Hobbies And Interests
Vehicles
Place your Mindstorm microcontroller on a wheeled chassis that is powered by the servos that came with your Lego Mindstorm kit. You now have a wheeled vehicle that moves around across the floor. Your child can get creative and make any type of robotic vehicle, such as a truck, car or motorcycle, as well as a humanoid robot. Using the ultrasonic sensor, your microcontroller can sense the speed of the vehicle. It can be educational for your child to play around with the different speeds using the speed detector. There are lessons to be learned about acceleration, echolocation and speed.
Launching Marble
Use the servos to toss, launch or even bat marbles. You can also play around with speed detection here. The servos will launch the marble in the direction you specify. All you need to do is feed marbles through the servo arm, and you can use a magazine that comes in your Mindstorms set.
Household Chores and Security
For the more advanced Mindstorm user, try to make up designs for the robots to do chores around the house. For example, you can program a robot to open the door for you when you say "open." You can use combinations and motion sensors to tell you when one of your valuables is being picked up, and the robot can make noise to notify you or scare away someone about to take the item.
Solving Puzzles
The Mindstorm's color sensors can help you solve puzzles, such as sudoku or the Rubik's Cube. One builder made a robot that was able to play a game of Connect Four against him and think two moves ahead.