Hi Brian, Brian Bagnall <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Going from the current information provided by Lego, it's interesting > but I'm still left wondering about a few things: > > http://www.lego.com/eng/service/faqs.asp?section=ConsumerService-FAQ-Products&catid=E8D0CD47-16B8-4B2F-900C-8FC40C163598 > > + They say they have improved touch and light sensors. Should be > interesting to see what the changes are.
the touch sensor now has an axle hole, so you can put axles there. The light sensor can recognize color, and with John Barnes being patr of the team designing it will be much better than the old one :-) > + They now have ultrasonic and sound sensors! Sounds like the native > software will allow voice commands. I can see kids loving that > feature, as well as adults. We'll see, in the video it seemed more like it reacted to the noise level. > + 3 *servo* motors. Right on! That's the way to do it. Yesss! > + The NXT brick is a dual processor unit and it has more memory. The > stats say 256 Kbytes FLASH, 64 Kbytes RAM for the 32 bit processor and > 4 Kbytes FLASH, 512 Byte RAM for the 8 bit processor. So basically > 4-5x the memory as before. The sub-1 MB memory is understandable since > they have to manufacture this thing cheap, but still 1 MB would have > been nice. If it can be controlled wirelessly via the PC with > instantaneous reaction times, memory won't be much of a concern. It depends how much of it and how easily we can use the Flash for VM + program + static data. > - Why go bluetooth? It seems like more people would have wireless > 802.11 - even .11c would be fine. Bluetooth is cheaper and uses less power. > - There is only one additional input port. I think they should have > logically doubled what was available in the previous generation to 6 > inputs and 6 outputs. This would also help Lego's business model since > people would be inclined to purchase more sensors/motors. It remains > to be seen if the new style jacks will allow an expansion module > similar to a USB hub. The site says: > - 4 input ports, 6 wire digital platform > - 3 output ports, 6 wire digital platform > I can't decipher what they mean by that... can it actually have 6 > motors and 6 sensors? I think the cables have 6 wires, hence 6 wire digital platform. It remains to see how they are used, to me digital implies that the sensors are intelligent. I read a rumour they use I2C. > - Battery life - has it been improved? I imagine not. A nice feature that I missed in the RCX would be a low power sleep with power use like off in the RCX, with a wakeup timer. Then you could wake up say once every hour and sample a value. Jürgen -- Jürgen Stuber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.jstuber.net/ gnupg key fingerprint = 2767 CA3C 5680 58BA 9A91 23D9 BED6 9A7A AF9E 68B4 ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Do you grep through log files for problems? Stop! Download the new AJAX search engine that makes searching your log files as easy as surfing the web. DOWNLOAD SPLUNK! http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_idv37&alloc_id865&op=click _______________________________________________ Lejos-discussion mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/lejos-discussion
