Make: Lego and Arduino Projects: Projects for extending MINDSTORMS NXT with open-source electronics

by John Baichtal, Matthew Beckler, Adam Wolf

Make amazing robots and gadgets with two of today’s hottest DIY technologies. With this easy-to-follow guide, you’ll learn how to build devices with Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0, the Arduino prototyping platform, and some add-on components to bridge the two. Mindstorms alone lets you create incredible gadgets. Bring in Arduino for some jaw-dropping functionality—and open a whole new world of possibilities.

Build a drink dispenser, music synthesizer, wireless lamp, and more

Each fun and fascinating project includes step-by-step instructions and clear illustrations to guide you through the process. Learn how to set up an Arduino programming environment, download the sketches and libraries you need, and work with Arduino’s language for non-programmers. It’s a perfect book for students, teachers, hobbyists, makers, hackers, and kids of all ages.


Build a Drawbot that roams around and traces its path with a marker pen
Construct an analog Mindstorms clock with hands that display the correct time
Create a machine that mixes a glass of chocolate milk at the touch of a button
Make a Gripperbot rolling robotic arm that you control wirelessly with Arduinos mounted on your arms
Explore electronic music by building a guitar-shaped Lego synthesizer
Build a Lego lamp with on/off and dimmer switches that you control with a smartphone application
Jump feet first into the world of electronics, from learning Ohm’s Law to working with basic components
You'll need the Bricktronics shield created for this book by Open Source Hardware kit maker Wayne and Layne, or you can build a breadboarded equivalent (see Chapter 10) for about $25 in parts.

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction

326 pages, Paperback

First published October 22, 2012

About the author

John Baichtal has written or edited over a dozen books, including the award-winning Cult of Lego (2011 No Starch Press), LEGO hacker bible Make: LEGO and Arduino Projects (2012 Maker Media) with Adam Wolf and Matthew Beckler, Robot Builder (Que 2014) and Basic Robot Building with LEGO Mindstorms NXT 2.0 (Que 2012), as well as Maker Pro (Maker Media 2014), a collection of essays and interviews describing life as a professional maker. John lives in Minneapolis with his wife and three children.

Reviews

[Eric Mesa · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had been waiting to mark this book as read until I finished all the projects, but the reality is that might take years; not because the projects are hard, but because I can't quite get the wife to justify all the extra expenses for toys.

This book is GREAT. It reignited my love for embedded programming (I've now got some Arduino MKR boards that I'm using for a BBQ Thermostat project and a few other ideas in my head for various projects and home automations). It also gave my daughter and I a very fun project to do together.

The only problem (and the authors are up front about it) is that this book is written for someone who's got a giant box of spare Mindstorm and Technic parts, which I don't. This means that for each project I have to search the Lego-equivalent of Ebay or Amazon (which they link to in the first chapter/project) to find the pieces. Or 3D Print them. Which means each project involves spending more money for something that is just a toy. This is not why I didn't give this book 5 stars. It's not the authors' faults that I've got umpteen million hobbies and the only one that doesn't cost me more money is software programming. (Unlike embedded hardware, photography, BBQing, cooking, and general love of building gadgets)

The reason it's not 5/5 is that I go by what the stars say as the tooltips in Goodreads and 5/5 is "it was amazing." While I love that this book has great projects and helped me bond with my oldest, it was a book a really liked, not amazing. Also, somewhere around project 2 or 3 they stop providing links for the extra pieces you need to get, which makes it a real pain to go to Lego Ebay and try and get the right part. (In fact, for the first (and only - so far) project, I got a piece that was ALMOST, but not exactly the right part and it meant it didn't quite grip things correctly, making assembly annoying)

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cool ideas.