Cube Inventor – A Mindstorms 51515 Cube Solver

After the huge interest in the Cube Booster, I tried to build a cube solver based on just one set 51515 Mindstorms Robot inventor. There are several version of cube solvers based on the older NXT and EV3 31313. Furthermore, there is a cube solver by David Gilday (Mindcuber.com) based on the Spike Prime set. As the brick content of the new Mindstorms Inventor is different, I had to follow a different approach. Coincidentally, it worked out well to follow the same concept as in the Cube Booster.

The mindstorms set comes with a more accurate color sensor and also with some more computing power than the Boost set. However, even the new Mindstorm hub does not allow larger programs or larger data use on the hub without applying a certain amount of hacks. There are several ideas available. David Gilday saves several auxiliary files on the hub to run the calculation in the background, outside the main program. Others (e.g. prime lessons.org) created separate software to upload larger programs. With my model I tried to stick to the standard SW and standard interfaces.

Building Instructions and a manual for setup and use of the Cube Inventor are available on rebrickable.com

To deal with the storage restrictions of the hub the Cube-Inventor relies on a USB or bluetooth connection to a PC. All cube moves, scanning and color recognition runs on the hub. The actual cube solving algorithm runs on the PC. The model instructions teach about the connection between PC and hub. This type of connection can be used for a wide array of applications such as Internet controlled hubs. So, this way of implementation is also a good start into the IOT (Internet of Things).

More Details on the page about the book The Mindstorms Robot Inventor Expert