Parts needed

BrickPi
1

Greetings,

We own the Lego Mindstorm NXT 2.0 and a ton of parts.

We also are new to, and own, a Pi 2.0, and a ton of starter set parts.

I’m trying to determine what is necessary to link the two without the purchase of a complete new kit. I didn’t see a part list that I could individually by, maybe I missed it, but I’m not sure what is needed anyway.

Thanks,
Frank

2

Hey Frank,
Sorry for the slow response here.

Just to be clear, do you have the Raspberry Pi Model B+ or the Raspberry Pi Model B Version 2?

If you have a Raspberry Pi Model B+, I would recommend buying the following:

  • BrickPi - Comes with the electronic board, a 9V adapter cord, and a case.
  • Power Pack - Lets you use AA batteries to power the BrickPi.
  • SD Card - If you don’t have this already, or don’t have a spare, pick this up. I would strongly recommend you use our SD Card, or at least use our image.

I assume you guys have a wifi dongle laying around somewhere? Like this one.

If you have the Raspberry Pi Model B version 2, we haven’t updated our software for that yet. We’ve been working on it all week (well, since Wed when we got the latest version. We’ll have a software update for this soon, but it looks like the B+ is really the best Raspberry Pi to use with the BrickPi.

Hope this helps. Best,

John

3

John,

Thanks, and no worries.

We have the Pi B+, we purchased it for my son on Jan 26 with no knowledge that the v2 was releasing a week later.

Isn’t that how technology is?

Yes, we have a wifi dongle, exactly like that, we purchased after our starter kit. The one that came with the kit wasn’t working.

Anyway, that’s fantastic, I’ll take a look at the links and talk to him. He saw your example of the BrickPi reading a book, and thought that may be a great project to try.

One last question, we’ve just started looking at your programming libraries (and by we I mean me). Will that get us started, or are there any recommendations on books you sell related directly to the BrickPi and NXT programming?

4

Frank,

Excellent news all around. The B+ has really great power management and we’ll probably keep recommending it as long as they sell it. This is great news.

As for starting out. Most of our examples are in Python; certainly the Book Reader project is. If you have some experience with that programming language, you’re ahead of the game. We don’t have any books though, unfortunately, for getting started with it.

If any questions arise as you work through it, please contact us here on the forums and we’ll assist asap.

Best,

John

5

Hello John,

I’m planning to purchase BrickPi through Amazon, since it’s simplest for me.
In this post I saw that BrickPi comes with 9V adapter cord. Is this for all Brick Advanced? I just don’t want to miss something doing order. I will also take PowerPack. Is this all I need, if I have usual things for RPI?

BR,

6

Hey Kerhold,

Yes, you got it. The BrickPi Advanced comes with a 9V adapter cord. You should also get the BrickPi Power Pack or some other 8XAA battery pack to adapt. That should be everything you need to get a basic robot going (other than the lego components which we are not allowed to sell).

You’ll also need, of course, an SD Card, a wifi dongle.

Best,

John

7

Thx John.

BTW. I noticed that you are updating some products like GroovePI. Do you have any plans for BrickPi?

BR,

8

Our pleasure. We have plans, but we’re still getting things together. First step was to make sure that everything worked with EV3 and the latest manufacturing run should have that updated firmware on it. More to come!