Video tutorials

In this video tutorial we look at Vertical Lift Attachments. The attachment, the root and the mission model are all build from LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor 51515 set. We've found that vertical lift attachments that could lift missions models vertically could be quite useful for FIRST LEGO League competitions. This attachment is one of the more complex attachments and some say it has an "eye opening" mechanism as you can learn so much from it. It uses gear wheels and two levers connected to those gear wheels to lift a part vertically.

On of the most precise ways to position on the FIRST LEGO League and other competition fields is to follow and align and in this tutorial we demonstrate exactly this - how consistent and reliable this method is to reach specific mission models. In this way you know that every time you will be at the right place, which is great.

This is a remote control car. Have fun with it before disassembling it.

In this video tutorial we demonstrate a really important concept for FIRST LEGO League competitions - you position the robot on the field with depending on timers and rotations. The issue with moving the robot for 10 seconds and then stopping is that every time it is in a different location. Same for rotations. The wheels will slip, the battery will change, something will happen and the robot will not be in the same place every time. This is not consistent and reliable.

Developing a program for the Arduino is very easy. We need to do again three thigs:

In this 10 out of 10 tutorial we demonstrate the accuracy of the robot when we use acceleration in its movements. The robot has not sensors attached to it and it is not making use of it's internal sensors. The goal of the tutorial is to give you the understanding and to make a demonstration of how difficult it is to consistently reach a mission model without the use of sensor even when we use acceleration.

This is a teacher's note about the math behind calculating gear ratios with for our lifting attachment. It math model we build in previous tutorials is not exactly correct and here is the explanation why.

With this 10 runs we demonstrate the consistency and reliability that could be achieved with a LEGO Education SPIKE Prime robot and a 2-states simple line following algorithm. It is not bad. Still there are some things you should consider when using this program and one of the things is the use of the timers

Each palette contains programming blocks that share common purpose. We will cover most of them

The important task before the solution. If you haven't done it already, then attach a new axle at the front of the robot and extend the construction with gear wheels and axles to reach the two legs at the two sides of the robot. 

You have the controller, you have the diode. The controller has a number of pins (holes). Where should you put the diode so that it starts blinking? 

The small holes on the controller are called pins. On our controller we have 32 pins. The more pins that you have, the more elements you can controller with this microcontroller. For this video the interesting pins and 13 and GND

In episode 11 we looked at one of the most important topics for the competition - calibrating the light sensors. In this video I would like to show you how to use a more programmatic approach. This means letting the robot do the calibration on its own. Automatically.

One of the easiest ways to improve the accuracy of LEGO Education SPIKE Prime robots is to use acceleration and deceleration when moving. This also applies to LEGO Mindstorms EV3 and LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor and generally to most robots that we know of. This tutorial demonstrates how acceleration and deceleration could be used and what improvement in accuracy and consistency you could expect. This is quite useful for FIRST LEGO League and other robotics competitions.

In this video tutorial we try to move forward with a LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor robot and we try to keep a straight line using the Motion Sensor. Without entering into the details of the programming we demonstrate what is the behavior of the robot when trying to keep a straight line with the Motion Sensor while we are participating in a FIRST LEGO League competition.

As an exercise try to implement the calibration of the minimum and maximum values for a single sensor. 

In this episode I will show you how to program the touch sensor part of the LEGO Mindstorms education robotics sets. I have given answers to questions like - how the touch sensor works or how you can use it.

In this video tutorial we explore acceleration and deceleration and how to make the robot turn precisely by using acceleration and deceleration. The goal is for us to demonstrate a program that turns the robot to 90 degree. In the first 45 the robot is accelerating and in the second 45 it is decelerating.

Implement the program for array initialization.

Follow the video tutorials for initializing arrays and implement the program. 

Robots could do chores for us and they must consider the load of the cargo or the robot could be damaged.