Alright, so I had this idea the other day, kind of a throwback project. I was looking at my old NXT brick, you know, the LEGO Mindstorms one. Been sitting on the shelf for ages. And I thought, wouldn’t it be neat to get some sort of simple news feed running on that little screen? Just basic headlines, nothing fancy. Seemed like a fun way to dust it off.
Getting Started
First things first, I had to actually find the NXT and all its bits. Dug through a couple of boxes, found the brick itself, the USB cable, thankfully still had some charge. Powered it up, heard that familiar beep. Okay, step one done.
Then I remembered the software situation. The original LEGO software is pretty old, and I wasn’t keen on installing that again. I figured I’d try controlling it from my main computer using something simpler. I’ve messed around with Python and Bluetooth connections before, so that seemed like the way to go.
Finding the ‘News’
Next up, I needed a source for the news headlines. Didn’t need anything complex. I just searched around for a really basic, free RSS feed or something similar that just spat out plain text headlines. Found a couple of simple tech news feeds. Good enough for this little experiment. The goal wasn’t a full news reader, just getting something dynamic onto that tiny NXT screen.
The Coding Part
Okay, so I decided to write a simple Python script. The plan was:
- Fetch the latest headlines from the RSS feed I found.
- Connect to the NXT brick, probably via Bluetooth cause cables are annoying.
- Send commands to clear the NXT screen and display the text.
Now, this is where it got a bit fiddly. Connecting via Bluetooth wasn’t too bad, found some libraries that could handle it after a bit of searching. The real challenge was the display. That NXT screen is tiny and monochrome. You can’t just dump a long headline onto it. I had to figure out the exact commands to send text, and how to handle lines that were too long. Decided to just show the first few words of each headline.
Connecting and Testing
Got the script sort of ready. Paired the NXT with my computer’s Bluetooth. Ran the script. First few tries? Nothing. Just errors or the script would hang. Checked the Bluetooth connection, seemed okay. Realized I was probably sending the display commands wrong. The NXT can be picky about the format.
Went back to the code. Looked up the specific commands for displaying text, making sure I had the right format, the right line numbers for the screen. Also added some delays between commands, thinking maybe I was sending things too fast for the brick to handle.
Making it Work (Sort of)
After a bit more trial and error, success! Well, kind of. I ran the script, and after a moment, the NXT screen flickered, cleared, and then… text appeared! It was just the start of a headline, maybe the first 15 characters or so. Then the next one popped up below it. It wasn’t scrolling or anything fancy, just replacing the text every time the script fetched new headlines (I set it to check every few minutes).
It looked pretty basic, honestly. Blocky text on a tiny screen. But hey, it was pulling live headline snippets from the internet and displaying them on a decade-old LEGO brick. That felt pretty cool.
Final Thoughts
So, yeah. That was my little adventure trying to get news on the NXT. Was it practical? Absolutely not. The screen is way too small, and it’s pretty slow. But it was a fun challenge. A good reminder that you can often get old tech to do new tricks, even if it’s just for the fun of tinkering. Definitely brought back some memories of playing with the Mindstorms kits way back when.
