Video tutorials

There is a way of mounting the drill bits faster and more reliably than what is shown in this video; however, it requires a steady hand and starting the drill while the drill bit is not yet mounted. We decided that it may pose danger for people not yet savvy with the drill, and that it is best to show how it was intended to be mounted. We strongly advise not using faster methods before you are very comfortable handling this tool.

In this video we look at the way this robot uses the LEGO Mindstorms EV3 motors. How are they attached and the what the rotation of the motor is transferred to the attachments.

The dip switch is mounted by using the holes that are already placed on the PCB board. Meaning that we don't need to drill any holes for it.

In Episode 58 we introduced you to a LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Modular robot. In this tutorial, we show you how we reached that construction. We start from a construction found on the Internet and take you through the process of examining and improving it, till we reach a more stable and reliable robot.

time to plan where everything on the PCB will go. You can rearrange the components as you wish, as long as the wire connections are done correctly after that.

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.

If you’ve connected everything correctly, you can now turn on the motor and control its speed using the potentiometer.

The potentiometer is the small knob on the motor speed controller that you can rotate.

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. 

Time to make the final connection and complete the prototype.

In this video we are also focusing on lifting a loop as a common mission on robotics competitions like FIRST LEGO League/World Robotics Olympiad. We demonstrated an attachment for lifting a loop. The tutorial uses Luly, a small LEGO Education SPIKE Prime competition robot with 3D building instructions as a robot base.

To demonstrate that it does not matter where in the circuit we place the switch, we placed it at the negative battery terminal. However, in practice, it is always better to put it near the positive terminal as it lowers the area that can damage your electronics if accidentally touched by other power sources or grounding.

We start a course for following a line with crosses and gaps. This is a challenge that one of the users at FLLCasts.com was trying to accomplish and asked us for advice. We present the whole challenge to you step-by-step. But first, let's also see the whole run of the line following algorithm. With this course, we also do an introduction of using State Machine as a programming pattern.

You can notice that the two positive terminals are placed in the middle. That is a common practice that has a few functionalities, like shortening the paths on the PCB, but the main purpose is to lower the chance that the power cables connected directly to the battery are more difficult to touch accidentally.

In Episode 58 we introduced you to an LEGO Mindstorms EV3 Modular robot. Mic Lowne wrote to us and had that robot remade, because it used too many blue lego pins and could not be build using one EV3 kit.

The motor’s contacts are connected by a wire that is wrapped in a special way. When electricity flows through the wire, it creates a magnetic field that makes the shaft spin. The direction the shaft spins depends on which way the electricity flows. If you switch the wires, the shaft will just spin the other way, and nothing bad will happen. The plus (+) and minus (–) marks on the motor only show which way to connect it if you want the shaft to spin in a certain direction.

The last fifth construction is larger compared to the previous constructions. It is wider. It has four sensors and you can take a larger load all by keeping the robot stable. 

Notice that we connect the switch to the red cables and not the black. That is standard practice aimed at minimizing the points through which power can accidentally be connected to other electrical components. Stopping the power near its source is the best way to do it.

This tutorial in an animated demonstration of how a LEGO Education SPIKE Prime robot could turn precisely at 90 degrees using the Motion Sensor. The goal of the task is to download the program and rotate at exactly 90 degrees. Because of this precise rotation it is easy to know where your robot is on the field and to program the robot to perform in a reproducible way. To download the program check out the courses in which the tutorial is used.

Connecting the other side of the motor directly to the battery will turn it on, but we want a way to control when we turn it on without having to disconnect and reconnect cables constantly. For that reason, we added a switch between one of the connections from the motor to the battery. It may seem easier to use a larger switch, but the DIP switch is meant to be soldered to a PCB, and that is what we'll do in the end.

Need to transfer circular into a linear motion. You need a rack. Here is an attachment with a rack for our box robot.

It doesn’t matter if you connect the wire to the positive (cathode) or the negative (anode) terminal of the battery.

Note that for power sources, the cathode and anode are marked opposite to that of diodes and other electronics. In them, the cathode is the positive terminal and the anode is the negative one.

Based on feedback from many of you in this episode I would like to show you how to build an active attachment that changes the orientation of a gear wheel placed vertically to a gear wheel placed horizontally. This attachment could be used in competitions and shows a basic principle of changing the orientation. All attachments could follow the same principle. 

Before you connect wires in your project, you need to take off the plastic covering (insulation) at the ends so the metal wire is exposed. This is called stripping the wire. You can do it with a wire stripper or even with simple tools you may have at home.

The attachment builds on previous episodes this time using two LEGO rubber bands. When a lever is released the rubber band exerts pressure on it and moves it in a circular motion. As an example we are solving the 2012 FIRST LEGO League, Senior Solutions, stove mission (which was quite interesting as a mission)

In this tutorial, we share a tip for organizing robot attachments in the FIRST LEGO League challenge. By designing attachments to hook onto the table edge, you can keep them close at hand for quick swaps, saving time and reducing mistakes.

Options include building hooks into the attachment design or using small separate hooks. This method is used by many teams and is a practical way to stay organized during competitions.

This is a very interesting idea that is worth sharing with the rest of the teams and the ELM team has provided it to us. Check out how they drop a LEGO human at a specific place.

In this video tutorial, we demonstrate a full run for the FIRST LEGO League 2024-2025 SUBMERGED challenge, completing all missions in a single sequence. Each mission is shown individually beforehand, with close-up views of how the attachments work and the principles behind their design. All attachments are pinless, making them quick to change during the run, though aligning and loading the robot still requires practice. The strategy involves moving from one base to the other while accomplishing as many missions as possible, including retrying those close to base when needed.

While the complete run takes longer than the official 2.5 minutes, the focus here is on demonstrating reliability, consistency, and the trade-offs between time and scoring points. In some cases, missions are skipped to focus on higher-value tasks, but in this run, we aim to complete them all. The result is a strong performance that comes close to the maximum possible score.