This new edition of the Inventor's Guide provides everything one needs to get started with the current Lego Mindstorm's NXT 2.0 set, and importantly gives an organization to structure one's developing parts, assembly and programming knowledge through your increasing knowledge of this fascinating hobby. The authors are both widely published in the Lego NXT community and are engineers themselves with more than a decade each of involvement in this hobby. This extensive handbook begins with a clear and succinct introduction to everything you will find in your NXT 2.0 set, including parts and software installation. It then proceeds with a clear and well illustrated tutorial in constructing structures with the parts, beams and gears. A similar and non-threatening introduction to NXT-G programming follows. Chapter 10 provides a brief but clear introduction to a sound methodology to design and develop NXT robots and projects. The following chapters describe and give a tutorial background for 6 fascinating robotic projects concluding with an electro-mechanical printer similar to early personal computer plotters built entirely in the hardware and programming language of Lego Mindstorms NXT 2.0. The appendices catalog the parts contained in the set and each of the elements of the NXT-G programming language giving a categorization that will allow one to organize their increasing knowledge.
I highly recommend this well-organized and exciting tutorial to anyone who wishes to learn this fascinating hobby, or to be given along with the set to provide the necessary knowledge to obtain the real benefits of the NXT 2.0 set.
--Ira Laefsky, MSE/MBA