LEGO Mindstorm

LEGO Spik3r

Spiker and the bug beacon

I recently brought a set of LEGO Mindstorm (31313). It is a programmable, construct-able, destruct-able play toy. It consists of motors and 3 types of sensors. Those sensors were to sense light intensity, colors, IR sensors and push touch sensor.

EV3 The LEGO CPU

EV3 is the central CPU to move all the mechanical parts, it also acts as a storage to all the motorized movements. The previous generation to EV3 was NXT, with the new EV3 things got much more interesting actually. EV3 alone could work with USB and Bluetooth directly. As of WiFi, the feature is listed in the setting tab, but it requires a separate WiFi dongle to be attached on the USB slot.

Volume - This however is adjustable from the programming area
Sleep - To adjust when it sleeps
Bluetooth - Easily setup and most laptops comes with Bluetooth feature
WiFi - Needs a separate plugin WiFi product

This processor however requires 30 seconds to startup, and another 15 seconds to shutdown.

Port View - See next figure for more explanation.
Motor Control - Manual controlling on the motors A,B,C,D
IR Control - A remote control that comes with the device
Brick Program - Not really useful, it's to program it via EV3 instead of using the Lego Mindstorm Home Edition

The EV3 processor has a "Port View" feature, which can be very useful to test on the Light Sensor and also Infrared sensor. It also displays the motor turned angles. Generally it works like a debugger for the motors and sensors.

Port view showing the IR-Proximity, displays shows the object from the IR sensor is around 35%

The software LEGO Mindstorm Home Edition (there is also and Education Edition.) are the default software used to code EV3. These software is used to program the EV3 to "auto" run according to the programmed codes. **I had not figured it out yet as of how to program it to run both on Manual + programmed codes.

Bricks

Spik3R from one of the Home Edition instruction

The other best part is the destructible and reconstruct-able Lego components. I had not been playing Lego for the past 20 years and it's memorable to had been playing it again. What interested me the most on Mindstorm was the capability to program the constructed Lego!

One of the model I have created is SPIK3R, a scorpion like Lego, programmed to locate an IR Remote Beacon. SPIK3R walks like an insect and shoot pellets. This model instruction was included in one of the LEGO Mindstorm Home Edition software.

The other fun part re-learning Lego (especially techniques), is the way how gear works. Interesting in SPIK3R, are the 2 left wheels; one of the wheels is restricted by a blue peg(see picture above), this causes the scorpion to turn in circles when it reverses, while SPIK3R can head straight when the wheels turned forward.

EV3 Home Edition

Blocked codes

EV3 Home Edition programming are the User Interface of to program EV3. As a programmer, I do find this tedious as the blocks are big and hard to read. But to new users this is easy to understand as this software provides a colorful visual.

I found another project that can be used to program EV3's CPU, the project was code named Lejos. I will invest some time to test over this.

For SPIK3R, there was a problem where the pellets construction + program as it were not able to shoot out the pellets in scorpion form. To fix this pro-grammatically, I've lowered the motor energy from -75 to -40, this solved the program and now it is firing perfectly. :)

Final words

This things is fun, which made me made time to blog this instead of transformers (this time). All in all, it's a worthy set and can really kept me as a programmer - occupied.