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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MicroBot

After I had success with my challenge to build a 1"x1"x1" NanoBot, I wanted to try my luck at something a little larger. MicroBot measures approx 2"x2"" and uses the same Atmel microcontroller and battery (see N anoBot details). The body was custom made from a larger piece of 4mm white PVC. MicroBot gets its' senses from 3 front mounted ProxDots (IR units) and a bottom mounted IR unit (for line following). This gives MicroBot…
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NanoBot

While waiting for the NXT system to come out, I decided to try my luck at making tiny robots. While Googling, I stumbled across a Yahoo newsgroup for NanoBots based on the MegaBitty controller. I have always been interested in making compact Lego robots, but for obvious reasons, they can only be so small. So, I decided to try my luck and NanoBots. Although I am not sure of the exact definition of a NanoBot,…
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DominoBot NXT (ver1)

May 2006: Update: DominoBotNXT has been enhanced. See DominoBot2. For those who do not know about the Lego Mindstorms Developer Program (MDP), back in January of 2006 Lego was seeking assistance from the Lego community on their next generation Mindstorms product (NXT). Approx 9600 people applied to become one of the 100 MDP's. In late February, I received an invitation to participate and of course jump at the opportunity. For a few months, the group…
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