Sensors

  Hello tinkerers, look at your adapter, now back to mine, now back at your adapter, now back to mine.  Sadly, it’s not like mine, but if you headed over to Dexter Industries and bought one, it could look like this one.  Anything is possible when you can quickly disable or enable the 82K Ohm pull-ups using a DIP switch.  ...

I am sure you’ve seen the pictures of the Wii Nunchucks attached to the NXT before on the Internet.  However, they either required a very specific Nunchuck to be used or some modifications on the device itself.  Dexter Industries, together with Matthew Richardson have come up with a great new Wii Adapter for LEGO MINDSTORMS, the NXTChuck.  With this sensor ...

If to be able to sense the Force you want your robot, an excellent choice this HiTechnic Force Sensor is.  Hmmmmm. ..  Due to come out in early October, this little bad boy can measure the amount of force applied to an axle that presses into the axle receptacle (image below left), which you see in the front of the ...

Mindsensors is about to release a cool new sensor with an array of 8 light detectors: the Light Sensor Array.  Sound familiar?  Well, it should.  This is quite similar to their LineLeader sensor, with one major difference; there is no built-in PID regulator.  Why?  Simple, some robotics competitions deemed the LineLeader so good as to be an unfair advantage over ...

HiTechnic told me they were working on this little gem a while back but it’s finally here!  The HiTechnic MiniScope!  This is so cool it’s not even funny!  It’s very small and can actually be plugged right into a bread board!  That’s very useful if you want to combine it with the HiTechnic SuperPro, of course.  Now you can see ...

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 ...

Controlling your robot with a Playstation 2 remote is all well and good but what if you want to use something else?  No worries, with the new Mindsensors Playstation 2 controller interface, you can also get a model that can receive IR signals from a standard TV remote.  Sounds cool?  Well it is. When I released my Driver Suite yesterday ...

The folks at Dexter Industries don’t seem to need any sleep, it seems.  They’ve published a new set of program samples that allow you to communicate with your robot over WiFi through WebSocket using the dWiFi sensor.  What is WebSocket, I hear you ask? According to Wiki: WebSocket is a web technology providing for bi-directional, full-duplex communications channels over a ...

The mailman brought me a very nice package today, courtesy of the fine folks at Mindsensors!  Among its contents was a brand new PSP-Nx V4-c, the PS2 Controller Interface for NXT, together with a wireless PS2 Controller. So what makes the new V4 better than the V3?  For one, there’s the IR receiver on the back which allows it to ...

Dexter Industries have re-launched one of their first products, the dSwitch.  The dSwitch is a device that allows you to control a main-operated device with your NXT!  Pretty freaking cool, if you ask me!  The possibilities are endless: Setup your NXT to turn on the coffee maker in the morning, wake up to the smell of a freshly brewed cup ...