ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Here is something pretty cool if you would like to push the EV3 a little further then it is meant too be. http://www.dexterindustries.com/blog/2014/05/29/connecting-arduino-ev3/ That's right, our friends at Dexter Industries just released a tutorial on how to connect these two devices http://www.dexterindustries.com/howto/connecting-ev3-arduino/ Let us know in the comment below if by any chance you have played with this combo already or if this is something you are adding in your bucket list? : . .

Here's some great news, Dexter Industries sensors for MINDSTORMS are now EV3 compliant! Right now EV3 blocks for the dPressure ,  dGPS , dLight and  dIMU are ready to use and the rest of them are quickly becoming available. Visit their website here for status update and setup instruction. Interested in finding out how they did this? Make sure to check out the Open-Source repository here on their github repository .  : . .

Dexter Industries have updated their 'websockets' program which allows you to connect and control a robot through the Internet.  This means that it'll work from a laptop, smartphone, tablet, basically anything that can load up a standard web browser.  What makes it even better though is the fact that it is two way communication, mean you can send sensor values back to the web browser so you can keep tabs on your robot from anywhere in the world! How is this possible you ask? The hard part of using websockets is establishing a connection with a webpage. For security reasons, a key is passed back and forth in a complicated “handshake”: the webpage sends some information, and the NXT must respond with a specific answer back. We’ve taken care of that with our websockets library so you can easily and quickly setup your robot to communicate with Chrom, Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari.  Dexter very helpfully supply a fully worked code example in RobotC, read...

MAKE: Magazine has just posted a great little interview with John Cole, founder of Dexter Industries. My favourite quote from the interview: It’s disarmingly simple: people get intimidated by technology, but LEGO’s are something everyone grew up with so it’s not that hard to start with the simple, and grow into the complex. Congrats to John for being featured on what is probably my favourite blog! Read the whole interview here -  http://blog.makezine.com/2012/07/02/interview-with-john-cole-of-dexter-industries

Over at the Dexter Industries Blog is a nice entry about a University Teacher's use of the dIMU to teach basic physics concepts.  The dIMU gives the acceleration, tilt and rotation in all 3 axes.  Marcelino connects the dIMU to a Matlab visualization via Bluetooth.  As he rotates it around, the Matlab graph moves in time. More details as well as the full source code can be found here: http://dexterindustries.com/blog/2012/05/10/imu-physics-experiment/

If you've recently been looking for a gyro sensor to build an NXT self balancing robot, here's another relatively unknown sensor for your consideration. It's the Microinfinity Cruizcore . Find a video of this sensor in action here . There are currently three gyroscopic sensors available for the NXT ( HiTechnic , Dexter Industries and Microinfinity), each with their own specific advantages. In my experience, they all perform equally well when it comes to balancing an NXT robot with RobotC code. It should be noted however, that currently only an NXT-G balancing program exists for the HiTechnic sensor. It's possible to do this with the other sensors as well, it's just that those programs haven't been made or published online yet. As I write this, I realize that a comparison page might be helpful. Coming soon then!

Hot on the heels of their successful  'WiFi Week' , comes Dexter Industries aptly named 'WiFi Week 2'. Another 5 fantastic projects using the DI WiFi sensor.  They helpfully include lots of RobotC sample code for each to make life that little bit easier. Monday - Using DIWIFI to send data (sensor values, motor positions, etc) to the Pachube service. Tuesday - Reading in the weather information from Google and using that info to control your NXT Wednesday - This time, the tutorial shows you how to take your own sensor data, and post it online to thingspeak.com so other people can see it. Thursday - Want more than just weather from Google?  This will show you how to grab the latest news headlines from Google News and display them on your NXT. Friday - Last one for the week, this post shows how to access all the DIWIFI functionality from the LeJOS development environment. So....  who's going to give one of these a go?  Let us know in the...

Dexter Industries have come out with another sensor for the NXT, this time a compass. A compass is an excellent way of figuring out which way your robot is pointing.  Especially handy for things like navigating around or playing a game of robot soccer! This particular one can measure along 3 axis (so I guess that means heading as well as tilt?) As with all compass sensors, you need to be very careful around other magnetic fields (power cables, motors etc) but according to the manual, you can do some calibration to reduce any offset from true north. At $29, it's one of the cheaper sensors available for the NXT :) More details including code samples for NXT-G, RobotC and Labview can be found here. http://dexterindustries.com/dCompass.html (via Bot Bench )

It used to be there were very few ways to sense air pressure with the NXT… but over time a number of different companies have come out with third party pressure sensors for the NXT. It’s something that I’ve been interested in for a while: I’ve used pressure sensors for determining altitude during hikes, monitoring high-altitude balloon flights, technical geyser investigations, and lots of other things… so it seems natural to try to compare some of the sensors currently out there in the NXT market. Warning – this is my own personal testing and opinions. It may be wrong. And in the interest of full disclosure, most of these companies have been extremely helpful to me by providing sensors to test and responding to feedback… but still, this is as closeas I can come to an unbiased position. I have pressure sensors from four companies currently: HiTechnic, Vernier, Mindsensors,and Dexter Industries. All of them interface easily with the NXT, using NXT-G blocks, NXC code, or other drivers. Mo...

Dexter Industries (who makes all kids of cool NXT sensors) has just submitted a few lesson plans / ideas to  http://www.k12lab.com  (an part of National Instruments who created NXT-G in conjunction with LEGO) So far they've submitted lessons for: Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIR) -Measuring Heat from a Laptop exhaust fan - http://www.k12lab.com/lesson-plans/Monitor-Computer-w-NXT-TIR and their Solar Panel - Constructing a Solar Car http://www.k12lab.com/lesson-plans/NXT-Solar-Car They've included sample programs for LabView for LEGO Mindstorms (LVLM), but even if you're not using that language, you could adapt to NXT-G or any other one.

This week Dexter Industries will be giving away a "Snowflake dIMU" to one lucky winner. It's a special edition of the dIMU sensor. “How can I win the Snowflake? You can win the Snowflake by visiting us on Facebook , and liking Dexter Industries Facebook Page, in the next week. Already like us? You’re entered!" More details are on their website .

In the past few months I've been working on a renewed RobotC program for a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Segway. The current program handles all balancing tasks in the background so you can make the Segway do what you want without worrying about balancing. It supports both the HiTechnic Gyro sensor and the new Dexter Industries dIMU . The complete source and instructions are available on my website . The older ready to run NXT-G version of the program (only supports HiTechnic Gyro) is also still available. Many of you have been asking for the source code, so here's a chance to study the balancing algorithm. You may use and edit the code as you like, but don't forget to link to the original code and give credit if you reshare your program. Update: Just another example of what you could use the code for!

We are all familiar with what Google has done with the invention of it's Street View Car.. and we see the result each time we click on Street View* on Google Map!  Well Mark Crosbie has recently completed his latest version of the LEGO STREET VIEW CAR and it works pretty much the same way as the real thing...  Here is a video showing the history behind this project: Worth mentioning is that Mark and his LSVC will be present at the World Robotics Olympiad finals held in Abu Dhabi this year -- If you are a WRO finalist and will be present in AD this coming week, be sure to go visit The Robotics Experts booth in the main hall and check this cool Mindstorms creation in action. More detail on Mark LSVC can be found here: http://www.mastincrosbie.com/Marks_LEGO_projects/LEGO_Projects.html More details on the WRO can be found here: http://wroboto.org/en/ * Maybe one day we will be able to see LEGOLAND under Google Map's Street View mode!! :D

Dexter Industries have just wrapped up a week of WiFi inspired posts aimed at getting you DI WiFi sensor connected to the Interwebs. I wouldn't say it your typical kid could do it, (it talks about modem AT commands and other scary stuff), but DI have done an amazing job of leading a newbie through the process, one step at a time. Definitely worth the read if you're interested at all about how these things work.  I certainly learnt a lot :) I love the final instalment where they take a temperature reading, and sent it to a twitter account. Tweeting NXT's, love it :) From their website: Wifi Sensor for LEGO MINDSTORMS Release The Dexter Industries Wifi sensor for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT is released!   Continue reading  → WIFI Week: Communicating with Computers The second installment of Wifi Week at Dexter Industries. Today we’ll be walking you through our example of how to connect to other computers and internet devices with TCP protocol. I...

I've just finished playing around with the new Dexter Industries Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIR) . While Xander did a very nice experiment with RobotC, I was keen to see how well it went with the NXT-G datalogging blocks. I got some good results, and although it would be nicer if it sampled a little faster than 5Hz and reacted to changes in temperature a little quicker, it was easy to implement and I can see lots of great experiments I could run in class with it. Full writeup here on my blog -  http://www.damienkee.com/home/2011/11/7/dexter-industries-thermal-infrared-temperature-sensor.html

A few days ago, I blogged about the progress on my NXT Segway with the Dexter Industries IMU . Here's a new video showing how it follows the line on the NXT Test Pad. I will bring this robot to LEGO World (Netherlands) next weekend. Feel free to come by for a chat! We all speak Dutch and most of us speak Dunglish very well, too.

Recently I have been reprogramming my NXT Segway. The code is now much cleaner, and it also made it easier to implement Dexter Industries' latest sensor, the 6DOF IMU . The Segway runs around the room while avoiding objects with its ultrasonic sensor. This isn't new, but it's a nice demonstration of Dexter's new sensor. In this robot I'm just using one "Degree of Freedom", namely one gyro axis. Other axes could be used for elementary navigation like making a 90-degree turn. The acceleration sensor could help determining whether the robot has run into an obstacle. Much interesting work left to do here!

There's a new project by  Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Academy  (known as creators of the NXT programming language  RobotC ): swarm robots that are communicating via the  NXTBee  hardware by dexter Industries. In the following  video , the NXT robots collaborate to group around a leader robot: More details can be found on the associated entry in the RobotC blog.

6DOF-IMU you say???  What's that? Well the folks over at Dexter Industries look like they are putting the finishing touches to a new sensor.  The IMU stands for Inertial Measurement Unit and the 6DOF means 6 Degrees Of Freedom.  What does that mean in normal speak? Well in layman terms the sensor will be able to not only be able to measure movement in the left/right forward/backward and up/down directions, but will also be able to measure the amount of rotating in all the same directions (can anyone come up with a better explanation?) Xander over at 'I'd Rather be Building Robots' has a prototype (complete with ridiculously bright LED) and is putting it through it's paces.  Can't wait to see what's possible with this sensor!

Dexter Industries have just released their latest sensor for the NXT, the Thermal Infrared Sensor. From their webpage - The Dexter Industries Thermal Infrared Sensor reads surface temperatures of objects. It is a non-contact thermometer based on the MLX90614. Detecting the infrared radiation from an object, the sensor can read object temperatures between -90°F and 700°F (-70°C and +380°C). The sensor has a high accuracy of 0.5°C and a resolution of 0.02°C.  The Thermal Infrared Sensor reads both the ambient temperature (the temperature of the air around the sensor) and the surface temperature of the object that the sensor is pointed towards.  The sensor can detect a flame at a range of 2 meters. Xander has already done some cool things with his sensor , and I've just received mine, so stay tuned for a post about how I've tested it out. How would you use this sensor?  Feel free to add your thoughts in the comments. -- Damien Kee www.damienkee.com