Designing Lego Mindstorms NXT sensors

I bought a Lego Mindstorms kit last month to mess with, I’ve got some ideas for robot localisation that I want to try out. Anyway, the kit comes with a sonar range finder but I wanted a little more accuracy and smaller detection area. I’ve got a bunch of Sharp rangefinders from another project and they would work perfectly for what I wanted. A couple of companies sell after market sensors for the NXT, Mindsensors and HiTechnic but it’s much more fun to design and build your own.

For a little background on how the Sharp sensors work, Acroname Robotics has a good article on them.

Adapter board for the ATtiny45

Read More…

Posted in Embedded Firmware, Hardware Design, Software at August 6th, 2010. 5 Comments.

Photos and Schematics for the Irrigate project

I’ve not had time to finish the Irrigate Project page so in the mean time I’ve posted some Schematics and Photos of the PCBs.

I’ll add more on the software/firmware side of things soon.

Posted in Embedded Firmware, Hardware Design at May 5th, 2010. No Comments.