Just before Christmas I received the HiTechnic SuperPro Experimenter’s Kit and the HiTechnic MiniScope. I was lucky enough to get some time over Christmas to have a play with the SuperPro and really enjoyed it. The SuperPro comes with an array of electronic elements including a speaker, magnetic sensor, temperature sensor, light sensor and some LED’s. I went through the 9 experiments and felt that I learned more about electronics. I especially enjoyed controlling the array of LED lights as I was soon able to modify the code (I was using RobotC)to make a Knightrider type effect (see video below). The SuperPro comes with a solderless breadboard and a case full of cables to make wiring anything up very easy. The quality of all the parts is very good.
If you are in to LEGO Mindstorms and want to learn more about sensors and start making your own, then this kit is the holy grail. This board has more features than anyone could want. You can even program the board directly using SuperProc C.
If I had to suggest improvements, I would probably ask for more information on how components work and why you need to use them in the certain experiments (e.g why do we use x resister in this example, why do we use a capacitor between these 2 pins). I would also love to see an experiment which uses a non LEGO motors or a servo. I think if you were clever you could setup this board to be many sensors in 1 (temperature, light, LED Array) and free up your NXT ports.
My next plan is to see if I can get a motor or servo working, maybe then moving on to a motor multiplexer.
I would like to thank HiTechnic for giving me this chance to try out this brilliant piece of kit.
Below are images of some of the experiments.
So what did they send me? 1 of each of their sets!!!! (yes I must of been a very good person this year!). My plan is to build a few small models first and then build something epic!! Matrix Wheelchair, a Terminator? who knows!
