The King's Treasure - Summary
The book is out! I'm happy to announce that "LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT 2.0: The King's Treasure," the sequel to "LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT: The Mayan Adventure," is a 302 page book with CAD building instructions created by Chris Smith.
The book contains 21 chapters and provides five new challenges to solve by building 5 new robots. The book is broken into 5 sections, with each section containing four chapters:
First chapter of a section contains part of the fictional storyline - Evan is back in Guatemala with his archaeologist uncle and they're ready to enter King Ixtua's treasure respository - but traps and obstacles are everywhere.
Second chapter of a section contains building and programming theory discussions - you'll be using the Design Journal worksheet (5 blanks provided in the book but you can download them for free to print more) to help formulate your robot design and program.
Third chapter of a section contains the building instructions for a robot that can be used to overcome the challenge found in that section. Unlike the Mayan Adventure that used photographs for building instructions, I was able to get my good friend and fellow MCPer, Chris Smith, to take my photographs and convert them to CAD. They're large and easy-to-follow.
Fourth chapter of a section contains the programming instructions for creating the NXT-G program used to solve a challenge. I walk you through the placement of every block and show you how to configure them (and explain the hows and whys).
That's only 20 chapters, you say? Well, of course Chapter 21 contains the story's finale... will Evan, Uncle Philip, and the rest of the expedition team be able to uncover King Ixtua's treasure? But a better question is - will you?
Jim
ps. a HUGE thank you to all my readers - parents, teachers, coaches, and students - for your emails, letters, and comments regarding The Mayan Adventure - this book would NEVER have happened without your support. I hope you all enjoy it!
pps. I mentioned in a previous post about a special commemorative item I'd be announcing when the book was released... stay tuned... it's coming soon!
Comments
This will make a great Christmas present - Love the patch as well.
I think you mentioned this before but I can't recall the answer. How does the difficulty level of King's Treasure compare to Mayan Adventure? Should you go through Mayan Adventure prior to King's Treasure or are they independent of each other?
I'm planning on going through Mayan Adventure in January w/ a small group of 9yr olds! Wish me luck!
LEGOmom
For me, though - I think the difficulty level of the two books is about equal.
Congratulations and thank you for publishing another book. I'm waiting for my copy to arrive and am confident, based on all your previous excellent contributions, that it will be awesome.
Aloha,
Aaron