Mindboards

Hello all,

I enjoy NXT for a little while now and as a long time programmer I'd like to drop the use of the NXT Brick in favor of an embedded board running the Microsoft's .NET Compact Framework.

After some surfing on the net the ones from GHI caught my attention.
There's a product comparison document here: http://www.ghielectronics.com/downloads ... oducts.pdf

Now I'm not very good in electronic and all I know is NXT cervos and sensors use the I2C interface and the NXT brick runs with 6*1.5V batteries. The EMX board is said to run with 3.3V power and is 5V tolerant for the IO Voltage, while the ChipworkX (apparently the best board) runs also on 3.3V power but can only use 3.3V for IO. I was wondering if the ChipworkX would be able to use the NXT cervos and sensors.

I saw some video of Paul Tingey on You Tube were he did what I'd like to do but I can't get in touch with the guy for advices and the board he use is no longer sold.

Thanks for helping!

loicba wrote:...Now I'm not very good in electronic and all I know is NXT cervos and sensors use the I2C interface and the NXT brick runs with 6*1.5V batteries. The EMX board is said to run with 3.3V power and is 5V tolerant for the IO Voltage, while the ChipworkX (apparently the best board) runs also on 3.3V power but can only use 3.3V for IO. I was wondering if the ChipworkX would be able to use the NXT cervos and sensors...

Only some of the sensors use I2C, and not the motors. As far as the original sensors, only the ultrasonic sensor uses I2C (and it requires really weird timing, or so I have heard). The light, touch, and sound sensors are analog, and the lego color sensor uses some type of custom serial communication.

The motors are just standard motors, but also have encoders in the NXT motor case. You will need a PWM output pin, a couple GPIO's, and an H-bridge for each motor you want to drive (as well as a power supply for powering all of the motors). If you want to use I2C to control motors, you should look at the NXTMMX, as it uses standard I2C, and can control two motors each (the NXTMMX's can be daisy-chained to control more motors).

Hi,
Using those boards with Lego components will not be easy if you are pretty comfortable with electronics. Is there a particular reason why you want to move away from the NXT? Perhaps a different programming system, would allow you to do what you want to do and still use the same hardware...

Andy