Mindstorms EV3 - writing long programs

Week 4 - Programming your EV3: Part 3: Writing long programs)

This is a transcript of Prof Jennifer's Educational Robotics for Absolute Beginners. Greater details can be obtained from her video: More about the Software (Part 3: Writing long Programs)

Suppose you are creating a long program and is running out of space, one thing you can do is to use the pan tool and drag the blocks around so you can get more space to add more blocks:

Drag the blocks to the left so you have more space at the end to add blocks. To stop panning, click the pan tool again.

Another neater way to get more space would be to break to sequence of blocks into 2 blocks, arrange them one above the other and use the sequence wire to connect them. Get out of the pan tool and click on the select tool .

Click on one of the sequence plug to break the sequence of blocks

Then you can use the select tool to bundle the separated sequence of block together and pull them down below the first blocks

However, the arrangement is not neat as the sequence wire runs through the blower blocks of codes. To make it less ugly, you can click the sequence connector (the other end of the sequence plug) to break the connection. Reconnect them by hovering the mouse over the sequence plug till you see a "spool of wire" then drag it down and then to the left till it align slightly in front of the lower sequence connector, pull it down then to the right to connect to the sequence connector and you will have a neater arrangement of a long program.

Overview: Sorting out your hardware and software

The first task is to open box, sort the parts into the sorting tray:

Mindstorms EV3 parts sorting tray diagram

Then you need to sort out your hardware and software

• Install rechargeable battery pack (Educational Kit)
• Build the robot
• Install the software on your computer
• Start up the software
• Connect the EV3 to the computer
• Upgrade the EV3 firmware

Lego Wedo GUI (help us talk with computer)

The first thing for those new to Wedo software is to get familiar with the GUI or Graphic User Interface which is used for us to talk with the computer, the screen you see once you open the Wedo software as shown below:

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Right at the bottom is the Menu (Palette) containing all the programming blocks, the "language" you use to talk with the computer. To program a robot, you can drag and drop these programming blocks to the working area, the white area in the center (click on programming block, drag to working area in the center and let go). The very first block you should put in the working area is the START block . To start a program going, you click on this START block.

Introducing random number to children

The LEGO Wedo software has a neat random number generator to input random numbers into selected programming blocks. This gives parents or teachers a wonderful chance to introduce the concept of random numbers to children. (skip explanations to view demo video)

If your kids have played the Snake and Ladder board game, they would be familiar with the 6 sided dice, but if not, then watch this video and watch how a roll of the dice can generate random number from 1 to 6.

Random number demonstration with numeric screen

The Wedo random number input can reinforce the understanding of random numbers. Setup the following programs (see screenshot below):