I wanted to start by thanking Eric for inviting me to contribute to nxtasy.org. I am honoured to be part of his team. As a brief intro to myself, I am one of the LEGO NXT MDP / MCP members and hope that through my site (http://www.astolfo.com/) and my participation in the community, that I can bring useful tips, robots and information to the table for others. Some of you may know me for creating DominoBot and DominoBotNXT. Now, on to the topic of this post.
Most of those in this tight community are aware of Mindsensors and HiTechnic for their RCX and NXT sensors, but there is another company out there producing high quality sensors for NXT and RCX systems that deserves mention. TechnoStuff (Techno-Stuff) has been creating RCX sensors for some time now, and I have had the chance to test a number of them including their:
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What may not be so well known is that most of these sensors will work on the NXT kit. You simply need a NXT RCX wire converter and either NXT-G or a 3rd party programming language (eg. RobotC). The converter wires can be obtained from shop.lego.com, or you can make one yourself quite easily (as long as you dont mind cutting up a few cables).
Programming with these sensors in NXT-G can be done by using a legacy Temp Sensor block and raw output (for unpowered sensors) and a Light Sensor block for powered sensors. For my testing, I use RobotC and set the sensors up as a Light Sensor. This will allow you to read the raw reading values and code your robot to react appropriately. For more information on these sensors, visit the TechnoStuff website at www.techno-stuff.com.
Dave