Sensors

Something that’s been brewing in the labs of Dexter Industries is sitting on my desk as I type this.  It’s an NXT compatible GPS sensor.  As you can see, it’s very compact.  It’s still a prototype and chances are the final version will probably use more surface mounted components to make it smaller, still. The info on the chips and ...

Thanks to a very generous person named Thorsten on the ROBOTC forums I am now the proud owner of A RCX 2.0 brick An IR Tower An RCX remote control (not pictured) A USB<->Serial converter I’ve been asked in the past to add support to my ROBOTC drivers for communicating with an RCX using the HiTechnic IR Link sensor.  It ...

Yesterday and today I’ve played a bit with the upcoming E-Meter from the Renewable Energy Add-on Set and whipped up both ROBOTC and NXC drivers for it.  The NXC driver you can find linked below, the ROBOTC driver will be part of the next release of the Driver Suite. You can download the NXC driver right here: [LINK].

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 ...

If you’re like me and are the proud owner of a small room, also known as the Lego Lair, you may find that the lighting conditions in said room sometimes leave a lot to be desired.  You may not really notice this until you start using a sensor that uses light to do its thing. Take the NXTCam for example.  ...

I’ve uploaded a new release of the ROBOTC Driver Suite. Version 1.5 has a couple of nice changes: Newly added: Drivers for Dexter Industries dFlex, dPressure and temp probe Test program for Mindsensors Touch Sensor MUX with HiTechnic Sensor MUX Driver for additional timers in ROBOTC Documentation changes: All drivers sorted by manufacturer for easy lookup (thanks to John Hansen ...

A new product was launched by Texas Instruments recently that seems to be aimed at the hobby-electronics geek. The MSP430 Value Line Launchpad is a super cheap board that features a PDIP socket that allows you to use either the MSP430G2211IN14 or MSP430G2231IN14 uControllers.  The specs of these processors aren’t phenomenal but seeing as the complete kit will set you ...

It seems that there’s an evil scientist by the name of Sparra Mc who has turned an ordinary Lego Light sensor into a laser target sensor! There is no lack of sharks around his part of the world, so I am sure we can expect at least a few white sharks to be fitted with one of these very soon! ...

It seems balancing robots are all the rage now.  Laurens Valk made one that even hit the Make: Magazine’s blog.  It just so happened that Gus from HiTechnic was thinking the same thing a few weeks ago and has made one as well.  It’s a different model and also works with RCX, NXT 1.0 and 2.0 sized wheels.  The HTWay ...

Some people have mailed me asking if it was a light sensor.  Well, yes, it’s a sensor that uses light, but that’s far too generic an answer to accept. I’ve been working on the Mystery Project and it’s currently not working yet.  I’ve probably made a mistake on the prototyping board.  Here’s a picture of its current state. It doesn’t ...