Programming

A new release of the Driver Suite has been uploaded to Source Forge. Changes: Added Dexter Industries GPS driver + test program Added Mindsensors Numeric Pad + test program Added new "driver" with statistical functions Changed HTGYROstartCal in HTGYRO-driver.h to do more sampling for calibration data HTRCXreadResp in HTRCX-driver.h now clears all of the response buffer Made all calls in ...

Ever wanted to make your NXT robot run along the bottom of a river?  If you can wait until March 2011 you’ll be able to do just that! Robotics Academy, the makers of ROBOTC, are developing a virtual environment where you can run your NXT robot without actually needing the set!  Isn’t that cool? They have a multi-stage plan to ...

Look what the mail man brought in today. This little beauty here to your right is a prototype of the new upcoming Mindsensors Numeric Pad.  It’s a very nice capacitance proximity detection based keypad meaning it can tell when you’re touching it without the need for actual switches.  That does mean that if you like to wear gloves while working ...

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 ...

For your testing pleasure, the Robotics Academy has released a new set of beta versions of ROBOTC for various platforms.  So go get your own copy for the NXT right here: [LINK]. Changelog: Fixed ROBOTC behaviour not to automatically disabled TETRIX motors in a low-voltage situation. Fixed incorrect “SizeOf” function. Disabled Bluetooth Debugging information in the “Debug Stream” Window. Fixed ...

This baby had been announced prematurely at the beginning of this year when Lego Education accidentally ran its mouth in their catalogue.  Now it’s finally available to the public, the HiTechnic Angle Sensor. This thing is so ridiculously low friction when you turn it that you wouldn’t even know it was there.  With it you can measure the following: Absolute ...

My next project with the omniwheel is to have it react to bumping into things that it encounters on its journey.  I want to use the HiTechnic Accelerometer to do it, the Mindsensors one is currently being used in another project. I’ve been racking my brain for about 2 days now, analysing the data from the runs, trying to come ...

A new release of the Driver Suite has been uploaded to Source Forge. Changes: A driver for the new HiTechnic Magnetic Sensor has been added, together with an example program for normal use and for with the Sensor MUX. Added a driver to send and receive messages to and from an RCX using the IR Link.  You can also control ...

The “Minifig Vomit Mobile” is what my friend Marc-Andre called the omniwheel I took the video of.  I felt that in order for that name to be more accurate, I had to add a minifig to the robot, so here he is, on the left.  Unfortunately, this one has no internal organs, being a skeleton and all, so there is, ...

For those who are keen to get their hands dirty with the latest beta release of ROBOTC, can do so right now.  New Features and Bug Fixes in ROBOTC for MINDSTORMS 2.25.1 BETA Improved “Step Over” debugging command. Previously you may have had to hit it several times for one statement because some opcodes (e.g. “setup sensor”) did a short ...