ROBOTC.net Blog  

The NXTCam from mindsensors.com

Vision systems are one of the more useful, albeit trickier, sensors that can be used in a robotics system. They allow a microcontroller to literally ‘see’ an object, its color, shape, and (in some cases) the material it is made from. They are used extensively almost anywhere an automated system needs to make a decision based on an object’s visual properties.

Fortunately, MindSensor’s NXTCam combined with Xander’s driver suite allows NXT users to quickly and easily program a vision system for their robots. ROBOTC forum member alain has recently created one of the basic NXTCam robots (a robot that will track a colored ball with relatively high accuracy) and was kind enough to share his programming journey on the ROBOTC forum and the video below.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

If you’re interested in building your own color-tracking robot or have other, unique ideas for an NXT cam with ROBOTC, be sure to check out the Robotics Academy demo video for ideas on how the NXTCam can be used and the ROBOTC forum for coding help.

In years past, the science and art fields were generally considered to be diametrically opposed; if something was scientific it usually didn’t have artistic value, and if it was a work of art it probably didn’t do much for the scientific community. Recently, though, the line between art and science has been blurred and blended in some very unique and interesting ways.

A prime example of this is a color-sensing “Coltar” made by Youtube user PhilippLens. By mixing imagination with ingenuity, PhilippLens created the hybrid guitar using a LEGO Mindstorms NXT brick with a color sensor and two touch sensors (one on the Coltar itself, the other on the ‘pick’). Using the touch sensors to control chords and the color sensor to control which notes are being ‘strummed’ allows the Coltar to emit a surprisingly large range of notes.

YouTube Direct Link 

For more information on this cool project, check out Philipp’s Reddit post. You can also download the code here.