Lego Mindstorms Interfacing

Rating:
Summary: not worth the money -- beware
Review: As an experienced circuit designer and a lego mindstorms enthusiast, I found this book very disappointing. I had suspicions about why many copies of it were being auctioned on ebay for $2 each. Now I know why. Right from the first chapter on, I am puzzled about what the hell the author is attempting to communicate. I fail to understand why he uses an obsolete Scout programmable brick (from the Robotics Discovery Kit), or for that matter, why he even interfaces a gutted RC transceiver to it. He doesn't even use it to remotely control the robot. No, he uses the Scout interfaced with a relay driver circuit to turn a wireless receiver on and off remotely as a lame example of wireless control. This is an example of wireless control? Yeah, a bad one if anything.

I'm also not sure of the audience he intends this book for. He put lots of circuit schematics and descriptions in it, but assumes the reader has basic elctronics knowledge, such as diode and transistor theory, as well as circuit analysis skills. If this book was intended for high-school age readers, they better be taking electronics or have had courses in it, or he will lose them with this content. My personal opinion is that this text has some potential as a reference in the 2nd year of a community college electronics program, but no serious circuit designer, programmer, or even hobbyist is gonna get anything new from this. Better info about sensor development and other programming languages is easily found on other lego mindstorms websites.

Another annoying aspect is the author's liberal use of acronyms for just about any set of words he deems necessary, whether it fits or not. There are more TLAs throughout this text than any military field manual ever contained. I don't need him to condense something so useless as 'stand-alone code' to SAC for future use.

The author does include a new and interesting method of object-oriented RCX prgramming with Python and VBA language using Excel. This is probably about the only redeeming aspect of this text for savy programmers, but it too is more of a 'type this' and 'run this' treatment that omits any useful explaination of the code and how it works. I believe the intended audience for this book may just find this way over their head if they are only capable of programming the RCX using RCX code, instead of using other more flexible and challenging languages such as NQC and Java.

Bottom line: if you are even mildly curious about this book, get it at an auction or buy it used thru Amazon (as I did--I only paid $2.50 + $3.50 s/h). Don't even think about paying full retail price for this text; it isn't worth it, and you'll be disgusted that you wasted your money on it. Better and more information on RCX interfacing can be found on the web at other lego mindstorm sites such as http://www.plazaearth.com/usr/gasperi/lego.htm

Rating:
Summary: Helpful and informative
Review: I found the book easy for me to understand. Although I am relatively new to Mindstorms, I needed to be able to move beyond the basics. The programs provided on the cd gave me some more ideas of where I can go as I develop myself. It's light-hearted and full of illustrations that gave me a thorough understanding of the concepts that he discussed. This book is an asset to any collection.

Rating:
Summary: Great book from a different approach
Review: I have in my collection all of the books published on Lego Mindstorms. While everyone else focus on construction of a Lego model with an accompanying program to add functionality to the model, Wilcher takes a different approach.

This book is not for the absolute beginners. You do need to have some prerequisites in electronics and programming. The book only shows you how to carry out the interfacing between the RCX and the outside world (using eg. RC transmitter/receivers, Basic Stamp) but assume you know about potentiometers, resistors etc and also know how to use multimeters. This book is more for the electronically adept users who wishes to use RCX as part of his tools.

Overall, this is book that I would highly recommend to all who wish to use the RCX other than what all the books have on about. I gave it 4 stars (actually I would have preferred 4.5 stars, but Amazon doesn't have that!) as I would really would see Wilcher going in-depth for some of the projects.

Rating:
Summary: Take Mindstorms to the Max!
Review: In this book Don Wilcher provides step by step instructions and lab projects to use the LEGO Mindstorms RCX and Scout as a basis for many types of robotic inventions. Learn new types of software interfaces, data aquisition methods, diagnostic tools, and more. The CD included with the book provides computer programs and circuit simulations. I would recommend this book for anyone that has the desire to learn and experiment with electronic controls and software for robots.

Rating:
Summary: Take Mindstorms to the Max!
Review: In this book Don Wilcher provides step by step instructions and lab projects to use the LEGO Mindstorms RCX and Scout as a basis for many types of robotic inventions. Learn new types of software interfaces, data aquisition methods, diagnostic tools, and more. The CD included with the book provides computer programs and circuit simulations. I would recommend this book for anyone that has the desire to learn and experiment with electronic controls and software for robots.

Rating:
Summary: Lego Mindstorms Interfacing by: Don Wilcher
Review: Oh, what a wonderful book. Easy to read and follow, lots of easy to use techniques and illustrations. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the field. This could very well be a great teaching tool for many colleges and high schools. I'm very much impressed with the lab projects. A great book to have for reference resources.

Rating:
Summary: Lego Mindstorms Interfacing by: Don Wilcher
Review: Oh, what a wonderful book. Easy to read and follow, lots of easy to use techniques and illustrations. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the field. This could very well be a great teaching tool for many colleges and high schools. I'm very much impressed with the lab projects. A great book to have for reference resources.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful motivator for Mechatronics
Review: This book is great because it gives step-by-step
explanations on various ways in programming RCX brain
and how to interface with various sensors.
A wonderful motivator for Mechatronics.
Dr. Chung, Lawrence Tech University