Video tutorials

In this episode we would modify the blinking diode program so that the diode will stay on for four seconds. 

Safety notice: There is current flowing in this device and you can touch the device with your bear hands. This is not dangerous, but there are a few things that you should consider especially in class.

As a result from the previous two videos we have a diode that is blinking. What will now happen with the diode if we remove the power and change the position of the legs.

To correctly upload the blinking diode program to the controller we must first check some of the configurations of software. These are the "selected controller" and COM port

For making the diode blink we just use one of the examples available in the Arduino Software. 

Arduino programs are developed with a software and this software is downloaded from the http://arduino.cc site.

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

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

For the current specific example we need two parts - the diode and the controller. In this episode we would show you which part is the controller, which are the jumpers and finally we would choose a diode.

Why: It's an easy and fun example to introduce you to Arduino

How: Presenting questions and trying answer this questions. Experimenting with different tasks.

What: We would like to show you how to control a diode. We would build a device and write programs for this device.

End Result: A blinking diode

It is a hardware/software related course. You need a set with parts. And you need a number of sets for a class of students. You can buy the set from us, from other vendors, from online retailers. It doesn`t matter actually as long as you have the needed parts for the course. We have tried to create a very lean set, but if you can afford to buy additional parts you could create more complex and probably more interesting devices. 

The course is designed for classes of students, but it could also be used personally. Each module should take you about 20 minutes and depending on how long your student hours are and how much time you will leave the students to experiment and solve tasks you could include different numbers of modules in your class.

This is a course for beginners, but the tasks would be interesting and for more intermediate students. We do not expect any previous knowledge from you except for how to divide numbers and use a computer. 

Answering three questions:

Why - because we believe any student and basically anybody must have a basic understanding of how electronic works. This course gives us the chance to present it and to move forward to better and smarter robots.

How - we do videos, we set tasks. You solve them.

What - we are using Arduino. Because it is popular, it is easy and we like it. 

Cable management is very important on each competition. Cables could get in the way of attachments, levers, different wheels and so on. Brick accessibility is also very important. Do not forget that the brick should be charged from time to time and that you should also be able to access the buttons. 

This robot could quite possibly be build from a single EV3 core and EV3 resource sets. It uses fewer parts and only three motors. There are additional parts that could be skipped when building the robot and we have added these parts only as to make the construction more complete. 

Here we start with a second box robot that we would like to build. It is in a way improvement to the first robot and we would take a look at its features. 

One more example for an active attachment with a system of gear wheels. This time the system is constructed so that the attachment could lift heavy objects. 

In this episode we do a full run of the mission for collecting a single treasure before going into explanation on how we have programmed the robot.

This is a third example for adding an active attachment. This third attachment is now connected to the wheel at the front of the robot. Again, the attachment could be easily extended. 

Second active pinless attachment for the robot construction. It is placed in the top/right corner of the robot and includes an interesting gear system for transferring the power. The attachment is suitable for complete rotations.

This is the first Active Pinless Attachment for the Box competition robot. The attachment is placed on the top of the robot and is controlled by one of the motors. 

Without the use of any motor, you can still accomplish a number of missions using passive attachments. You can still pull/push on different levers using only a beam or two connected to the frame.

We should how to build a frame that could hold the attachments for specific competition missions. This frame is added in a pinless manner. This means very fast and easy without any glitches of the pins.

In this video we discuss how do we transfer power from the motors that are "inside the robot box" to the gear wheels that are "outside the robot box". 

In this episode we look at the way this robot is balanced. A well-balanced robot could handle heavier attachments without losing track of its position on the robotics competition field.