Lesson 54: DANCING ROBOTS! (Part 2: The Move Steering Block)

This is a summary/transcript of Prof. Jennifer's Week 3 - More about EV3 Brick: Dancing Robots Part 2: The Move Steering Block.

The Move Steering block assume your motors are connected to port B and C of the EV3 brick
The first Selector is called the MODE selector.

If you select ON FOR ROTATION (#) then you specify how many rotations the motor should rotate (can be a decimal - move a fraction of 1 rotation)

If you specify On for Rotation, then you specify on for how many rotation in this area:

The above shows On for 0.5 rotations means the wheel will rotate half a rotation.

If you specify On for Degree, you must specify how many degrees you want the motor to rotate and it must be a whole number:

The above shows that Steering is set to rotate for 90 degrees which is a quarter of a rotation. (360 degrees is 1 whole rotation)

You may also specify On for seconds. You may specify decimals (fraction of a second) If you specify On for rotations or On for degrees, the motor will rotate the exact number of rotations or degrees. However if you specify On for seconds, the motor will move the exact number of seconds but how many rotations it rotate may depend on the battery level etc.

There are 2 more options ON and OFF which Prof Jennifer will discuss later.

There is also a slider bar for you you adjust to make command the 2 motors to make the robot go straight,

to the left

or to the right.

The second slider is the Power slider, When set to 100, the robot move at full speed. When set to a low level (what is low level depend on your robot setup, heavy or light, or the gearing), the robot stop. When set to negative, the robot reverse.

The last option is BREAK AT END and can be set to TRUE (tick) or FALSE (cross). When set to TRUE, the brake will be applied at the end of the duration or no brake (free to coast [freewheeling]).

Once you learned how to make motor/robot moves you can program robots to do all kind of things, like do a dance.

Get more detailed information from Prof. Jennifer's video at DANCING ROBOTS! (Part 2: The Move Steering Block)

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.

Lesson 73: Part 4: EV3 Downloading, Batteries, Memory, and More)

When your EV3 brick is connected to the computer, the EV3 software will display a window at the bottom right corner of the screenand at the top right of this window will be the word EV3 highlighted in red. This small window which will enable you to do various thing. If the brick is disconnected to the computer, this word EV3 will revert to black color.

Below that red word EV3 are 3 buttons
1st button: download program from computer to EV3 brick
2nd button: download program from computer and execute
3rd button: download programs

IMPORTANT: Avoid using 2nd and 3rd button. Reason, robot may start moving and drag laptop computer off the table

Lesson 72: (Part 3: Mindstorms EV3 software, Writing Long Programs)

When we are writing long programs, we may need to move blocks around.
One way is to use pan. Click the PAN icon (picture of a hand) at the top right corner , then click on screen, drag around.
It is like the screen is very much bigger than what we see, and we drag the hand icon around, it is like dragging the whole screen to a position we want.

Another way is to first click the SELECT icon at the top right corner click and drag the cursor to highlight a series of blocks, then click the group of icons to a more convenient place on the screen.

Note that the screen is rectangular, not long and shallow to accommodate a really long series of blocks. There would be big empty space above or below the long series of block and you can actually make use of "programming wire" to connect programming blocks instead of connecting them by placing them together in long horizontal connected series

Lesson 67: MORE DISPLAY (Part 3: Simple Animations)

Animation example, rising water level.
LEGO has lots of images at
Display block > Images > Progressions > images saved by LEGO > select water level 0
So add a PLAY block, connect a DISPLAY block picking first water level 0
Add a WAIT block, make it wait, say, half second
Repeat above a 3 times selecting in sequence, selecting water level 1, then 2 then 3

First step:

Lesson 68: MORE DISPLAY (Part 4: Displaying Text)

This lesson explain how to display 2 lines of text simultaneously

While we can specify the start of the text in pixels
We can also also use GRID MODE. For displaying text, easier to use grid mode
lEGO ev3 divides the screen grid into
22 columns horizontally (x-axis) starting from 0 to 21
12 rows vertically (y-axis) starting from 0 to 11
Each row can display 1 row of text

Lesson 58: More pitfalls

Created project named ABC xyz
Added program Sound block "okie dokey"
Added program Display block "thumbs up" (Lego > Image > Information)

Now download project into EV3 brick and execute program
Hear only "Okie dokey" but didn't see "thumbs up" sign? This is because sign displayed for fraction of a second, too fast for human eye to notice, then project cleans up by shutting off speaker and clear screen IMMEDIATELY.

Different blocks takes different amount of time to execute

The Sound block: Default is for sound block to finish playing sound before moving on to next block

PROGRAMS SAVED ON YOUR COMPUTER; PROGRAMS SAVED ON YOUR EV3

Programs saved on computer and on EV3 brick different. EV3 version is compiled version

Programs in EV3 brick is saved automatically, but not so for computer
Remember to save Project on computer

Learn more by viewing video at Prof. Jennifer's lesson PROGRAMS SAVED ON YOUR COMPUTER; PROGRAMS SAVED ON YOUR EV3

OPENING & SAVING (Part 3: Opening Additonal Programs and Saving Projects)

In this post, 2 items will be discussed
1. How to add additional programs to a project
2. How to save the project

1. Go to FILE menu on menu bar and click ADD PROJECT

or
Open project, click + next to project name and click NEW PROGRAM

For more details, view Prof. Jennifer's video at OPENING & SAVING (Part 3: Opening Additonal Programs and Saving Projects)

OPENING & SAVING (Part 1: Opening Programs - Educational Version)

How to open a previously saved project with educational version of EV3 software:
The easiest is to click the software File Menu , then click RECENT PROJECTS, then click OPEN

A better way is to click the FILE menu at the top left of the software, then OPEN PROJECT

For more details, view Prof. Jennifer's video at OPENING & SAVING (Part 1: Opening Programs - Educational Version)

PROGRAM (Part 5: "Good Morning" Program)

In the earlier post/video, we programmed the robot to say "Morning"
Now drag another sound block and insert between PLAY block and "Morning" block
Change the sound to "Good"
Download this program into brick and play, you should hear robot say "Good" followed by "morning"

For more details, view Prof. Jennifer's video at PROGRAM (Part 5: "Good Morning" Program)

YOUR FIRST PROGRAM (Part 4: "Good" Program)

After starting a New Project, you would have the START icon in the Project area
Below are different colored bars which are "folders" for the program blocks
The first bar is GREEN and is the ACTION "folder"

We want program to start by saying GOOD MORNING by grabbing the SOUND block and hook it to the START block

Now click on the green bar at the top to add sound

To change program name, double-click
To change project name, SAVE AS then give your initial as Project file name followed by a number

To transfer to brick, connect USB cable and download

For more details, view Prof. Jennifer's video at YOUR FIRST PROGRAM (Part 4: "Good" Program)

YOUR FIRST PROGRAM (Part 2: Starting Software - Educational Version)

Open Mindstorm EV3 Educational software
Click the + icon (ADD PROJECT) (This method is recommended)

Another way to ADD PROJECT is to go to FILE > NEW PROJECT

For more details, watch Prof. Jennifer's video at YOUR FIRST PROGRAM (Part 2: Starting Software - Educational Version)

EV3 Brick Settings

Turn EV3 brick fully on till FOLDERS screen appears
Select last folder to access SETTINGS
Use SETTINGS to set
1) Volume (how loud or soft) from 100% to whatever you wish
2) Auto shutoff time from 30 minutes to whatever you wish

For more details, go to Prof. Jennifer's EV3 BUTTONS (Part 3: Exploring the Buttons)

EV3 Brick: Files and Folders

Files (programs) are stored in Folders in EV3 Brick
When brick is fully turned on, this tiny window will display showing the folders

1) First folder store recently used files/programs
2) Second folder store all files/programs
3) Third folder store programs by LEGO
4) Fourth folder are brick SETTINGS

Navigation:
Use UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT buttons to move between folders and files,
CENTER button to select
TOP LEFT button to go back 1 level
TOP LEFT button is also the STOP button

For more details, view Prof. Jennifer's video at

EV3: More about the EV3 Brick

The EV3 brick center button serves different function depending on status of brick
1) As "ON" button when EV3 brick is turned off
2) As "YES" when brick is asking a question
3) As "SELECT" when brick is on

For more details, view Prof. Jennifer's video at More about EV3 Brick Buttons

EV3 Brick. Turning Brick Off

EV3 brick has 6 buttons (see diagram 1 below)

To turn on EV3 brick, press (2) middle button

The buttons
(1) Back button
(2) Enter button (also to turn brick on)
(3) Up, Down, Left, Right buttons

Diagram 1

The EV3 automatically turn itself off when left alone for some time.
To turn it off yourself, press the buttons labelled (1) (2) (3) in seqence as labelled in diagram 2 below:

Diagram 2

(1) Press corner button till shutdown screen appears
(2) Press right button one time to select check mark
(3) Press center button to turn off

If after pressing corner button (1), shut down screen not visible, keep pressing till shut down screen eventually appears, then follow the above sequence.

Source: Education Robots for Absolute Beginners - EV3 by Prof. Jennifer Kay.

Watch Prof. Jennifer Kay's video below for greater details

3.1 EV3 BUTTONS (Part 1: Brick Buttons Overview)

EV3 brick has 6 buttons (see diagram 1 below)

To turn on EV3 brick, press (2) middle button

The buttons
(1) Back button
(2) Enter button (also to turn brick on)
(3) Up, Down, Left, Right buttons

Diagram 1

Click on diagram to make it bigger:

The EV3 automatically turn itself off when left alone for some time.
To turn it off yourself, press the buttons labelled (1) (2) (3) in seqence as labelled in diagram 2 below:

Diagram 2

Click on diagram to make it bigger:

(1) Press corner button till shutdown screen appears
(2) Press right button one time to select check mark
(3) Press center button to turn off

If after pressing corner button (1), shut down screen not visible, keep pressing till shut down screen eventually appears, then follow the above sequence.

Source: Education Robots for Absolute Beginners - EV3 by Prof. Jennifer Kay.

Watch Prof. Jennifer Kay's video for greater details

LEGO Mindstorms EV3-G program blocks

The LEGO Mindstorms EV3 software is called EV3-G and works by drag-dropping graphic blocks in a line starting from the left to right. The first block on the left is always the START block


The blocks are organied by colored tabs into groups. There are 6 groups of programming blocks:
1. ACTION blocks
2. FLOW blocks
3. SENSOR blocks
4. DATA blocks
5. ADVANCED blocks
6. MY blocks (for putting frequently used blocks)

ACTION blocks

FLOW blocks

SENSOR blocks

DATA blocks

ADVANCED blocks

MY Blocks

Troubleshooting LEGO Mindstorms EV3

When EV3 brick encounter glitches, what to do?

1. EV3 brick dead after battery change: check battery springs
2. EV3 flashes red briefly then dies: defective battery. Get LEGO Education to replace
3. EV3 brick says "starting", then nothing:
a. remove battery and reinsert
b. hold down center and right buttons till display says "updating"
c. plug brick into computer via USB
d. go to Tools drop down menu and select "Firmware update"
4. EV3 brick stuck during firmware update: ....

Go to What to do when EV3 stops working.