MINDSTORMS!!!

The Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kit has arrived at our house!!

Alex saved his money and finally had enough to place his order. It arrived on Thursday night just as we were heading out for the evening. It nearly killed him to leave it, but he was so excited that he actually had it that it was okay.

That night, before bed, he unpacked and repacked the box of parts so he would be ready in the morning. He then took the manual to bed with him and read it all so he would be REALLY ready :-)

In anticipation of the arrival of the box, he had worked ahead in his schoolwork so he could have Friday off.

The boy built and programmed ALL day....




He loved his first little bot... but alas, that love was short lived and it was quickly disassembled in order to build something else.




(demonstrating the jaws of the gator-bot he was building)

He built several of the examples from the kit over the course of the day. By Saturday afternoon, he thought he was ready to branch out into his own design. This really excited me. I must admit that I had a fear that he might build the examples and then be done... either from loss of interest or from it being more difficult than he had thought. I was glad to see that he was willing to give his own creation a shot even before he finished the sample projects.

So, Saturday night he built a gondola-bot that travels across his room on a piece of yarn suspended between his desk chair and closet door knob. He keeps tweaking the program, but right now it travels to the closet with a green light shining. When the touch sensor hits the door, it pauses, says "have a nice day", turns its light to red and travels back to the chair. When it hits the chair it again pauses, says "have a nice day", turns its light back to green and travels again to the closet. He's pretty proud of this so it goes on for quite a while! :-)

I can't wait to see what he builds next!!