This is just sweet! The robot was built from Lego MindStorms, and can solve a rubiks cube in about 6 minutes. That’s better than my current record of 12 years.

You can read more about it on the website.

Posted in Development, Distractions, Robots No Comments »

This isn’t recently breaking news, but I hadn’t posted about it yet.

Microsoft is offering their “Express” version of Visual Studio for free, just go to the Visual Studio Express Home, and download it. You do have to register with them to get a product key, but that still seems pretty painless.

The fact that Microsoft is offering a development platform for free was surprising to me, but what was really shocking was that although this version is aimed at hobbyists and students, there is no licensing restrictions, so you can sell your code commercially without worrying about lawyers breathing down your neck.

There are a couple of different versions, depending on what you are interested it, there is a web developer suite, as well as C#, C++, VB, and J#.

Now that you have your Development platform, what next? Well they also have a “Beginner Developer Learning Center” to help get you coding, and a “Coding for Fun” website to give you something to play around with.

Originally the plan was to offer the express editions free for 1 year, but on April 19th, 2006, they decided to make them available permanently for free.

I had mentioned in an earlier post that Microsoft was offering the Robotics Studio for free as well, but you can’t use it for commercial products without buying a runtime license. But you can learn to program Lego MindStorms in your free time. There is no need to go out and buy a robot though, because you can even work with virtual robots.

References:

Visual Studio Express Home – Microsoft

Beginner Developer Learning Center – Microsoft

Coding for Fun – Microsoft

Robotics Development Studio – Microsoft

Introduction to Programming Lego Mindstorms – Coding4Fun (Microsoft)

Posted in Development, free stuff, Microsoft, Robots 2 Comments »

I was reading the WhatsNewNow Newsletter, when I saw a link to this PCMAG’s article talking about Microsoft’s newly released Robotics Development kit.

Now, I’m not a big developer, but this sounds really cool! Evidently you can develop for real robots or for robots that only exist on your machine.

The article talks about how Tandy Trower built a virtual robot, plugged in a Xbox 360 controller, did a little dragging and dropping, and bam!, he was able to control the virtual robot.

You can read the article yourself , or visit the Microsoft Robotics Studio.

On a side note, the article also talks about the Robocup, which plans on building a team of humanoid robots that will take on, and win against, a championship soccer team.

Finally, we are one step closer to being excellent slaves for our robotic creations.

Maybe I’ll go out and buy myself some Lego MindStorms, and a robotic vacuum.

Not to mention a sledgehammer, just in case.

I mean, you never know.

Posted in Development, Microsoft, Robots, SDK No Comments »