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 ...
Read More »Mindsensors GlideWheel-M
The mailman brought me a cool new toy to play with this afternoon! It’s the Mindsensors GlideWheel-M! These are so cool, you can now use the Large XL Power Functions motor with the same degree of accuracy as an NXT motor. The GlideWheel-M is just a single unit thick and fits very nicely onto the motor. You can mount it ...
Read More »Coming soon: Mindsensors AbsoluteIMU
Mindsensors have been working on an IMU of their own. It has a compass, and accelerometer, as well as a 3-axis gyro. It can be used is available in two configurations: Accelerometer and Compass or Gyro Accelerometer and Compass and Gyro. Seems a bit strange to have to chose between these two configurations but I am sure there’s a reason for ...
Read More »Coming Soon from Mindsensors: GlideWheel
Do you like Power Function motors but hate the way you can’t use them with any degree of accuracy? You love how compact they are but are not impressed with how many extension cables and converters you need to use them? Well, soon, most, if not all, your reasons to not use a Power Function motor will disappear! Enter the ...
Read More »Preview of a new Robot: Skittles
This is a quick video I shot with my mobile phone of a new robot called Skittles. Why did I call it Skittles, you ask? Well, it’s got all colours in the rainbow in it because I simply don’t have enough bricks of one or two colours to build the whole thing uniformly. So I figured I may as well ...
Read More »Mindsensors Digital Pneumatic Pressure Sensor (PPS58-Nx)
Mindsensors have made a new pressure sensor and it’s really sweet. It uses their new compact sensor housing and it’s very slick and robust looking. Rather than calling it the PPS v3, they gave it the uebercatchy name PPS58-Nx. So what can it do? It can measure pressure from 0 to 400 kilopascal (1 to 58 PSI) with a 1 ...
Read More »Happy and Prosperous 2012
I’d like to wish all of my readers a very happy and prosperous 2012. 2011 was a big year for my blog and NXT-sensor land. I moved from a hosted WordPress blog on wordpress.com to my own one on HostGator.com. I’ve never been happier about a hosting company. We had some major issues with our previous one (Hostway) which hosted ...
Read More »UI Frame Work – More Button Pushing
Today I’ve been quite busy programming a more generic framework for using buttons, strings and multiple windows on the NXT. Things like button pressing is now handled centrally, as well as rendering the windows and the buttons in their current state. It’s starting to take shape now and it’s not looking too badly. The buttons respond to presses anywhere ...
Read More »Pressing my Buttons!
I thought it would be kind of fun to modify some of my program to make use of the Mindsensors TouchPanel sensor. Having buttons on the screen would make it a lot more intuitive to use. So here’s a first short video of a 3D button that you can press with the TouchPanel using a stylus. It’s not much yet, ...
Read More »New from OpenElectrons: NXShield-D
OpenElectrons, the non-NXT company of Mindsensors, has released a smaller version of their NXShield-M that fits a normal Arduino Duemilanove or Uno. This one doesn’t have as many servo connections as the NXShield-M (which has an insane number of servo connectors) but has a smaller form factor. You can attach up to 4 NXT motors and 4 NXT sensors as ...
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