MajorAlvega

The servo moves almost imediately. By almost perhaps in 0.3~0.5 seconds, I don't have a good way to measure. I'm trying some improvements in my method, hope to get slightly better latencies but you don't want to make heart surgery with it :) The SBrick response, in bluetooth terms, doesn't come in sync with the movement. It doesn't matter if you just send one command (like move servo to 50%) but I can't send another command until this acknowledge comes (well, I can but it stays in a queue - not a SBrick queue, more like an operating system or python queue). So no "bursts" - the above video with the running PF lights can be a little faster but not much more. and when I stop the programm (Control-C) lights keep running one second more (the queue is beeing flushed).

Better speed yes, better performance perhaps not. You should see Philo's excelent "LEGO® 9V Technic Motors compared characteristics". The Power Functions XL motor has more or less the same torque as the EV3 large motor but a bit more speed. If you want a bit more speed go for the L Motors. Much more speed and still some torque AND still commercially available only the PF train motors (not commercially availabe there is the Technic RC motor, good luck finding it at bricklink at a good price). But you said you want your vehicles "build to be intelligent". As the EV3 is not a supercomputer, any «intelligence» costs time so speed [usually] is not a great concern for those who build autonomous vehicles with the EV3.

Well, it is not «supported» by ev3dev in the sense that there is a driver like there is for the Color Sensor of for the Servo Motor and very recently even for the WeDo... but as long as you can use shell scripting or any language that can invoke system commands (in particular the command «gatttool» from BlueZ 5.x) you are OK. SBrick is still at the very beginning. It will have an API or an SDK or something like that but not now - the software guys are focused on the iOS/Android/Windows Phone client app and the hardware guys are almost delivering it to production, pehaps even as we speek (see those last posts at SBrick forum). There is also no good library (as far as I know) for Bluetooth 4 Low Energy - the best I've found is bluepy but I could not make good use of it yet. So, at the moment, my use of gatttool is the only known way to talk to SBrick. It's enough for most needs but not for all - if you need very low latency and very high frequency I'm sorry but you'll have to wait. But if its enough for you to send ~ 10 commands per second and get a response in the next second... you can do it right now (at least from EV3 with ev3dev, from Raspberry Pi with an upgraded Raspbian and from Ubuntu).

SBrick works fine with the EV3 but you need a Bluetooth 4.0 USB Dongle and ev3dev (the EV3 has only BT2.x inside, doesn't talk with the SBrick, and at the moment LEGO firmware isn't flexible enough so you need a microSD card with ev3dev - a Debian Linux for EV3). But you just need PF IR + HiTechnic or SBrick if you want the EV3 outside of your model. If you want the EV3 inside of your model and just need 4 or less motors, you can use an adapter cable to connect PF motors to it. LEGO had a NXT>RCX adapter, if you get one you can add a PF extension cable to connect to the PF motor. Or you can make your own cable with just a few resistors. As NXT/EV3 motors are servos, you don't need the PF servo. The smaller EV3 motor can replace it. Now if you want the EV3 inside you model AND need more than 4 motors... you may: - use a LEGO WeDo USB Hub to connect 2 PF motors (again, you need ev3dev) but as USB is only 5V (and perhaps 0.5A) motors will have less power - not much of a problem because if you want to use a EV3 you don't expect a race car, you expect a slow rover - use PF IR and HiTechnic to add 2 PF motors with IR link - use SBbrick and USB BT4.0 dongle and ev3dev to add 4 motors with BT link - use another EV3 in daisy chain to add 4 motors (overkill!) Lots of options... neither of it cheap. Lots of cables also and big geek factor.

You said there are some missing pieces... if any important I'll go after it in bricklink. There are many projects on the net that can be made with just the basic kit, see for example this site: http://www.nxtprograms.com After you have some experience with the sensor and motors of the basic kit you might want more motors and perhaps different sensors but I would not spend much money, at least not while you're starting. Then you'll want some technic structural elements like gears, liftarms, pins. Small sets are a great way to collect these kind of pieces. And f you like tanks or bulldozers you might want the 42028 bulldozer, it's affordable and has plastic tank tracks (the rubber tracks from your kit are fine, just not so reallistic and with a fixed length).

The SBrick team just relased a very early alpha version of its app for Android (version 0.0.10). [media] [media]

You just want to glue some pieces or you want to create new and solid pieces? You can try polymorph (or any other of the commercial names available). It's a plastic that melts at around 60 Celsius (just put it in hot water). It's not ABS, at room temperature it's a bit more soft/flexible but it's strong enough. You could mold it but I find it difficult to use with casts. It's not easy to paint but when hot you can add acrylic paint (I used Tamiya) to give it the color you want. You can also use epoxy putty like Tamiya epoxy putty (smooth surface), more easy to mold and cast (and paint) but less plastic and not so strong. I've used both to make small pieces for minifigs (hair, pauldron, skirt, weapon). And also fitting electrical (DIY) cables into bricks. Also tried sugru but didn't like it (and also too expensive).

No, in parallel you just get more current. The voltage is the same. To get more voltage you add it in serial instead of parallel. And yes, 14.8V is too much. SBrick must operate under 11.0 V.

You mean like this? ]http://youtu.be/lba1u_IQIK0 You can do it with any ammount of batteries: for 'n' batteries wou need 'n' Power Functions extension cables and 'n-1' 9V cables, just connect the PF cables to the batteries and the 9V cables between the PF cables. But... - all batteries must be VERY simillar - or current might flow from one battery to other - watch for current on the cables... the more batteries and load the more they heat

You use the Sbrick the same way you already use th PF IR - it also has a single input. So if you want all that power: - use 2 SBricks, one for each RC motor, each with its own battery - use 1 SBrick with both RC motors and use just one LEGO battery, probably you would want to mod it to overcome maximum current limitation but in that case... - use 1 SBrick with both RC motors and just use a custom SOLID battery

I found a easier and almost purist way of reading temperatures with the WeDo: You just need: - a WeDo Hub (of course) - a WeDo tilt sensor - a Mindstorms RCX Temperature Sensor (9889) - half Power Functions cable - half 9V cable The WeDo tilt sensor is plugged «piggyback» with the half PF cable from which we use C2 and 9V wires to connect to the half 9V cable. The temperature is read from the tilt sensor in raw mode (just assure the tilt sensor itself is always «flat» so it doesn't interfere with the readings. If you don't have or don't want to use a WeDo tilt sensor just solder a 3k9 resistor between C1 and 0V wires of the PF cable (to pretend it is a tilt sensor) and a 10K resistor between C2 and 0V (although you might skeep this aswell). If you don't have or don't want to use 9889 then solder a NTC 10K resistor (less tha €1) between C2 and 9V wires of the PF and use some proper insulation (hot glue, epoxy, duct tape, whatever) It works seamless with Mindstorms EV3 and a PC with Linux. I don't have LEGO WeDo software to test with Windows so I don't know if it is possible to read raw values from the tilt sensor - if it is, then you don't need Linux at all.

The ev3dev kernel was updated this night with native driver support for WeDo. So now anyone using EV3 can also use LEGO Power Functions motors and lights through USB with no need for cable modifications and keeping all EV3 motor ports available. Lets hope this driver goes upstream and reaches other distributions so we can use WeDo on-the-go with the Raspberry Pi or a linux laptop.

Update: since LEGO WeDo uses the C2 pin as an analog input AND it is possible to read the raw values at C2, we can use the WeDo USB hub as an ADC. So I connected a 10K NTC thermistor (a resistor that varies with temperature, when temperature increase it's value decrease) to my modded cable, between C2 and 9V, in parallel with a 10K normal resistor (so that the thermistor varies almost linearly with temperarure, see here). I had not enough time to calibrate yet so here are some in-a-hurry results: - ambient room, after settling: ~180 - touching ice: ~160 - 10cm over a tea candle: ~215 (with nothing connected, just the modded cable, the tilt raw input is 125) Later this week I'll show more details. I also intend to: - read a potentiometer and see if it is usefull for reading a motor position - read a light-dependent resistor to measure light levels

Here is the circuit of the tilt sensor. I made a basic 4-key gamepad with 4 RCX touch sensors, here my EV3 using 2 WeDo hubs reading the gamepad to control 2 L-motors More info here.

Hi all! I don't know if WeDO fits here at "Technic, Mindstorms & Model Team" but didn't find a better forum theme. The ev3dev people are preparing a WeDO driver for Linux. It will allow any Linux system [EV3 ev3dev included] to use WeDO. Not just ONE WeDO USB hub but as many as you want/have. I got excited and got two WeDO USB Hubs and a tilt sensor. And while waiting done my own tests. There is already a python library for WeDO: wedo. But I could not make it work so I used a variation: WeDoMore. It works fine with my Ubuntu laptop and with Mindstorms EV3 running ev3dev. I believe it will also work seamless with a Raspberry Pi, will try it later. Some more details at my blog. I've also found Philo photos of the WeDo internals and used it to reverse-engineering the tilt sensor. With just 4 resistors and a Power Functions connector we can build a 4-switch control and read it as a tilt sensor (one switch for each tilt state). More on this later.

Nop, doesn't work. Installed Irdroid app and can import configuration file and it parses the key codes so I can send FORWARD_FORWARD but nothing happens. With hearphones I can listen a 'click' so it seems to be working, Perhaps my phone (Sony Xperia Z1) audio output isn't strong enough. Irdroid is truly open source, they give the PDF with the schematics, its an easy circuit with a common (and cheap) audio amplifier, 2 IR leds and a few passive components. They also give the source code. As I'm not a coder guy, is there anyone who wants to make an Android app?

There are already some dongles like the Irdroid: They use a customized version if LIRC for Android but I suppose that on a PC LIRC (or WinLIRC) will work. Since they also use the audio port perhaps their Android app works with «my» gadget, I'll give it a try.

As I promised here are two very boring videos: - my laptop moving a car at 3.0 meters - my laptop controlling the speed of a M-motor and the position of a Servo

Hello. There have been experiments on controlling PF IR with audio files (like this thread) but I didn't find an easy way to controlling it programmatically from a PC (although there are a few Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects). This week I found a GitHub repo with iConor's lego-lirc, a program to generate LIRC configuration files for LEGO PF IR protocol... and also two ready-for-use configuration files. So I made my own audio-IR-transmitter (just cut the cable from old headphones set and solder two IR LEDs, less than €1 cost) and used iConor files... and I'm now controlling a PF motor from the command line of my Ubuntu laptop. I also got between 2 to 3 meters range, it's a replacement for the LEGO remotes but it's usefull enough for some interesting ideas (expect more on this later) I'll also intend to show a video very soon. Some more details here (caution: Linux only, no LEGO parts at all).

I'm currently using 8xAA NiMH for tests since I dont' have a LiPo charger (but last post may force me to change that ;) ) The red plugs allow me to add a multimeter (serial) so I can measure current consumption.

The author already posted about it here at eurobricks, I strongly recommend his explanation and also his project submission at LEGO Ideas. '''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''' Topic locked due to the moc builder posting a "better" topic about it.

You could use the 3 cell batteries but to be safe add at least 1 power diode (like 1N5401 for max of 3A, also pay attention to heat at the diode) so the final voltage drops to ~ 10.5.

Thanks. I'm afraid I didn't understand your question. It is already automatic in the sense that after program starts it will move the way the logic of the program makes it move. Do you mean also reacting to inputs? It can, although my device extension doesn't have any kind of sensor yet (SBrick firmware doesn't yet expose any read values, it will al least report internal temperature and I think also battery level). It can also react to other inputs, like keyboard and mouse or other devices (there are extensions for NXT, Arduino, Wiimote... the ev3dev guys are working on another also for EV3...).

Hi, I've been testing the SBrick, a great crowdfunded product that allows us to control LEGO motors via Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy (BLE) commands. Last weekend I created R4T1NH0, a small robot so my kids could control it with a wireless gamepad. But as there is a PC-in-the-middle, it can also be controlled directly from a programming language environment like Scratch or Snap!. These visual programming languages are great for teaching essencial science concepts to children, not just how to program. As I already had a basic Snap! device extension for SBrick, it was easy to use Snap! to control R4T1NH0. And since it is so small (and slow) I can even use it on a table. Hope you like it. If/when I get a USB IR emitter, I'll try to do the same with a Power Functions IR receiver.

Hi. While most people awaiting for their SBricks are planning to use them in big/strong/fast models with lots of Power Functions motors and batteries I am more interested in the control possibilities. This weekend me and my kids assembled a very small RC rover just for fun, RAT1NH0 ("little mouse" in portuguese). It was a sucess and I made a quick revision to be used on a table. Not 100% LEGO and some bad things were made to LEGO cables... but I'me sure you agree that it opens lot of possibilities A (few) more details at my blog.