Coming Soon from Dexter Industries: a 6 DOF IMU

19 07 2011

Wow, a lot of new sensor/ NXT stuff these days – this is the third in row: Dexter Industries comes with a 6 DOF IMU. It was first leaked on I’d Rather Be Building Robots, where Xander wrote:

Dexter Industries are currently developing a great new sensor, a proper 6 Degree of Freedom (DOF) Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) for the NXT. It consists of two sensors on a single board; a 3-D gyroscope and a 3-D accelerometer. Both sensors can measure their respective values on the X, Y and Z axes.

The sensor, like many of the other Dexter Industries products before it, comes with a very bright U-R-Blind LED™ to indicate when it’s powered on. This light is also useful when trying to find your way out of a dark cave.

I’m currently working on a driver for it which will be part of the Driver Suite, of course.

The following image cannot be displayed: Xander's Photo of DI's 6 DOF IMUI’m imagining it’s going to be a lot like what Aswin did for his ball balancing bot. I hope the DI one’s gonna be just as precise – see A Grain of Sugar. Again, once people start doing stuff wit hthis sensor, I’ll post links below:


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories : Dexter Industries, Mindstorms accessories

Dexter Industries’ NXT Thermal Infrared Sensor

27 06 2011

EDIT: I was working on a (/this) post about the stuff that people have done with Dexter Industries’ thermal infrared sensor, when it hit the shelves today (24/06/2011), so here is a more up to date version of it.

First off: some images

The following image cannot be displayed: Dexter Industries' Thermal IR Imaging Sensor; Front ViewDexter Industries’ thermal IR sensor, front view. image source

The following image cannot be displayed: Dexter Industries' Thermal IR Imaging Sensor; Hind View The following image cannot be displayed: Dexter Industries' Thermal IR Imaging Sensor; Side View Dexter Industries’ thermal IR sensor, back and side views, respectively. image source

The cool thing about this sensor is that it can read temperatures of up to 380° C (700° Fahrenheit), more than double the amounts their NXT thermometers measure. And that with the same accuracy of .5 degrees Celsius!

Based around the MLX90614, the sensor has a resolution of 0.2 degrees Celsius. It can read “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” (source). So, since it’s a non-contact based thermometer, it can detect heat at a distance; a flame can be spotted up to 2 meters (6 feet) away.

And that’s exactly what Xander Soldaat did. He built a pan and tilt rig and pointed it towards a candle, taking 80 x 90 readings. Those he put into excel, and turned them into these two images:

The following image cannot be displayed: Xander's Excel Graph of his Experiment        The following image cannot be displayed: Xander's Thermal Image of his ExperimentXander’s results. image 1 source, image 2 source 

He did the same with a glass of water, and also made a video of his rig. You can see those at his blog post over here.

With the introduction of their latest sensor, Dexter Industries also published a new manual wiki. The manual for their infrared imaging sensor is available over here, packed with descriptions, explanations and warnings. It’s for sale for just under 55 USD.

Here’s a (hopefully) full list of things people did with the sensor; if you did something new, or see something I missed, just leave a comment and I’ll add it:


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Dexter Industries, Mindstorms accessories

Dexter industries WiFi Sensor Demo by Mightor: Spin Pretzel

9 05 2011

EDIT: the live stream will be taken down on May 15th 2011.

Since the Dexter Industries WiFi sensor is coming out (soon?), Mightor is writing a RobotC driver/ library for it. And the proof of concept video is AWESOME. It features Pretzel, one of his NXTs, which(/who) you can see at this live stream. The cool part is that you can command its(/her) motor, just by going to a webpage and putting a speed into the URL! From his blog:

I am currently streaming a live feed of my NXT on UStream.  You can easily control the motor on my NXT using URLs like:

The
power to the motor can range from –100 to 100, with 0 being “brake”. Be nice to the poor little NXT and observe these simple guidelines:

  • Don’t try to feed it garbage, nobody will think you’re a l33t h4xor if you crash the NXT and if I track you down, I will send my NXT powered, hellfire missile armed quadrocopter to your house. It’s fully autonomic but it has some bugs, so waving a white flag may be perceived as a threat instead and it will act accordingly.
  • It may crash and it may not respond as quickly as you’d like but give it time and don’t hammer it.
  • If the light on the left is not ON then it’s not running.
  • Don’t bother leaving messages in the comments or mail telling me it has crashed. I’ll check periodically to see if it is still responding and restart it if necessary.

It’s a very small webserver programmed in ROBOTC running on the NXT. It uses the new Dexter Industries WiFi sensor for the NXT. You can download the code right here: [LINK]. You’ll need to download my driver suite too as it uses the common.h file from there.  The code is rough and mostly undocumented. Usual caveats apply. This program and driver will be part of the driver suite.

Try it!

The following image cannot be displayed: Pretzel, as seen in the live stream


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Communication, Dexter Industries, Mindstorms accessories

Coming SOON from Dexter Industries: Wifi for the NXT

10 04 2011

New info available! From the DI blog:

Dexter Industries brings Wifi to Lego Mindstorms NXT.

We’ve built our first prototype and we’re shipping them out to our beta-testers and collaborators.  The hardware is done, and over the next few weeks we’ll be working to develop some killer software applications that will bring all the power of the internet and wifi to Lego Mindstorms NXT

Picture available, too:

Wifi-From-Dexter-Industries


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Dexter Industries, Mindstorms accessories

Coming (soon?) from Dexter Industries: WiFi for the NXT

25 03 2011

Earlier today, Dexter Industries, the folks responsible for the dFlex, NXTBee, dSolar and much more, released a preview to some of their upcoming products. One of those was a WiFi sensor for the NXT (!!), to “let the NXT communicate with the internet”. This’d open up a million of possibilities for NXT to PC communication, NXT to NXT communication, data storage, data sharing (live?), etc, etc, etc.

WiFi blocks for the NXT have been made before though, but they’ve never been for sale (as far as I know).  Sjef Fransen, for example, has done something similar for “Lego Beyond Toys“, see picture below.

It’s unknown when it’ll come out.


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Communication, Dexter Industries, Mindstorms accessories

NXTBee’s invasion

9 02 2011

New from Dexter Industries: the NXTBee has arrived! From their website:

The Dexter Industries NXTBee’s are now up for sale. We have some example code to get you started in RobotC, and we’re working on NXT-G blocks for the sensors.

Goodbye slow, short, and unreliable communications over bluetooth. Hello easy, fast, far-reaching, and awesome communications between the Mindstorm NXT’s and other devices with XBees.

It’ll be for sale in three editions: regular, naked and pro. The regular one gives you:

  • Fast, long-distance wireless communications.
  • Communicate Far: Send data over 300 feet.
  • Communicate Fast: High speed communication between NXT’s.
  • Communicate Wide: Talk to multiple NXTs and other devices and robots.
  • Communicate Easily: Minimal configuration with advanced options for secure and mesh networking.

NXTBee Regular

In addition, the NXTBee naked has:

  • Fast, long distance wireless communication the NXT.
  • Just the adapter. No radio included.
  • Configurable for XBee and XBee PRO.
  • Slide an XBee or XBee PRO radio into the sockets and go!

NXTBee Naked

And, finally, the NXTBee PRO adds:

  • Fast, long distance and easy-to-use XBee PRO adapter and radio for the NXT.
  • Communicate Far: Send data over 1.2 KM.
  • Communicate Fast: High speed communication between NXT’s.
  • Communicate Wide: Talk to multiple NXTs and other devices and robots.
  • Communicate Easily: Minimal configuration with advanced options for secure and mesh networking.

NXTBee Pro

The three models (regular, naked and pro) will be available as singles, costing $55.01, $33,02 and $78.00, respectively, as well as being sold in pairs, for about double those prices. More info:


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Communication, Dexter Industries, Mindstorms accessories

dSolar – Solar Panels for NXT

15 10 2010

About a week ago, Dexter Industries revealed their newest product: the dSolar Systems. It’s perfectly compatible with Mindstorms NXT and includes everything you need to get started powering your bots with nothing but the sun. Although both include a dSolar Power Cord, a 9V solar panel and an adapter, there are a two different versions:

  1. dSolar 2W System is able to power your NXT and one motor in direct sun light using approximately 250 mA.
  2. dSolar 4W System is able to power your NXT and two motors in direct sunlight using approximately 500mA.

Furthermore, Dexter Industries sells a few nice dSolar accessories to enhance your solar powered creations even more:

  • dSolar CapBank is a mini-battery holding 1 Faraday that is loaded up by the dSolar Systems, enabling your robot to function on saved-up power when the sun disappears.
  • dSolar Parallel allows you to connect up to three dSolar Systems to your robot for delivering up to 750 mA at 10 volts. This suggests that it’s only compatible with the 2W System, but I’m not sure.
  • dSolar Battery Pack Adapter can connect your dSolar Systems to the LEGO rechargeable battery.

For prices and more information on the dSolar Systems see the dSolar page on the Dexter Industries website.


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Dexter Industries, Mindstorms accessories


Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 34 other followers