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Showing results for tags 'spike prime'.
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Today I would like to introduce you to my latest MOC: The PortaBrick Arcade. It is a fully functional mobile arcade game console built entirely out of LEGO®. The PortaBrick Arcade consists of 432 parts and weighs about 520 grams including the battery. The software is based on the @Pybricks project. Quite unlike any other game console currently on the market from the Danish bricks, the PortaBrick Arcade is 100% functional. The whole thing came out of a university project and was supposed to be just a small demonstrator for driver development and as a tool to brush up my Python skills. But as it is sometimes, things turned out differently. So I had a lot of fun writing games for the demonstrator. Thus, it was quickly decided that I would build a nice case around the naked basic framework. And with this then complete game console the first "test persons" played, were quite excited and so it came that I threw all original plans overboard and concentrated completely on the game console. The result is now the PortaBrick Arcade. I created the console in Python/MicroPython. As software I had to resort to the source-open framework Pybricks, because LEGO software only recently started to support programming in Python again. If everything works out, I will (eventually) port the program code to the LEGO platform (LEGO Spike App). The heart of the PortaBrick Arcade is the Spike Prime Hub (nearly identical to the Mindstorms Hub from set 51515). The game console has two displays: Below a monochrome one with a resolution of 5x5 pixels. The upper display can show colors and has a resolution of 6x6 pixels. This upper display is also one of the special features of the MOC. It is composed of four single modules of the Spike ColorLightMatrix. For this I had to write my own driver to be able to control all four displays as one. When the first game ran, it quickly became apparent that the whole thing was nice, but poorly usable. While playing, it became evident that input via the two buttons was poorly recognized. The program's flow is to blame for this. All instructions are processed one after the other. And so that a human being can recognize and play something at all, I worked with a short pause in the program flow. Problem: During the pause and during the instructions, which have nothing to do with the input, no input is accepted. So I needed something like concurrent programming or a way to process instructions in parallel (called multi-threading). However, Micropython does not support this out of the box and the used framework Pybricks does not support it at all. I found the solution in the concept of so-called generators. If you want to read more about this, you can visit my blog. Enough of the technology, on to the content: Currently, the game console runs two games. One is the Nokia classic Snake, and the other is Pong, one of the arcade veterans of all time. Both are currently solo player games. If there should ever be a second console like this (who will have the heart to build the second one??), then Pong can be switched to multiplayer. Two players, double the fun! Also part of the project was a "Pixel Art Painter", a small application that allows you to paint pixel images for the PortaBrick Arcade and then transfer them to the program code. The source code of the whole project is available on Github for anyone interested. If you have any questions about the project, just ask! Otherwise I'm looking forward to your feedback. P.S. If you like the project, feel free to support me on LEGO Ideas. There I have posted the PortaBrick Arcade as a project and keep my fingers crossed. To all who support me and to those who supported me right after the start, thank you very much! -
Wireless Sensors on Spike Prime Hub
joeh posted a topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
We have created an external board that allows another remote device to wirelessly send data to emulate a sensor attached to the Spike Prime hub: https://youtu.be/PTmfwyByj0w Check it out. The virtual sensor is fully compatible with Word Blocks. This will enable Makers to create all sort of sensors and controls to work with their Spike Prime robots. Joseph -
Connect spike prime sensors to ev3 brick?
benwiley4000 posted a topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
I'm working on a project using the ev3 brick and sensors. However I would like to try out some of the newer spike prime sensors without replacing the engine yet. Does anyone know if it's possible to buy or build something that would allow me to attach a spike prime sensor as a custom sensor to my ev3 brick? My options could include using a raspberry Pi as a translator if necessary, but obviously I would prefer a simple cable adapter. For now I'm not super concerned with bulkiness.. mostly just want to test stuff. Thanks in advance for your help. -
New connectivity toolkit for Mindstorms/Spike Prime hub
Steve Robbins posted a topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
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 Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
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.