LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Hacker's Guide

click here for more details, find new or used items	Dave Prochnow Our price £15.19 (£15.99) New from £4.52 Used from £3.50 Pages: 459 (Paperback) ISBN: 0071481478 Pub: Tab Electronics Pub date: 2007-01-01 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 405793

Reader Reviews:

Some interesting stuff, but an awful lot of padding hides the useful information (21/22 people found this helpful)

Dave Prochnow was selected to take part in Lego's pre-release of the Mindstorms NXT system, and the book is written from the perspective of someone who has had access to the NXT parts and software for a good while.
He covers four main topics - the history of Lego robotics (including RIS), the NXT system, the project ideas and an extended section on design in around 450 pages.

However, the useful section of the book for the NXT builder is contained in section 3, the 'hack' projects, which covers only 90 or so pages. Some of the projects are fun - adding a video camera to the system for example, but some of them seem to go nowhere- the Bluetooth hack spends a couple of pages explaining the Bluetooth protocol, then wanders into a discussion for the 'Pepper Pad', a $[...] hand-held entertainment tablet. The link? Now you understand Bluetooth, you'll naturally want to spend $[...] on a device that might be able to communicate with the NXT in some unspecified manner, with no examples to show that he achieved this himself. Why not show the NXT connecting to a simpler Bluetooth device you might already have, say a phone?

The last section of the book, Katherine's Design Fun House' is a primer on good design principals. However, it is a strange choice for a book on robotics to illustrate all the principles of good design through projects replicating architectural design. And all using Lego bricks, the majority of which are not in your NXT kit. It's hard to see the relvance of this section at all.

I understand that hacking projects are supposed to be a little unfinished and rough, the idea being that you can include the ideas and topics into your projects, rather than simply following an assembly sequence. However, Prochnow's projects are too meandering, and some (adding lighting, or the external sensors) just don't have enough information to go anywhere other than say 'this looks like a great idea'. However, the claim that the projects can be 'completed in under 30 minutes' is too good a description of the lack of information, rather than a compliment to their simplicity.

Good points: Prochnow's style is entertaining, and the book is well laid out. The photgraphy is good.
Not-so-good points: Close-up photographs of Harry Potter Lego minifigs? An extended essay on the contents of his NXT test kit? A Connect4 game played with the NXT components? How to build a replica of a New York skyscraper?

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