Mindsensors Digital Pneumatic Pressure Sensor (PPS58-Nx)

Mindsensors have made a new pressure sensor and it’s really sweet.  It uses their new compact sensor housing and it’s very slick and robust looking.  Rather than calling it the PPS v3, they gave it the uebercatchy name PPS58-Nx.

So what can it do?  It can measure pressure from 0 to 400 kilopascal (1 to 58 PSI) with a 1 Pascal resolution.  It will do 15 samples per second, so that’s fast enough for almost all purposes.  You can retrieve the pressure in the three most commonly used pressure units: kilopascal , millibar , and pounds per square inch. Internally the sensor uses Pascals.  You can get the absolute pressure but it can also measure relative pressure using an arbitrary pressure you define yourself, nice!  The high resolution (1 Pa) “raw” pressure data can also be accessed through a separate set of registers.  It also fits very nicely inside a Technic frame, so you can easily build it into your models.

I’ve been playing with this little beauty and I modified the Pneuma-Snatcher to make use of it.  I added a Magic Wand as a pressure indicator, I think it looks pretty cool.  The program currently running is what I use when I am giving demos at events.  The robot doesn’t move around so it can’t kamikaze off the table either.  The pneumatic valves are moved using the Valve Kits, which, in turn, are controlled with a Servo Controller.  A driver for this sensor has been written and will be part of the next release of the Driver Suite.

This sensor will go on sale by the end of next week and should retail for $39.95.  You’ll be able to order it from here: [LINK].