New mindsensors sensor speculations

[mightor]

Well, actually probably one of both. The Arduino shield and the Android related doodad

- Xander

[nxtreme]

Ahh, ok. Can't wait for your reviews of both! Have a good vacation .

[dimasterooo]

Same. Happy holidays

[mattallen37]

Well, today is 7/8/11, and mindsensors were true to what they said on the coming soon page about releasing information today. The new Android device is similar to the coming device for the Arduino Uno (and similar form factor boards). This new mindsensors device will also be compatible with the Arduino Mega.

[h-g-t]

Since the new NXShield is I2C, is there any reason why this should not also work with the NXT?

Perhaps speed might be a problem though.

[mattallen37]

I don't believe so. In fact, I see no reason for it to not work with the NXT. As long as the processor board (Arduino...) supports I2C slave on it's I2C pins, it should work (you may need to add pullups). I think all Arduinos support I2C slave, but so far for me it has been problematic to get it working like I want it to. If I can get it to send and receive the data properly, I think it would just be a matter of coding an Arduino library to make the NXTShield and Arduino be an addition to the NXT.

If it was used as an addition to the NXT, it should still support ADC on all 4 inputs, and all 4 outputs should work the same. The I2C lines of the sensors ports are all in parallel to each other, so it would be one single bus (like using a port splitter on an NXT sensor port), and the Arduino is also on the bus as a slave.

As you say about speed, I assume you mean I2C speed. It really depends on what you have in mind of doing. The lego NXT firmware I2C is very slow, so it could potentially be an issue. However, it should be able to be used as just one great big motor and sensor MUX. With ROBOTC or another FW that supports fast I2C there should be no issues at all with speed.

[h-g-t]

Ok, thanks.