Please, please, please. Sharp makes nice IR sensors, please spray paint them red and sell them to us. VEX is the only series of robot parts that you can’t buy IR sensors for.
The VEX Line Trackers consist of an infrared LED and an infrared sensor. I don’t know if this is possible, but you may be able to cover the LED so that the Line Tracker functions only as an infrared sensor.
The IR sensors he is talking about are range sensors. They work much like the Vex ultrasonic range sensors, except using IR pulse instead of an ultrasonic ping.
Here are three popular Sharp IR sensors: Short, medium, and long range.
The cool thing is that you can wire these directly to a Vex analog input and get a distance reading using an Analog Input program block. No timers or interrupts needed, and only a single port. I have no idea if you can operate multiple IR sensors in close proximity, though, as they might interfere with each other.
Cheers,
- Dean
Vexactly! They plug into the analog ports, they are very accurate, they are super easy to us and we should have them as parts! It does not overload the CPU like the sonars sensor.
I get mine from Robodyssey.com/and I buy this very nice mounting bracket for them. The bracket makes it very nice for fine positioning. I’ve even strapped the VEX Sonar to one to make it easier to adjust.
Highly recommended if you are trying to follow walls, find the distance to towers / goals, etc.
Robodyssey also sells some smaller mice kits and very cool walkers.