 1999
Submitted by Tim Smith   [Respond | View]



Good book, although beware--Lego has updated the RIS to 1.5, and although most of the changes are minor, they do impact some things in the book. In particular, the really cool "Minerva" project uses 8 of the little beveled gears, and RIS 1.5 only includes 5 of them.


The Unofficial Guide to LEGO® MINDSTORMS™ Robots Review,  February 04 1999
Submitted by Michael Garriss   [Respond | View]



Great book! Being a programmer by trade I am already a fan of the O'Reilly series of books and now they have published a easy to read, well organized book about my "other" favorite hobby.

My suggestion for the next edition: More, more, more. I would like to see more projects, a more complete programming section (especially legOS), and more on the Hitachi H8 archeticure.

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