Exposed

The HiTechnic Compass held a lot more internal chips and doodads than I had originally expected, to be very honest.  When one of my readers, Noah, suggested I take it apart and show the World its guts, I had my reservations.  I was pleasantly surprised, as I hope you will be. Without further ado, I present to you, the HiTechnic ...

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 ...

This one was a request by one my readers and what a great suggestion! Taking this sensor apart proved a little bit of a challenge.  It wasn’t as eager to give ups secrets as readily as some of the other ones I’ve opened up in the past.  I also didn’t have a replacement cap for this, so I had to ...

No, not a HiTechnic sensor in this episode of Exposed. Yesterday someone on the Mindboards forums asked what the third bump on the LEGO Colour Sensor was for.  I was curious enough to take a small blade to one of my sensors and take it apart.  I did take some grainy pictures but figured I could probably get better ones ...

What’s this?  Two Exposed posts in two days?  What is this madness? To be honest I’ve been wanting to cut HiTechnic’s new Barometric Sensor open since I got it a while back.  I held off while it wasn’t on sale yet since I couldn’t really write about it anyway.  However, now that it’s out there in the wild and I ...

I’ve received a fresh batch of sensor covers in the mail so I can once again show you the gory details of various NXT sensor innards. This time I took a knife to the HiTechnic Acceleration Sensor. I’ve been curious about this one for a little while now. From the pictures below it’s quite easy to see which one of ...

The HiTechnic Angle Sensor was released a few weeks ago and I’ve been eagerly awaiting a production version of it.  The wait is over now and of course the first thing that came to my mind was “I wonder what it looks like on the inside.” Gus from HiTechnic did mention that it uses a magnetic sensor to detect the ...

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to receive one of the main components in the upcoming Renewable Energy Add-on Set.  I didn’t get a manual with it so it was a bit of a mystery to me.  However, thanks to John Hansen and some very helpful peeps at the Lego Electronics R&D department I got some more information ...

On my continuing mission to take apart HiTechnic sensors and show you guys their guts, I present to you: The Gyro.  The little yellow/gold component on the right of the PCB is the actual gyro chip, the rest of the components most likely to deal with power conditioning.  There’s not a whole lot to tell about this board since there’s ...

A new version of the colour sensor has been brought out by HiTechnic.  It features a number of new abilities: Increased sensitivity; the sensor can determine a large object’s colour from up to 20 cm away. No longer needs an RGB LED but uses a bright white LED instead.  The RGB values are determined by the very sensitive colour sensor. ...