Time to expand your building power with your Lego Mindstorms®. You must be tired of rotating things all day with regular old motors. It’s time to start moving things bach and forth, up and down, in and out! Like a REAL engineer. Firgelli actuators will make you the coolest kid on the block for certain.

Lego Mindstorm®, Power Functions®, and Technic® compatible Linear Actuators. These linear actuators are self contained units which include an electric motor. They will push up to 25N and move at 12mm/s unloaded.

For use with your NXT® Brick you will need a standard NXT® connection cable to connect it in place of one of the Mindstorm® Servos, and you will need to download the Firgelli L12-NXT Block here.

For manual use with Lego Power Functions® you will require the Cable-NXT-PF available on this site. For manual use with older Lego Technic® style battery packs you will require the Cable-NXT-Technic available on this site.

Please note: The Lego Group does not endorse these products. Lego®, NXT®, Mindstorms®, Technic® and Power Functions® are trademarks of The Lego Group.

The ArbotiX Commander is an Arduino Software compatible, open-source XBEE-wireless hand-held controller built specifically for controlling ArbotiX/NUKE powered walking robots (but it can be used to control just about any Arduino powered robot). This gamepad style controller comes ready to be setup with the ArbotiX Robocontroller. The ArbotiX Commander was meant to be hacked, modified, upgraded, and otherwise tinkered with. Add additional sensors, customize it with your own handle grips, or rewrite the firmware sketch in any way you see fit!

We’ve been a bit quiet around here lately, mostly because we have our heads buried and are hard at work at bringing you guys some awesome new robotics products and kits! Wanted to take some time to showcase a new reworked section of our site that helps builders like you build your robots easier. Our Robot Servos & Brackets section has been completely revamped, pairing up the servos with compatible brackets and frames (tons of new varieties have been added, as well as more to come).

The Robotis Dynamixel Servos section should be of particular intrest, as we now stock individual Bioloid Frames as well as every type of DX/RX/EX Series Brackets and Frames.

Even our Hobby Servos section got a revamp, now offering Micro, Standard, and Giant Scale PWM Hobby Servos and compatible brackets!

We also started rounding up some cool user projects to demonstrate what can be done with these awesome actuators, which can be found on various related product pages. Here are a few examples!

Assimilate them early! Corrupt their minds before they have a chance to live a life free from fascination with robots. Yes, we are talking about our youth. We must teach them to master the machines to avoid enslavement in the future!

Trossen Robotics has been filling the professional hobby robotics niche for half a decade now. We’ve all seen the crazy projects mentally unstable adults have been creating over there, but now it’s time to help pass the torch. The droids at Trossen Robotics are happy to announce the Grand Opening of their new sister store for the youngins, Roboticstoys.com.

To celebrate the opening of the store sure to be the favorite of baby John (and Sarah) Conners everywhere we are giving away a free robot to the first 50 orders! In reality these are spybots that we plan to put into every home as part of a secret government program, but for now you can have one free. Isn’t that exciting!?

Roboticstoys.com aims to be the number one place to find all your robotics kits, toys, and decor for that budding roboticist in your family. Robotics is a great way to spark an early interest with children in mathematics, engineering, and the sciences. There is nothing quite like building your first interactive creation and watching it come to life to kickoff a lifelong fascination of discovery and invention. Just be careful with how much time they spend behind closed doors or you just might come home to find this thing “negotiating” allowance increases with you.

As always, Thank you for being a customer and blog reader!

- The Trossen Robotics Team

This is an extremely versatile Arduino-software compatible microcontroller that packs a lot of features in a very small footprint. It is also the board used for the target/scoring system in the Mech Warfare robotics competition. Read more below:

The MINI robocontroller is designed for small robots. It incorporates a powerful AVR microcontroller, XBEE wireless radio, dual motor drivers, and 3-pin servo-style headers for IO.

The board includes all circuitry needed to control a small differential drive robot. It can also easily control up to 4 servos.

See the user manual here.

RoboController Specifications

• 16MHz AVR microcontroller (ATMEGA168).
• 20 I/O, 6 of which can function as analog inputs
• Servo style 3-pin headers (gnd, vcc, signal) on all 6 analog inputs, and 4 of the digital IO
• Dual 1A motor drivers, with combined motor/encoder header.
• XBEE radio sold separately. A typical setup will require 2 XBEE radios and an XBEE explorer to be able to wirelessly control your robot from your computer.
• This board requires either an FTDI cable or ISP. We recommend the Sparkfun FTDI breakout.
• 2.4”x2.4” with mounting holes in each corner.

We managed to pick up a handful of extra kits for those who missed the Pre-Order. Quantities are extremely limited and available on a first come, first serve basis. Order now while there is still time before Christmas!

For those of you wondering about the availability and release date of the Bioloid Premium Upgrade Kit, which will allow Bioloid Comprehensive Kit owners to take advantage of all the awesome new features, these kits are estimated to be available in February. We will keep you updated!