LEGO MINDSTORMS TUTORIALS
With this video tutorial we start the course for LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor and how to successfully program the robot for FIRST LEGO League robotics competition. It is good to have SPIKE Prime or EV3 for the competition. But if you happen to have Robot Inventor, don't be discourage. It is still possible to participate and accomplish a lot with the set.
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.
In this video tutorial we demonstrate the user of a quick 'pinless' attachment. As all pinless attachment it is not that they are completely pinless, but that they do not require the "click" of the pins that is often difficult to achieve in a quick pace environment as during FIRST LEGO League competition rounds.
Programming the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor for FIRST LEGO League competitions involves learning how to turn left and right with the robot. There are not precise turns. The robot will make mistakes, because that's what robots do. But nevertheless it is important to learn how to program the robot to turn. We are releasing an additional course that is focused only on programming and how to make the robot consistent in its behavior, but in this tutorial we stop on turning
The bench mission was a video tutorial that we recorded several times. It was really hard to get it 10 out of 10. The reason was the shear complexity of the mission. There are three things that should happen in this mission at once which was extremely difficult. What you will see in the tutorial is how this attachment behaves
On every FIRST LEGO League competition and generally robotics competitions with LEGO robots, we build attachments to accomplish missions and we must accomplish the missions in a limited amount of time. Most of the time we can not accomplish the missions with a single attachment and we have to change attachments. This is where building robot attachments that are easy to remove really makes sense. In this tutorial we discuss some of the things that should be considered in the building Easy to Detach modules and attachments
In this video tutorial we demonstrate a few ways to use the Distance sensor from the LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor on FIRST LEGO League competitions. We don't enter into the details about programming as we do in the LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor Programming course, because here we demonstrate the behavior of the robot when the sensor is use and we make the argument that you should always use sensors at FIRST LEGO League competitions
In this video tutorial we demonstrate the behavior of a LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor robot when we use the Motion sensor. The Motion sensor was also referred to as Gyro sensor in previous versions of the LEGO Mindstorms Robot. We do not enter into the details of the programming and you can download the programs from the course lesson, but we make a demonstration of how the robot turns to about 95 degrees when we try to turn it to 90 degrees, we explain why and we suggest a way to improve the behavior of the robot.
This short animation demonstrates a really useful principle for FIRST LEGO League competition and this is how to use the Inertia of the robot to trigger an attachment that will do the work for us. It is very useful as we don't have to use the motors of the robot and we can afford to use the motors for other things.
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.
In this video tutorial we discuss probably the most useful principle that we've found for FIRST LEGO League competitions and this is how to align to a line with two color sensors. We use the LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor for a quick demonstration of the principle. In the LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor Programming course we enter into more details of how exactly we program the sensors. The current tutorial demonstrates the use of such a program and makes clear why this could be very useful and is a must for any well prepared team and wants to achieve a good score on the competition.
In this video tutorial we demonstrate the importance of properly shielding and protecting the light/color sensors of your LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor robots. These principles generally apply for all kind of robots. The problem is that external light sources from the venue could change the behavior of the robot - like have you ever been to a competition venue where the lighting just makes the robot behave in different ways? - well this tutorial is for you!
This video tutorial had a different idea than what we recorded. We planned for a push/pull attachment as we've shown such attachments for LEGO Education SPIKE PRIME and LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3. However, the issues with LEGO MINDSTORMS Robot Inventor set 51515 is that we could not figure out an easy way to build a push pull attachment that meets our criteria for an attachment. Because of this we made a slight modification on the idea and it is again push/pull attachment but not moving in a line but in a circle - circular movement.
In this short animation we demonstrate how the LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor Distance sensors could be attached to the robot and then use to stop at distance from a wall. This wall could be the border of the field or another mission model. We need an attachment, we need a sensor and we need the robot. In the live video in the lesson we enter into more details and explanations of how the sensor is used. Programs for the distance sensor are provided in the lesson and in the LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor Programming course we enter into more details about how to program the distance sensor
This animation demonstrates the principle of aligning to a line with two color sensors and a LEGO Mindstorms Robot Inventor robot. This is a useful concept for FIRST LEGO League competitions where you want to know exactly where you are on the field and to achieve consistent behavior. In the course lesson you will also find a live video tutorial where we enter into more details about aligning. We align the robot to a line by moving both sensors slowly until they both see a black line. When one of them sees the line we move only the other. At the end we return the first sensor back.