We just came across this fantastic post on rjmcnamara.com where the Dexter Industries WIFI sensor’s range is extended. In the post, the website shows you how to take advantage of the U.Fl connector on the WIFI sensor to extend the range of the sensor.
Check out the post on rjmcnamara.com and let us know what you think!
A new lab from K12Lab.com! This project explores solar energy with LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT and the dSolar 4W.
Solar power is becoming increasingly important to scientists and engineers. Solar energy comes from the sun and photovoltaic (PV) cells (among other ways) can turn sunlight into usable electricity. Solar power is growing in size and importance. As people become more and more interested in preventing climate change, solar energy is being used to power individual homes and stores. While you may have seen buildings, stores, and homes that are powered by PV arrays (groups of solar cells), have you ever seen a car that was powered with solar electricity? Probably not, but engineers have begun focusing on powering vehicles with solar panels.
In this lesson we’re going to show how you can build a solar powered car. There are many challenges to powering a vehicle with solar power. Issues such as the amount of sun available, the efficiency of solar panels (how well they convert sunlight into electricity), and the weight of the solar cells all affect how well the car will run. Improvements and changes to current designs can be improved through work on the mechanical, electrical, and control (computer) design of the car. This exercise will introduce you to solar powered vehicles and the challenges there are to design them. We will start with a basic design to get you started, and talk about ways that you can work to improve the design.
A great new lab and resource for teachers from K12Lab.com. The lab uses the Thermal Infrared Sensor to read the heat coming from a computer:
Explore the thermodynamics of modern devices and measure the heat generated by your computer as you run different programs using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT and the Dexter Industries Thermal Infrared (TIR) sensor.
Fantastic! See more labs for LVLM and LEGO MINDSTORMS at K12lab.com!
The GENIUS FLL team from Atlanta Georgia have written and shared their competition project for the Body Forward 2010-2011 Project: a smart cooler! These ladies have done an incredible job of putting together a smart fridge the call the “Cool Factor” . The Cool Factor uses two Dexter Industries temperature sensors to monitor the temperature of a cooler. If you’re not near your cooler, the setup sends a signal, via NXTBee, to another NXT to alert you of temperature changes.
Congratulations team GENIUS!
Be sure to check out the video below of their project.
These ladies also have style and creativity outside of their future engineering careers!
This is a fantastic program put together by Mark Crosbie. Mark wrote a program using the dGPS and the NXTBee to plot his car’s location on a map, and send information back to his computer. While this is a very advanced project, Mark has broken it down step-by-step in NXC.
See Mark’s project on his website here.
Check out our hack for powering the wifi sensor. This project shows you how to power the wifi sensor with nothing but a USB port. If you’re tired of replacing 9V batteries, this is the answer!
This is a great resource for Labview for Lego Mindstorms, starting with the basics. Great work Rob Torok!
https://sites.google.com/site/robtorok/lvlm-tutorials
There’s also a section on the dGPS, which Rob has been working with for a while. You can find it here:
Maybe I'll head over to Aswin's page . . .
Thanks to everyone who joined in our dIMU Days this past week a few weeks ago!
We are happy to announce Hubert is our winner of the Snowflake dIMU! We will be shipping the sensor to him shortly. We had a little trouble contacting Hubert and apologize for the delay in announcing the winner.
As a “Thanks” to everyone that joined in, we will shortly send a coupon code on Facebook for a 10% discount on the dIMU.
We will definitely be having another giveaway soon, right after the holidays! It might even be a new sensor . . . (!)
For our LEGO fans in Korea, we now have an official distributor! DigitalWorld in South Korea carries Dexter Industries sensors now!
