Search the Community
Showing results for tags 'spike prime'.
Found 2 results
-
New connectivity toolkit for Mindstorms/Spike Prime hub
Steve Robbins posted a topic in LEGO Mindstorms and Robotics
For those looking to either use a custom application to monitor the robot state as it runs; or those looking to program the hub using a linux machine: I have just put up a new github repository of interest: https://github.com/smr99/lego-hub-tk I started with the spike tools (https://github.com/nutki/spike-tools, via https://github.com/sanjayseshan/spikeprime-tools) and then wrote a new communication layer that can use both USB and Bluetooth, with failover -- i.e. if you unplug from USB, it will automatically switch to Bluetooth. I added in a mechanism to continuously monitor the hub's sensors and devices, and the console output from a running program. It is a work-in-progress -- not all the hub messages are understood -- but useful enough. Let me know what you think! -
Using multiple Spike Prime/Robot Inventor Hubs
Skookumjim posted a topic in LEGO Mindstorms and Robotics
I have read all sorts of complaints about Robot Inventor and by inference Spike Prime. Some are valid (eg poor documentation)... some are less so (eg colour scheme). One thing seems clear is that the hardware is well thought out (yes there are issues with cables). Now in robotics three elements stand out as being super important: being able to use multiple motors (motors are basic building blocks), multiple sensors plus having the computational brain (and software) to hold it all together. Unfortunately Lego only provide 6 ports on each hub and have 2 versions of software both of which initially appear limiting. Whereas wireless Inter-hub communication could be very helpful enabling models to use multiple hubs and access both software platforms this is not something that Lego have explicitly provided at the moment. There is however a very simple and seemingly reliable work around available immediately that could help in cases where high speed comms and high data volumes are less important. This is to use optical communication. The idea which I have tested is to use the distance sensor to signal light flashes to the colour sensor. The number of flashes in a fixed time frame thus delivers information from Transmitter to Receiver. As expected using downloaded compiled code speeds the process up though not massively. This process could be 2 way, could enable daisy chaining of hubs and could be expanded to longer instructions (again high speed not being a limitation). On the downside the process sacrifices at least one port on each of a pair of hubs (if the requirement is for one way communication between the pair). The sensors need to be carefully and firmly positioned for reliability although there is no other requirement for any connection between them. In this context a model containing the one hub could “launch” the second. As SP and RI software can be easily swapped on any hub the user has the choice of using SP/SP or SP/RI or RI/RI platforms. Unfortunately size limitations prevent me from uploading images of the set up and demo code at the moment.