Since the release of ROBOTC 3.50, I’ve been working hard on porting my current Driver Suite to the new function prototypes that came along with the introduction of pointers. Apart from the obvious changes to make it compile under ROBOTC 3.50, I have also finally made the move to rename all the files and drivers to a more sensible naming ...

If to be able to sense the Force you want your robot, an excellent choice this HiTechnic Force Sensor is.  Hmmmmm. ..  Due to come out in early October, this little bad boy can measure the amount of force applied to an axle that presses into the axle receptacle (image below left), which you see in the front of the ...

Woot!  ROBOTC 3.5 is finally out!  Below is a copy of the original article, which you can find here: [LINK]. Please note that the Driver Suite has not been updated yet to work flawlessly with this new version.  I will update it in the coming weeks and add a whole slew of new drivers. The ROBOTC Development team is proud ...

Looking for an interesting challenge to hone your robot building skills?  Want to pit your skills against the rest of the World?  If so, then The Mindstorms Annual Online Competition might be just the thing for you. Here’s a run down taken from various pages on the official site: Rules All entries MUST be submitted before 25th December Up to ...

Mindsensors is about to release a cool new sensor with an array of 8 light detectors: the Light Sensor Array.  Sound familiar?  Well, it should.  This is quite similar to their LineLeader sensor, with one major difference; there is no built-in PID regulator.  Why?  Simple, some robotics competitions deemed the LineLeader so good as to be an unfair advantage over ...

HiTechnic told me they were working on this little gem a while back but it’s finally here!  The HiTechnic MiniScope!  This is so cool it’s not even funny!  It’s very small and can actually be plugged right into a bread board!  That’s very useful if you want to combine it with the HiTechnic SuperPro, of course.  Now you can see ...

2 New Drivers There are two brand new drivers for the latest NXT sensors, the Mindstorms AbsoluteIMU and the HiTechnic Passive InfraRed (PIR) sensor.  The cool thing is that the HT PIR sensor will also work with the HiTechnic Sensor MUX (SMUX).  Only one thing, though, when you’re using with the SMUX, you will not be able to adjust the ...

After seemingly forever, ROBOTC 3.5 beta is finally out.  So why is this important?  There have been so many cool new features added to this release, it might as well be 4.0, to be honest. So what’s new?  Below is a list of some of the new features: Full ANSI-C support to support pointers, recursion, and stacks with an updated ...

It’s been a while since I last did an “exposed” article, where I take apart a sensor and take intimate pictures of its insides.  The HiTechnic Passive Infra Red (PIR) is a great one though.  It was also one of the most tricky ones to photograph and put back together.  To read more about what this sensor can do, check ...

I don’t usually write about stuff other than sensors and robots, but I’m going to have to make an exception this time. I’ve been using a great tool for the past few months now called Freemind.  It’s a Mind-mapping tool that allows you to quickly put down your ideas and visualise them and make connections between various sub-ideas.  As Wikipedia ...