The Spirit of Christ-mas!

You're a mean one Mr. Grinch! It's almost Christmas and one of the Knights of Bots member has designed, build and programmed a Church. We call it All Saints R.C. Church. Inside of this festive Church is a typical design of a Renaissance Roman Catholic Church. This Church changes with the season.

 

As you can see that wreaths and poinsettias are surrounding this marvelous beauty of art. 

Here are some closer views of the inside of the Church.

The Altar has two sets of Wreaths on each end right next tot the presiders chair in front of the tabernacle. 

              

  Another angle of the sanctuary. 

This is a view of the side of the church with some stain glass windows that are only visible to the people inside the church.

This structure has more than beauty, it has been programmed to play church chimes.

The loop is there to make the program repeat 2 times. Inside the loop is the two sound blocks that has the sound of the bells. A beautiful church model with beautiful chimes.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas! And A Happy New Year!

For more go to Brics2bots. -Antonio C.

A LEGO Power Functions Creation

One of the Knights Of Bots members recently began to work with LEGO Power Functions (also referred to as LEGO PFs).  After about a week of experimenting, the member came up with a weird LEGO Power Functions contraption (shown below).

The contraption

A picture of it from the bottom

Here is a video of the contraption at work:

The contraption was inspired by a book titled, The LEGO Technic Idea book: Fantastic Contraptions, by Yoshihito Isogawa. This book is filled with pictures of fantastic LEGO contraptions (hence the title). Upon reviewing the book, we were inspired to try out some of his brilliant ideas. 

This creation/contraption is a combination of two of the gearing systems found in Isogawa's book. Both gearing systems are powered by a LEGO PF rechargeable battery. The first gearing system is very simple. It consists of an old LEGO Technic motor (Electric RC Race Buggy Motor 2002) which actually has two axle holes for turning attachments, a bevel gear with twelve teeth, and a double bevel gear with 20 teeth. The gears result in a spinning motion, as shown below. This system can be found in pages 52 and 53 of the book.

The second gearing system, in my opinion, is very interesting. It is powered by a LEGO Power Functions Medium-Motor. There are 3 double bevel gears with 20 teeth and one double bevel gear with 12 teeth.

 As shown in the video below, the motor spins the 12 tooth double bevel gear to mesh with the 20 tooth double bevel gear. As the motor changes directions, the double bevel gears shift in the corresponding direction. If the motor was spinning to the right, the double bevel gears would shift to the right, causing the two gears to mesh with the double bevel gear on the right. If the motor were to shift to the left, the two gears would shift to the left, causing the to gears to mesh with the double bevel gear on the left. This gearing system can be found on pages 148 and 149 of the book. This gearing shift is what makes this contraption unique.

Feel free to make the contraption described in this article. If you would like to purchase the LEGO Power Functions kit, the LEGO Technic motor, or Yoshihito Isogawa's book, the links are at the end of this post. The link for Isogawa's website is down below too.

LEGO Technic motor

Power Functions M-Motor

LEGO Power Functions Motor Set

Yoshihito Isogawa's book

Yoshihito Isogawa's website

The Desktop Helper

Have you ever wanted a robot that assists you while you're doing work? Recently, one of the members of Knights of Bots finished working on a robot that does just that. The robot is Desktop Helper. It was made using the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 set.

The Desktop Helper

Desktop Helper can do two things: play music and hold pencils. To play music, simply wave your hand in front of the ultrasonic sensor. Doing so will cause the robot to play the chorus of "Don't Worry be Happy" by Bobby McFerrin.

To use the pencil holder, press the button. After pressing the button the pencil holder will move down so you can collect your writing utensil or place a writing utensil inside the holder. Press the button again for the pencil holder to move back up.

Here is a video of how the Desktop Helper works (remember to turn the volume up so you can hear the music):

To program Desktop Helper we used LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Home Edition software. While programming our member encountered a problem, the EV3 could not store sounds that were longer than approximately 8 seconds. In order to play a song, one would have to use a sound editing software to chop up the song into 8 second intervals and save each piece of the song. Then, the song blocks would have to be put together, in order, in the program. Our member used a song editing software named Audacity (a free program) to break the song into intervals. Our mentor/coach (L3GoBots Lady) helped us break the song into intervals. Then each song piece was saved as a sound block and put into the program. However, the song pieces were placed in a different order to make the song fluid.

A screenshot of the Desktop Helper Program

You may have noticed from reading the program (or watching the video) that while playing the song the robot displays a smiley face. Here is a picture of it: