Review – Dexter Industries – DI Thermal Series Sensor Roundup (Updated)

I recently had the chance to test out a set of Dexter Industries Thermal Sensors produced for the NXT. For those that are not aware, Dexter Industries has entered the market of producing LEGO Mindstorms NXT-compatible sensors and has come up with some pretty cool ideas such as the dSwitch (allows you to switch in-home devices on/off using the NXT) and some cool new ideas such as solar charging for the NXT as well as…
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Reviews – Mindsensors Magnetic Compass

The folks at Mindsensors were kind enough to send me over this Magnetic Compass sensor to test. The sensor serves the useful task of providing the NXT with an indication of its heading angle from magnetic North to the NXT. It uses orthogonal two-axis magnetic sensor from Honeywell (HMC1052) and provides digital communication with NXT. Click the image below to see a video showing the compass in action. I did a brief test of this…
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Review – TechnoStuff PIR (Passive Infrared) Sensor

ne of my early Mindstorms projects was to build a fire extinguishing robot. I did this using the parts I had at the time. It was based on a walker platform and used a pneumatic circut to "blow" the fire out when detected. It worked reasonably well with the provided light sensor. Recently, I discovered the PIR (Passive Infrared Sensor) from TechnoStuff. This sensor was built to detect infrared heat and seemed to be a…
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Review – TechnoStuff DIRPD Sensor – Review

One of the my challenges was to build a bot that could effectively avoid obstacles before it hit them.  My first attempt was to use the Lego Light sensor and the RCX to do this. The RCX would send out IR pulses and the Light Sensor would be used to read them and, based on how long they took to get back to the Light Sensor, could determine proximity. This worked realively well, with the…
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