NXT Color Sensor

Hi, i m new to NXT and mindsquall.
First of all, thanks very much for such a great library saving me plenty time study Lego spec.

I have a small question about color sensor, is there any way to turn on the white LED light source? i check the NxtColorSensor class but cant found any.

Thanks!

The NXT2 color sensor does not have a white led. Instead it has a hole with three colored leds behind: red, green and blue (and a lens before them). You can turn them on one at a time, or all tree at the same time. The last option should in theory give a whitish light, but looks more like three overlapping colored circles.

The sensor has two modes – it can function as a color sensor or it can function as a light sensor.

In the color sensor mode, all the three leds are turned on. And so to answer to your question, set it into this mode and ignore the sensor-part:

Code:

NxtBrick brick = new NxtBrick(NxtCommLinkType.Bluetooth, 3);
Nxt2ColorSensor sensor = new Nxt2ColorSensor();
brick.Sensor1 = sensor;

sensor.SetColorDetectorMode();

brick.Connect();

To turn the light off again:

Code:

sensor.SetLightSensorMode(Nxt2Color.Black);

You can also turn on the tree lights individually:

Code:

sensor.SetLightSensorMode(Nxt2Color.Green);

The code looks like this, because turning the lights on/off is a function of how the sensor is being used ... as a sensor.

I agree that this is not very intuitively when you just want to use the sensor as a lamp. I think that I will add some extra methods for this in the next version.

Thanks very much, it is helpful.

At first i was looking at the Color sensor, there are 3 led/sensor like component. Just wonder what they actually use for.

Everything you didn't know you wanted to know about the NXT2 color sensor:

http://botbench.com/blog/2011/09/16/exposed-lego-colour-sensor/