Page 12 - LEGO MINDSTORMS - Robotics Invention System-2 Projects

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Inventing… These sidebars offer suggestions for customizing the robots. Many of
the robots in this book have alternate sets of building instructions that will radi-
cally change the overall function and performance of the finished robot. For
example, the Bug robot has two variations on the standard set of building instruc-
tions presented in Chapter 1: a line following version of the robot and a version
that incorporates a proximity sensor. Any alternate building instructions will be
noted in these Inventing sidebars and can be downloaded from the Syngress
Solutions Web site (www.syngress.com/solutions).

Building your robots is, or course, only half the fun! Getting them to run using the RCX
brick is what distinguishes MINDSTORMS robots from ordinary models created with LEGO
bricks. Some of the robots in this book will use the programs that come hard-wired into the
RCX brick. Many of them will use unique programs that the authors have written specifi-
cally for their robots. Keep an eye out for the black and white syngress.com icons scattered
throughout the book.

These icons alert you to the fact that there is code for this particular robot available for
download from the Syngress Solutions Web site (www.syngress.com/solutions). The programs
for the robots in this book are written in two of the most common programming languages
used for LEGO MINDSTORMS:

RCX LEGO’s official programming language.
NQC Standing for “Not Quite C,” NQC is a programming language created by
Dave Baum. Very similar in many ways to the C computer programming language,
NQC is a text-based language that is more powerful and flexible than RCX.

For instruction on uploading these programs to your RCX brick, refer to the documenta-
tion that came with your LEGO MINDSTORMS RIS 2.0 kit.
The Syngress Solutions Web site (www.syngress.com/solutions) contains the code files
and alternate building instructions for the robots found in 10 Cool LEGO Mindstorms
Robotics Invention System 2.0 Projects: Amazing Projects You Can Build in Under an Hour.
The code files and alternate building instructions are located in a BotXX directory. For
example, the files for Robot 5 are located in folder Bot05. Any further directory structure
depends upon the specific files included for the robot in that particular chapter.

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