Microinfinity CruizCore XG1300L
Posted in: LEGO | Comments Off
Features:
- Tracks relative position
- Measures rotational angle and speed
- Detects contact from any direction
- Measures tilt and acceleration
- Ultra low bias drift of about 10 degrees per hour
All the details, and the chance to buy, can be found on the CruizCore XG1300L website.
admin @ June 18, 2011
Kinect SDK for Windows
Posted in: Robotics | Comments Off
The Kinect for Windows SDK beta is a programming toolkit for application developers. It enables the academic and enthusiast communities easy access to the capabilities offered by the Microsoft Kinect device connected to computers running the Windows 7 operating system.
Here is a sample Demo video":
The Kinect for Windows SDK beta includes drivers, rich APIs for raw sensor streams and human motion tracking, installation documents, and resource materials. It provides Kinect capabilities to developers who build applications with C++, C#, or Visual Basic by using Microsoft Visual Studio 2010.
This SDK includes the following features:
-
Raw sensor streams
Access to raw data streams from the depth sensor, color camera sensor, and four-element microphone array enables developers to build upon the low-level streams that are generated by the Kinect sensor.
-
Skeletal tracking
The capability to track the skeleton image of one or two people moving within the Kinect field of view make it easy to create gesture-driven applications.
-
Advanced audio capabilities
Audio processing capabilities include sophisticated acoustic noise suppression and echo cancellation, beam formation to identify the current sound source, and integration with the Windows speech recognition API.
-
Sample code and documentation
The SDK includes more than 100 pages of technical documentation. In addition to built-in help files, the documentation includes detailed walkthroughs for most samples provided with the SDK.
-
Easy installation
The SDK installs quickly, requires no complex configuration, and the complete installer size is less than 100 MB. Developers can get up and running in just a few minutes with a standard standalone Kinect sensor unit (widely available at retail outlets).
Download: Kinect SDK for Windows
Xander has one of the best collection of links for the Kinect SDK I’ve seen. Kinect SDK is Finally Here!
admin @ June 18, 2011
Version: 4.2.0 BETA 1 (version 4.2.0.0 b1)
Posted in: Netduino | Comments Off
This firmware requires use of the .NET Micro Framework v4.2 Beta 1 SDK. Users must completely erase and reflash their Netduino Pluses to use this firmware.
WARNING: This firmware is pre-release firmware. It may temporarily cause your Netduino to cease functioning properly. If this firmware does not work for you, you will likely need to erase your Netduino completely and re-flash the production v4.1.0.6 bootloader using Atmel SAM-BA tools (on a 32-bit Windows installation) and the production v4.1.0.6 firmware using MFDeploy.
NOTE: This beta firmware must be used with a beta version of the Microsoft .NET Micro Framework SDK.
If you’re an early adopter and would like to help us test and refine these new features, this beta release may be for you.
This firmware includes the following updates:
- Visual Basic support (including Visual Basic Express 2010)
- StringBuilder support
- Extension method support
- Dozens of bugfixes
More details, download link and discussion can be found here: Version: 4.2.0 BETA 1 (version 4.2.0.0 b1)
admin @ June 8, 2011
Released: 3rd Party ROBOTC Driver Suite V2.0b2
Posted in: RobotC | Comments Off
Xander has released the V2.0b2 version of the ROBOTC Driver Suite.
- I changed the min, max and clip functions to macros and renamed them to min2, min3, max2, max3 and clip. min2 and min3 are for two and three numbers respectively and will work with any type.
- I’ve added support for the MicroInfiniy CruizCore XG1300L with two example programs. One is a text only example but I got a bit fancy with the second version and made some graphical representation of the data from the sensor. Try it, you’ll like it, I’m sure. The new driver is called MICC-driver.h, the examples are MICC-test1.c and MICC-test2.c
- Fixed MSDISTsendCmd() in the Mindsensors DIST-nx driver
- I added MSMMUX-test2.c to show how to use MMUX with a daisy chained sensor (DIST-nx)
You can download it from here: [LINK].
admin @ May 30, 2011
Mindsensors NXTRelayDriver
Posted in: LEGO | Comments Off
The electrical specs of these things are pretty impressive: they can handle a load of max 10A at 18V, while only pulling 1mA from your NXT’s batteries. If you look at the picture on the left you’ll see the small cooling fin; I would suggest you keep that somewhere on the outside of your robot if you’re going to run that much power through it, though. This device is about 5×4 units big.
Their price will be $24.95 each and are due to be on the shelves around mid-June.
Using this Relay Driver, you can control up to 2 Relays using NXT.
Instead of Relays, you can control high current motors also.
While controlling motors, you can control speed as well.
admin @ May 25, 2011
GardenBot – Simplify your Gardening
Posted in: Robotics | Comments Off
GardenBot is a garden monitoring system. This means that you put sensors in your garden, and GardenBot will show you charts of the conditions in your garden — so you can see the world the way your plants see it.
With all the steps you need to build one of your own… the GardenBot is a great summer project. And, it’s easily expandable too. Add wireless, expand your garden size, make it solar powered… tweet your garden stats. The options are endless…
admin @ May 25, 2011
ROBOTC Driver Suite – Released: V2.0b1
Posted in: RobotC | Comments Off
Xander has updated his RobotC Driver Suite. Here is a short note, and the list of changes.
The biggest change is the way I am now handling the HiTechnic Sensor MUX. Rather than having to scan the SMUX for attached sensors, the individual sensor driver configures the SMUX for its specific port. This makes it much easier to use.
- Removed unnecessary common.h includes from examples
- Changed arrays from structs to just typedefs, all drivers have been adjusted
- Motor mux stuff split off from common.h
- All SMUX supported drivers now use new SMUX mechanism
- Modified common.h to separate SMUX functions from rest using defines
- Removed ubyteToInt from all drivers and common.h
- Test programs have had their sensor types reconfigured, you will need ROBOTC 2.26
- HTSMUX-driver.h newly added, has all the new SMUX functions split from common.h
- MMUX-common.h newly added, contains all the MMUX functions split from common.h
- Added min/max functions for floats
- light-common.h: newly added, adds RGBtoHSV conversion (thanks Mike Henning, Max Bareiss)
- HTCS-driver.h/HTCS2-driver.h: added functions for HSV values
- HTMC-driver.h: Improved relative heading algorithm
- Added DGPSreadTravHeading() to DGPS-driver.h and fixed commands
- Removed single axis functions from HTAC-driver.h
- Removed functions for single signal strength in HTIRS and HTIRS2.
- Removed No Wait functions from EOPD driver
- Removed HTIRL-NG, is now named HTIRL
- Changed arguments from byte to ubyte in MSLL-driver.h
- All applicable Mindsensors sensors now have an optional “address” argument that can be ommitted if using the default (thanks for the suggestion hedgepigdaniel)
Released: 3rd Party ROBOTC Driver Suite V2.0b1
admin @ April 30, 2011
SR 3d Builder – LEGO CAD Software
Posted in: LEGO | Comments Off
• Great fully 3D building envinronment with reflection and transparencies
• You will see your model during loading time and can pause for instruction steps
• You can modify and save models (lDraw/MLCad .dat compatible format)
• Fast selecting/moving/adding/removing you’ll never see in MLCad
• Copy/Rotation/Deletetion/Color change of single or multiple brick. Undo/Redo functionality
• Real connections detection, not always the same near brick positioning
• Brick selection by Block (means that solid connected bricks can be selected at once)
• Grid positioning to speed up positioning of pieces
• Automatic and precise positioning and orientering of most bricks according to connection detection
• Automatic detection of rotation axles
admin @ April 23, 2011
Netduino Firmware Update: Version: 4.1.1 BETA 1 (version 4.1.1.0 b1)
Posted in: Netduino | Comments Off
With this firmware, you will have the following resources available for your code:
64KB Flash
28KB+ RAM
This firmware includes the following updates:
- Early support for some 4GB+ MicroSD cards (courtesy of community member KodeDaemon)
- Early UsbClient support (requires deploy/debug via serial)
- Pushbutton (SW1) now returns true when pushed, false when not pushed
This update also includes updates that were in the prior BETA releases… the complete list of all the upates can be found here on the Netduino forums.
Version: 4.1.1 BETA 1 (version 4.1.1.0 b1)
There is also a special “extra memory” edition of the v411 Beta firmware. It has 50% more available ram.
Version: 4.1.1 BETA 1 (version 4.1.1.0 b1) – 50% More Ram!
admin @ April 10, 2011
Maine Robotics – Upcoming Events
Posted in: Robotics | Comments Off
- March 9th: Expanding Your Horizons (Maine Robotics Workshops) UMaine
- March 9th: Summer Camp Fair, UMaine Field House, 1-4 pm
- March 20th: Maine Youth Camp Association Summer Camp Fair, Portland, 1-4 pm
- April 30th: Southern Maine Robot Track Meet, Auburn Middle School, 9 am
- May 7th: Northern Maine Robot Track Meet, Maine Maritime Academy, 9 am
You can see more from Maine Robotics via there website: Maine Robotics
admin @ March 1, 2011
