I'm no whiz with electronics, but I'm getting better. My soldering skills are rusty, too. But since getting a look at HiTechnic's upcoming solderable proto-board, I've been considering some options for what I might want to do with it.
A recent trip to my local electronics shop (ACK, Atlanta, GA) let me find some small pressure switches (similar to the Touch sensor) that are either on or off. Whereas the Touch sensor must be mounted in a static position, pointing in one direction, I'm considering purchasing a handful of these smaller switches and giving them a longer length of wire so I can place them all over a robot. If I purchase 8 of them, I can place them around the robot in the N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, and NW positions and only need one sensor port to monitor them.
How would you use the proto-board? I think this proto-board is really going to open up the number of hand-made/homebrew sensors, much more than we saw for the RCX. I'm curious to hear from readers about what they would like to create using the proto-board OR what they'd like other more experienced designers to work on...
Jim