I've got HiTechnic acceleration sensor. Couldn't find any data on it aside from little paper that came with it saying that different addresses contain lower and upper bits. But still doesn't explain how positive or negative acceleration is denoted. Is the upper most bit a sign value?

To get started with minimal effort, setup the sensor as a standard ultrasonic sensor. That will give you "X" axis values in the range 0 to 255. The following code snipped will give you the signed value.

You'll have to do a bit more "work" to get all three axis. First, you need to write a task that will background poll the sensor for all six-bytes of data and then convert to ten bit values. A sample program that you can simply "#include" in your program should be available soon.

Thanks Dick!

But I actually want to understand the logic behind it all.

Here's what I did (pseudoCode)
[code]

int upperPart = readSensorRegister(42H); //upper 8 bits
int lowerPart = readSensorRegister(45H); //lower 2 bits
if (upperPart>128)
{
//sign is negative
return (-1)*((upperPart-128)<<4 + lowerPart);
} else
{
return (upperPart<<4)+lowerPart;
}
[/code]

The thing is - if I hold a sensor so that it is positive 1g then I get 200
But if I hold it upside dows - I get 300 value.

Is my path above wrong in making 10-digit signed value?

I found the following to work: Do the addition (with shifting) first. Then decide, if the value is above 511. If this is the case, then subtract 1024. This gives the correct results.

[quote="eivets"]I found the following to work: Do the addition (with shifting) first. Then decide, if the value is above 511. If this is the case, then subtract 1024. This gives the correct results.[/quote]
Thanks man! This actually works (and makes sense too)!

I posted a more comprehensive reply on the forums at nxtasy.org. DO a search on those forums for "RobotC acceleration". There's also a sample program for the HiTechnic accelerometer on that site.

The sample program -- Nxt Hitechnic Accelerometer.c -- is included in release 1.05 (firmware 7.15) of RobotC for NXT.

Hope this helps.