"My" Lego Mindstorm Fun...

Coding4Fun - Programming LEGO Mindstorms Robots using the My Namespace

"This article walks through creating an extension to the Visual Basic My namespace to easily enable programming Lego Mindstorms RCX robots...

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Nostalgic memories returned as I opened the box to the Lego Mindstorms Robotic Invention System I remembered the spaceships, fighter planes, sprawling space docks, towering skyscraper buildings—each coming to life accompanied by the soft click of LEGO bricks going together. And now you can automate your creations! If I had owned this kit as a kid there would have been some serious infractions of lights-out time at night.

With the release of the Microsoft.NET Interface for LEGO Mindstorms you can program your Mindstorms robot using any .NET language. In this article we will make the Microsoft.NET LEGO interface available via the Visual Basic My namespace.

Getting Started

You first need to download and install the free LEGO Mindstorms SDK 2.5. This will install the drivers required to send commands to Mindstorms robots via the infrared tower. You'll need Visual Basic 2005, which you can get for free from Visual Basic Express Edition 2005. You'll need to install the Microsoft.NET LEGO interface which will provide the interface between Visual Basic and your robot. You can get that by installing the Visual Basic LEGO Starter kits: Download Visual Basic LEGO Starter Kits If you run into any problems setting all of this up, see the setup tips in Tips and Tricks for LEGO Mindstorms programming by John Wingfield.

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There's something that's very cool about programming my Mindstorm from VB.Net (please, no jokes about toys/languages/etc  ;)