NXT

I was working on an omniwheeled robot last night, trying some code that would ensure the vehicle would go straight even if the motors were not perfectly in sync.  Unfortunately, there seemed to be a bit of a bug in the code which lead to some pretty erratic behaviour. So as you can see, not all of my projects are ...

After a prolonged hibernation period, the Mindsqualls project is back from the dead and version 2.0 has been released. I was using an older version in my super secret Kinect project, so it is nice to see that is being maintained again. Mindsqualls is one of the easiest to use .Net library for controlling your NXT using C# or VB.Net. ...

The NXTLog website has a very cool challenge up! I blatantly stole the article below from the NXT Step. Original article: [LINK] There are robot explorers all over the world and even on Mars! We are challenging you this summer to invent the NXT great generation of explorer robots with your MINDSTORMS NXT. Will your robot explore the desert, the ...

Dexter Industries are currently developing a great new sensor, a proper 6 Degree of Freedom (DOF) Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) for the NXT. It consists of two sensors on a single board; a 3-D gyroscope and a 3-D accelerometer. Both sensors can measure their respective values on the X, Y and Z axes. The sensor, like many of the other ...

HiTechnic have released a new sensor: a barometric sensor that can also measure temperature! If you ever wanted to make your own weather station, then this is perfect for the job! It measures the pressure in 1/1000th of an inch of Mercury, which can easily be converted other units like Pascal and PSI. The temperature is measured in 1/10th degrees ...

NXShield for Arduino This shield is designed to fit on an Arduino. It will have 4 NXT motor ports, 4 NXT sensor ports and several RC servo motor ports. It allows you to use the I2C port on the Arduino. However it will have only a single I2C bus.  That means it will work fine with multiple digital sensors as ...

After the initial post about my thermal imaging system using the Dexter Industries Thermal Infrared Sensor, I made some improvements with both the speed and accuracy of the whole thing. I made the sensor sampling interval time based, rather than encoder value based.  This proved to be a lot better at getting consistent sampling rates.  I also doubled the horizontal ...

Over at Amazon.co.uk they have the Mindstorms NXT 2.0 kit on sale. You can get it for just £176.79, down from £234.99. For those in the Euro zone, that’s down from €266 to €200. My North American readers can get a discounted one at the Amazon.com website where it’s priced down from $279.99 to $256.95. Use the links above to ...

These are the new Rotacaster wheels that arrived Monday morning. The one with the orange hub has dark grey, soft, very grippy rollers; the wheel with the dark grey hub  has slightly harder, orange rollers. These are the latest prototypes and they have undergone some great improvements; the rollers roll more freely and the hubs grip the axels in a ...

After seeing the video posted on Mauro Brunato’s website, I got all sorts of ideas in my head for other cool things to do with it. With a little help from my friend SC, I managed to get my hands on one of these Kinect sensors as well. It wasn’t easy to get it working, though but with the help ...