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LEGO MINDSTORM NXT

We all grew up enjoying hours of pleasure with Lego building bricks, well, now you can extend the pleasure to a new generation and bang up to date with robotics. Not only do you get the enjoyment of building,limited only by your imagination, but you can teach your children computing skills too, along with the huge educational value of problem solving.

Although Lego released Mindstorm in 2006 it has now been updated to Mindstorm NXT 2.0 and includes a host of new features and accessories and is, without doubt, one of the hottest toys for Xmas 2009.

Now you can create the smartest, strongest and most advanced LEGO® robot ever, in as few as 30 minutes! LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT includes an all-new NXT Intelligent Brick with 32-bit microprocessor, 3 Interactive Servo motors, a sound sensor, an ultrasonic visual sensor, an improved touch sensor, and an improved light sensor. The kit also features 519 specially selected LEGO TECHNIC elements for sturdy and durable building and improved functionality and movement, 4 input ports, 3 output ports and 7 6-wire cords Matrix display, Piezo speakers, USB 2.0 and Bluetooth support and an easy-to-use PC and Mac compatible programming software.
Now if that sounds complicated, don´t worry, the plug and play functionality and just simple ease of use means that you can be building working robots in less than an hour.
I´m not a programmer by an means but I was surprised to find that the
software supports a huge array of languages but you don´t need to have that
ability as the software is menu driven and very simple to use but, if you want to, you can expand it massively with these added abilities.
Lego now provide quite a large range of accessories so you can select add ons to suit almost any application you are trying to build.
As you can imagine, Mindstorm NXT has built up a large following and there
are a number of forums and groups where knowledge and expertise is freely
shared – so no matter what problem you may not be able to solve – don´t
worry – help is close at hand – Lego even have their own panel of experts on
their website who will help you as well!
Members of the Mindstorm community have also written books about the product which are easily available and if, at the beginning, you´re stuck as to what to create there are a number of detailed plans available to help you out.

You´ll see that the recommended age range for Mindstorm is 10yrs+ -I would tend to disagree with this (unless your 10yr old is a member of MENSA) and suggest that it is more practical for 14 year olds and upwards.
If you remember Mecano sets in the 60´s and 70´s and the amount of people who ended up as designers and architects as a result of playing with these highly educational toys – then give your children the opportunity to combine high tech with basic building skills – Mindstorm is highly engaging and absorbing – not to mention addictive – it´s not the cheapest toy at over $300 but I can guarantee you that you´ll never regret purchasing it…

LEGO MINDSTORM NXT 2.0 is currently in stock but buy soon cos it´s flying off the shelves and you won´t want to disappoint this Xmas..