Video tutorials

Gears could be a powerful tool for those who know how to use them appropriately. In this episode we introduce some of the basic terms and concepts behind using gears in your construction.

In this tutorial we present a way to align your robot to a black line. Go through common difficulties, that the teams face, when they need to align their robot, and provide a solution for them.

We continue the discussion of the Robot Design category from the FIRST LEGO League Competition. This time we stop on the programming - how to evaluate the programming of the team during its preparation for the competition.

The FIRST LEGO League Competition is divided in four categories. The Robot Design category is not as popular as the Robot Game, but still is 25% of the end result of a team. In this tutorial we will stop and make an overview of it.

This video tutorial reviews the EV3 Gyro Sensor and the HiTechnic Gyro Sensor for the LEGO Mindstorms NXT robotics Kit. We compare the two sensors and demonstrate them in action.

In this tutorial we introduce the basic algorithm for following a line with one sensor and review the algorithm for quickly followwing a black line with one sensor, implementing both with the Mindstorms EV3 robotics kit.

After several questions about the use of the LEGO Mindstorms NXT Light Sensor with the EV3 software, we have decided to go through this problem in this video tutorial and pay special attention to the Raw Sensor Value Block.

Each year the FIRST LEGO League robotics Competition involves loops. In this video tutorial I will go through the most common way of taking loops, show its disadvantages and suggest another way to do it.

An interesting question that has arise is whether we can use the LEGO Mindstorms EV3-G Software to program the NXT brick. In this episode we will go through the blocks from the EV3-G Software and see which works with the NXT Hardware and which does not.

There is no block for programming the Ultrasonic Sensor in the retail version of the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 software. In this video tutorial we will show you how you can download & import such blocks in order to use the sensor.

In the first part we built our first 3D LEGO model. Today we will smooth the model we have created and go through the process of creating PDF instructions for building it.

In this tutorial we will build our first 3D LEGO model using LDraw. I will build it using two different programs based on the LDraw library - MLCAD and LeoCAD.

In the previous part of the video lesson we showed how imprecise a chain LEGO Mindstorms robot could be if its positioning does not rely on sensors, but only on the use of move block. In this tutorial we will show the same thing, but using robot on tires.

You are not using sensors?! You are positioning the mindstorms robot only by moving forward, backwards and rotating it. That`s one of the BIGGEST mistakes teams make on the FIRST LEGO League competitions. In this video we are showing a robot with chains and how imprecise are the results are when you are not using sensors. 

Learn how to set up LDD and Ldraw on your Windows computer. Get one step closer to building your first 3D LEGO Model.

A human being walks with an average speed of about 5 km/h (3 miles/h). In this video tutorial we will develop a block for LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3, that measures the speed of the robot in distance/time units where time will be configurable and could be 1 second or 0.5 seconds or any other number of seconds you pass as a param to the block. Measuring the speed of the robot is very powerful if you start building an Artificial Inteligence for your robot and is quite fun :)

Have you even tried to move the robot not in rotations or degrees or seconds, but in metres. In this episode I am building a new block that could be used to move the robot a specific number of millimetres (mm). You could directly download and use it in your programs.

We are showing the basics of communication between LEGO Mindstorms NXT Bricks using a Bluetooth connection. In the next few minutes we will build two programs - one for the master and one for the slave brick, while explaining the essentials for building such programs.

In this episode of the Basic NXT Programming series I will cover the sound sensor. I will explain how to program the sound sensor, stop on common problems faced, when the sound sensor is used and finally we will build a program that will allow us to control the robot's speed through the volume of the sound.

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 we are solving part of the FIRST LEGO League Senior Solutions challange missions (FLL 2012) using LEGO Mindstorms NXT robots. I make a step by step explanation of each move I make. The goal of this video is to help you with ideas and suggestions on how one should look at the missions.

In this video lesson I will show you how to follow a black line using just one sensor, but fast enough so that you could use it during any robotics competition without wasting any time.

In this tutorial we will go through a solution for three of the missions from 2012 FIRST LEGO League competition using only one attachment. By accomplishing the medicines, strength exercise and cardiovascular missions we earn 55 points. You can download the programs from the link in the Materials tab. 

In this video tutorial I give a step-by-step explanation of how to implement a block for aligning to a line. The block was first used in lesson 28. Aligning to lines is probably the most powerfull way to know the position of the robot on the FLL Competition field and to be able to execute the missions precisely at 100% of the time.

In this video we are solving Senior Solutions missions: Stove, Gardening, Similarity recognition, Ball game and Wood Working. We will make step-by-step of everything we do on the FLL field.

In this episode we are showing the great similiarity between the sensors in NXT Mindstorms. We are solving a common problem - How to make a robot that do not fall from the table. We are using the Ultrasonic sensor, Light Sensor and Touch Sensor to solve the same problem, but with three different sensors.

Robotics competition is a large part of the FLL Competition. The field contains missions which give points and the main purpose is to gather maximum number of points for 2:30min. FIRST LEGO League competitions have different themes every year but the tasks have similar functionality. In this video tutorial we will give a brief of missions in Senior Solutions (the theme for 2012).