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You're reading from  Learning Lego Mindstorms EV3

Product typeBook
Published inJan 2015
Publisher
ISBN-139781783985029
Edition1st Edition
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Author (1)
Gary Garber
Gary Garber
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Gary Garber

Gary Garber teaches physics, math, and engineering at Boston University Academy. Gary is the president of the New England Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers and has led dozens of professional development workshops in education at both the local and national levels. Gary runs the Boston University FIRST Robotics program. He has run and hosted numerous robotics workshops in VEX, Tetrix, and LEGO platforms. He has run dozens of LEGO robotics tournaments and spoken on robotics education at both local and national conferences. His robotics team has worked with Engineers Without Borders, NASA, and the National Science Teachers Association on a variety of engineering and education projects. He is currently an educational consultant, working to develop new software tools for the classroom, at the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach, which is a pioneer in LEGO Robotics Education. He is the author of Instant LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3, Packt Publishing. He currently resides in Massachusetts, US. When he is not playing with LEGO, robots, or toy trains, he enjoys spending time with his wife, Catalina, and their two children, Alejandro and Leonardo.
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Graphical programming


The graphical programming features allow you to write simple programs based on sensor (or calculated) values on a graph. Unfortunately, you are limited to only the Action blocks, which include controlling the motors, the brick display, the brick lights, and the speaker. Again, the EV3 tutorials do a satisfactory job of explaining some elementary uses of the graphical programming. For instance, LEGO describes how to use the value of the temperature sensor to control a fan. One particular use of the graphical programming, which I like, is to program a three-level bang-bang controller. With the normal EV3 programs, this takes a few additional steps, but is rather straightforward with graphical programming. This also makes the concept of a setpoint and a bang-bang controller easy to understand for the most novice of students.

In the following screenshot, we see a graphical program using Reflected Light Intensity from our Color Sensor. The graph is broken into three regions...

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Learning Lego Mindstorms EV3
Published in: Jan 2015Publisher: ISBN-13: 9781783985029

Author (1)

author image
Gary Garber

Gary Garber teaches physics, math, and engineering at Boston University Academy. Gary is the president of the New England Section of the American Association of Physics Teachers and has led dozens of professional development workshops in education at both the local and national levels. Gary runs the Boston University FIRST Robotics program. He has run and hosted numerous robotics workshops in VEX, Tetrix, and LEGO platforms. He has run dozens of LEGO robotics tournaments and spoken on robotics education at both local and national conferences. His robotics team has worked with Engineers Without Borders, NASA, and the National Science Teachers Association on a variety of engineering and education projects. He is currently an educational consultant, working to develop new software tools for the classroom, at the Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach, which is a pioneer in LEGO Robotics Education. He is the author of Instant LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3, Packt Publishing. He currently resides in Massachusetts, US. When he is not playing with LEGO, robots, or toy trains, he enjoys spending time with his wife, Catalina, and their two children, Alejandro and Leonardo.
Read more about Gary Garber