What's Inside the NXT Brick?

This is the first in a series of mini articles that will take a look at the internals of the new Lego Mindstorms NXT Intelligent brick. In these articles I will take a look inside the NXT Brick what it is, how it works, and what makes it run. Check out part one of this series about the hardware inside of the NXT Intelligent Brick.

The full hardware specs as released by LEGO are as follows:

• Main processor: Atmel® 32-bit ARM® processor, AT91SAM7S256
• - 256 KB FLASH
• - 64 KB RAM
• - 48 MHz
• Co-processor: Atmel® 8-bit AVR processor, ATmega48
• - 4 KB FLASH
• - 512 Byte RAM
• - 8 MHz
• Bluetooth wireless communication CSR BlueCoreTM 4 v2.0 +EDR System
• - Supporting the Serial Port Profile (SPP)
• - Internal 47 KByte RAM
• - External 8 MBit FLASH
• - 26 MHz
• USB 2.0 communication Full speed port (12 Mbit/s)
• 4 input ports 6-wire interface supporting both digital and analog interface
• - 1 high speed port, IEC 61158 Type 4/EN 50170 compliant
• 3 output ports 6-wire interface supporting input from encoders
• Display 100 x 64 pixel LCD black & white graphical display
• - View area: 26 X 40.6 mm
• Loudspeaker Sound output channel with 8-bit resolution
• - Supporting a sample rate of 2-16 KHz
• 4 button user-interface Rubber buttons
• Power source 6 AA batteries
• - Alkaline batteries are recommended
• - Rechargeable Lithium-Ion battery 1400 mAH is available
• Connector 6-wire industry-standard connector, RJ12 Right side adjustment

The basic schematic for how the NXT brick interacts looks something like this:


For full schematics and information download LEGO's NXT Hardware Developer Kit.

Be sure to check out the next article about the motor and sensor ports of the NXT brick.