Archive for category: Experiments

• Another masterful hack from Philo

  Experiments, Sensors February 25, 2010 21:35 1 comment

  Philo has come up with another rather awesome NXT hack.  Using a Power Functions IR receiver, some additional components and a lot of creativity, he has made it possible to send up to 9 different combinations to the NXT using your PF remote.  For all the details and large pictures [...]

   

• Mindstorms Power Scope

  Experiments, ROBOTC Driver Suite, Sensors December 24, 2009 15:32 4 comments

  Mindsensors was kind of enough to send me one of their prototype sensors, the Power Meter, to play with.  It’s a sensor that allows you to measure, among other things, the current and voltage of anything you care to connect to it (within limits, of course).  The first thing that [...]

   

• I Feel The Need, The Need For Speed…

  Experiments, Sensors November 5, 2009 21:58 no comments

  In an earlier article I wrote, I tested how fast I could push the HiTechnic ProtoBoard and the MAX127 ADC under ROBOTC.  In a recent discussion with Deepak from Mindsensors, I2C speeds in ROBOTC on the NXT came up.  The questions arose about the most efficient read size for the [...]

   

• Connecting the NXT to an ArduinoMega

  Experiments, Ramblings, Sensors, Tutorials August 4, 2009 18:09 12 comments

  I’ve had my ArduinoMega for almost 2 weeks now and until today I had no luck getting it to work as an I2C slave with the NXT.  The NXT is a finicky beast when it comes to I2C.  It’s really not all that standard and requires very high pull-ups (82K) [...]

   

• All aboard the Arduino Bandwagon!

  Arduino, Experiments, Ramblings July 25, 2009 07:17 7 comments

  Having read the countless articles, websites and hearing about it from friends, I’ve decided to jump on the Arduino bandwagon.  I bought one of the new ArduinoMega boards with a very nice shield and some other things.    The ArduinoMega is an Arduino compatible board with an ATmega1280 controller that [...]

   
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  TwitterTattle: Big Brother Is Watching You

  Experiments, Sensors July 21, 2009 22:49 4 comments

  I love our dogs more than anything.  Even more than my NXTs.  I can hear you all gasp and mutter “blasphemer!”.  Now before you throw me on the fire, you must understand that I was a dog person before I was a robot person. Anyway, as I was saying, as [...]

   

• Release your inner evil scientist

  Experiments, Sensors July 2, 2009 08:49 5 comments

  Are you a budding evil scientist but lack the electronics skills to build your own sharks with laser beams?  Well, you no longer need to outsource your plans for world domination to second rate henchmen.  Now you can learn the skills needed to do this kind of thing yourself. HiTechnic [...]

   

• HiTechnic Sensor Hack

  Experiments, Sensors June 30, 2009 08:57 3 comments

  In two previous articles (here and here) I had tried to come up with a way to use IR light to gauge distances.  It wasn’t very successful, but such is the risk of trying something new.  So last night, whilst sitting at my laptop, I wondered if there was a [...]

   

• Sharp IR MUX board

  Experiments, Sensors March 2, 2009 12:14 1 comment

  What is nicer than attaching a Sharp IR sensor to your NXT?  Attaching 8 of them, of course. That is what my friend Helmut wanted to do with his NXT.  Unfortunately, as good a programmer as he might be, messing around with electronics just wasn’t his “Tasse Tee” (that is [...]

   

• Take control of your NXTCam2

  Experiments, Sensors February 23, 2009 00:12 5 comments

  Technorati Tags: NXTCam,Mindsensors,NXT,RobotC I got a Mindsensors NXTCam2 for my birthday last year but hadn’t had much time to play with it yet.  That is, until today.  The NXTCam2 detects objects by matching them to one of 8 user-programmable colour ranges.  The objects and their colour can then be retrieved [...]