Sensors

Hey baby, you’re on fire!  No really, you are, I can tell with my new Thermal Infrared Sensor from Dexter Industries. This sensor came in the mail today, it’s Dexter Industries’ latest sensor, the Thermal Infrared Sensor. I haven’t had a chance to play with it yet but I have some great ideas in mind.  All will be revealed shortly! ...

Sidneys1 has come up with an improved version of my own Disco Inferno, written in NXC. His article has a great explanation of what PWM is and how it works. So if you’re keen to know the finer details about how RS485 can be used to control the brightness of a light or a motor, go check it out: [LINK].  ...

Sometimes an idea comes into existence and you wonder why the heck nobody else came up with it. My good friend Laurens Valk was working on a robot for one of his classes and asked me if there was a way to PWM the pins on the sensor port, dig0 and dig1. He needed to control a non-NXT motor without ...

No rest for the wicked, although they have been taking it a bit easier. In any case, I present my latest creation: version 2.0 beta 2 of the Driver Suite. Not as many changes as for beta 1, as you’d expect. Highlights for this version include: I changed the min, max and clip functions to macros and renamed them to ...

I’ve wanted one of these sensors since the day I first saw it on the Hacked Gadgets website. It’s the Microinfinity CruizCore XG1300L. It’s a ridiculously accurate and low drift inertial measurement unit, or IMU. Some of the features include: Measures rotational speed and angle Measures tilt and acceleration Can track relative position Detects contact from any direction (I wish ...

If you’re a fan of the NXT as a programming platform but would like to control something beefier than just an NXT motor, you used to either have to resort to using relays or concoct your own controller board to handle the extra current. The latest offering from Mindsensors, the NXTRelayDriver, is about to change that. It’s not really a ...

The NXT webserver has been up for a few days now and it’s really cool to see so many people logging into it to make the motor move.  When I created it, I had no idea that it was going to be used as much as it has been.  I’ve had almost 1200 views on the UStream channel and blog ...

I am currently streaming a live feed of my NXT on UStream.  You can easily control the motor on my NXT using URLs like: http://xammy.demon.nl:81/MOTA=0 – stop the motor http://xammy.demon.nl:81/MOTA=100 – run the motor at 100% clockwise http://xammy.demon.nl:81/MOTA=-50 – run the motor at 50% counter-clockwise. The power to the motor can range from –100 to 100, with 0 being “brake”. ...

Among the things sent to me by Dexter Industries was also the latest incarnation of the dGPS, a GPS sensor for the NXT. This latest one is equipped almost exclusively with surface mounted components, making it a lot less likely to knock off one of the capacitors and giving the sensor a very professional look.  The mounting holes on either ...

The mailman brought some shiny new toys this morning, one of which included the all-new Dexter Industries WiFi sensor.  I don’t have all the technical details for this one yet, but like the NXTBee, it uses the NXT’s RS485 port for high-speed communications. It has a clip to hold a 9V battery on the back, the red and black wire ...