“Sister Christian, oh the time has come…” 🙂

Got two new Lego Mindstorms motors in the mail yesterday (which I had bought off eBay). My old ones were sticking and my robot was having trouble getting around.

When I plugged in the new ones, I immediately noticed the difference. They sounded quieter and smoother and seemed to turn faster.

With the new motors, my robot could get around a bit better, but it was still acting kind of retarded and whenever I stop the brickOS program (which came from a book), the firmware crashes and I have to take the battery out to even shut the RCX off. Annoying.

So I decided to scrap the brickOS program and try an NQC program instead – that one works quite a bit better even though the program is much simpler. The robot does an OK job of going towards light, although it sometimes misses it, especially it’s coming towards it at an angle, and sometimes it sees the reflection of its own light on my white wall and gets all excited and tries to make love to the wall.

I guess building a robot that does the dishes is going to be a long way off…