Way back when I were a lad, the cool toy to have was LEGO MINDSTORMS (the robot building kit made by LEGO). But at about £200 it was a bit out of my price range. As I got older and had the money to buy it there was a new version due out, LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT but it was also £200-ish. I assumed that the older version would come down in price as the new version came out. Wrong! It’s so highly prized that the older version is still about £200 to buy!
Now, many years later, I have the chance to play with LEGO MINDSTORMS. I spotted a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT on eBay for only £130 and snapped it up with all due haste! Even eBay has very few MINDSTORM kits on it.
Several days later I took delivery of said prize and, wow, does it look cool!
They certainly give you enough bits!
Everything you see in the photo above comes in one biiiiig box! The only problem is that the LEGO software (to program the ‘brick’, bottom right) only runs on Windows and Mac. But, thankfully: Linux hackers to the rescue! One fellow (John Hansen) developed his own language and compiler to program the ‘brick’ in Linux so, in appreciation, I have bought his book: Lego Mindstorms NXT Power Programming: Robotics in C
I’ve only had the kit a few days so I’ve not built anything as yet, but the book has a few examples in it so I’ll be building them first methinks.
Look out world, the Terminator storyline may still happen! 
April 18th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Did you managa to make anything good out of it? =)