Lego Mindstorm Experiences

Lego Mindstorm EV3RSTORM Experiences

Upon receiving Lego Mindstorm, It seems to me that EV3RSTORM was one of the most interesting examples, as it is the symbol of the box. After doing some research, it seems EV3RSTORM becomes one of the user favorites to build as it is an iconic robot that represents Lego Mindstorm itself. As we built out the robot, this article is about my experiences of going through all the missions of Mindstorm.

But first and foremost, we need to have some fun, and after about 4-5 hours of lego building, I was able to actually build out the entire EV3RSTORM first. The instructions can be found on

https://www.lego.com/cdn/cs/set/assets/blt2fdb839be7a53b96/31313_EV3RSTORM_2016.pdf

Either way, you must download the image from to program the ev3 brick https://www.ev3dev.org/downloads/

Basic Control Missions

Lego Mindstorms does come with basic challenge mission, which helps you to get familiar with the lego itself. It is highly recommended to go through them so you'd know where to find support when needed. It's also getting to know all the capabilities, sensors, and logics on what Mindstorm can do.

Mission 01: Hello World and move forward

Basic controls of the Lego Mindstorms goes through their first party software, which can be downloaded at https://www.lego.com/en-us/themes/mindstorms/downloads

Upon opening the software, we will be asked to connect to the brick via USB with computer.

Simple program can be written to display hello world

To Move Forward, we can use the following, since it's legs we can not just turn the motor on none stop

Now we are done with Mission 1 on the book, we can move from page 54 to 84 for mission 2.

Mission 2: Respond to button press

Mission 2 requires us to activate button press on cord #1, in the software we can do that via sensor function. In this case the robot would only walk when the sensor #1 is pressed.

There are total 4 sensor slots, button, infared, and color sensors came with the package. The mission is quiet simple and we can complete this easily.

Mission 3: Spinning the motor

From page 85 to 93 we will see mission #3, which is used to spin the motor, we can do this via sensor activation as well, since the blade is located on motor A, we can start the process by activating A.

Mission 4: Proximity Sensor

Page 94-104 we've installed the head for EV3RSTORM, which is a proximity sensor. An easy way to do it is use proximity as activator as below.

But we can make it a bit more interesting, as proximity is used to activate the fan, once we dont sense anything we can stop the fan until proximity senses something again. If you were to press the button from mission 2 we can stop the program.

Mission 5: Using Remote

Page 105 to 108 is about Mission 5. Part of Mindstorm also came with Remote IR sensor, we will use our proximity and IR beacon to connect with the application, this step can be a bit confusing, as we are controlling 4 buttons using beacon.

Mission 6, Fire the Cannon Ball

This is the last mission for the build up, we don't really have to change our project, we just need to swap out our blade with the cannon ball fire.

Voice Control Missions

Luckily because of the hackster's LEGO MINDSTORMS Voice Challenge, we can follow through the guide to get voice mission done. The first mission being connected to alexa. We will go through quickly on each step and getting through some of the basic functionalities here.

As I've went through the missions, I think one of the easier ways to start the programs is to use the actual console instead of run in the VS Code, as many of these programs takes a bit before getting connected and sometimes the output shows nothing which leaves me wondering what I am doing wrong. Use the following screenshots to actually activate the mindstorm program

And we can switch to terminal to run python code to start the program

Environment Setup

In this step we setup the lego mindstorms environment with visual studio Code and EV3DEV enviroment. There are few things to understand specifically.

You can use Etcher to format the SD card, this can be downloaded via

https://www.techspot.com/downloads/6931-etcher.html

The usb port and sd card is located on the left of the brick if it's faced down, or left side of the robot if it's facing you. This took a little time to figure out.

Upon loading the environment we can move onto the next step which is actual missions.

Voice Challenge Mission 1:

Through Voice Challenge Mission 1 we are able to connect Alexa with EV3RSTORM. This step also had a few things to notice, the ini file places AmazonId and alexaGadgetSecret is mission-01.ini, you must enter them without quote for the demo to work

amazonId = IDWITHOUTQUOTE
alexaGadgetSecret = SECRETWITHOUTQUOTE

After everything is setup, the Alexa is connected with

Voice Challenge Mission 2:

Reacting to music is always fun, this mission is fairly straight forward and you shouldn't run into any trouble. From this moment you pretty much have a dancing bot that you can impress your friends with.

Voice Challenge Mission 3:

This one is a little more complicated as it requires you to create an Alexa skill, which is required to actually control the Mindstorm. The controls are very simple for it to move with direction, speed and duration. Once it's finished we can see the following.

There is a little bug in the mission where left is right and right is left. This can be switched to following code to make it right. We can easily swap these code out to make things correctly.

if direction in Direction.LEFT.value:
    self.drive.on_for_seconds(SpeedPercent(speed), SpeedPercent(0), 2)
if direction in Direction.RIGHT.value:
    self.drive.on_for_seconds(SpeedPercent(0), SpeedPercent(speed), 2)

Voice Challenge Mission 4:

This one is the last of the skills which is built on top of Mission 3, there were a few things that needs to be changed, first is line 52 instead of line 40 on the index.js, you can change that to anything to things like "Welcome, mindstorms is here for your command". Rest of the steps are pretty straight forward, which helps to actually build an app using EV3RSTORM.

The voice control missions are now over, which did provide a lot of fun and I wish it was longer. This does give you the basics of building your own app for the MindStorms Voice Challenge.

Goodbye EV3RSTORM

After doing all the missions with EV3RSTORM, I will be moving on to building other things with EV3 MindStorm, Thank you EV3RSTORM, and goodbye old friend, maybe someday I will build you back up :)

When disassembling, please make sure you put parts in the right place.