Mindstorms: Level 4

Mindstorms: Level 4 — page 1 — (cid:53)(cid:46)(cid:47)(cid:38)(cid:38)(cid:41)(cid:35)(cid:41)(cid:33)(cid:44)(cid:0) GUIDES Chapter 1 Some Useful Tools W elcome to Level 4 By now you should know how to build and program a basic robot Your programs should be able to accomplish more than one goal at a time such as following a line and stopping when the sonar detects something within a range You should know how to use the ultrasonic sensor the light sensor the infrared sensor and the touch sensor You should also know the differ ence between the Wait For Switch and various sensor icons With that knowledge you are ready for this book Let’s start out by looking at some helpful tools in the EV3 software One tool that is extremely useful when learning to program is the Show Context Help option You can find it by clicking on the Help menu When it is selected a brief explanation will show up on-screen every time you select an icon There is also an option labeled More Information on most of the explanations If you click this it will open a separate window that gives you even more detailed information about the icon If you have questions about how an icon works be sure to check this out 4

Mindstorms: Level 4 — page 2 — MINDSTORMS Level 4 Another helpful tool is the Memory Browser One way to access this is to click the icon in the second box to the left in the lower corner of the screen It looks kind of like a cake with a dark bottom layer It is underneath the wrench You can also click on the Tools menu and select Memory Browser Either of these actions will bring up a Memory Browser window On the left side of the window is a bar graph This graph indicates how much memory you are using on the EV3 brick On the right side it will show all the programs currently loaded on the brick 5

Mindstorms: Level 4 — page 3 — (cid:53)(cid:46)(cid:47)(cid:38)(cid:38)(cid:41)(cid:35)(cid:41)(cid:33)(cid:44)(cid:0) GUIDES Simplifying the Programming Process If you ever decide to start learning about other programming languages you will ﬁnd that they all have features similar to the blocks in Mindstorms In other languages these are called functions routines or methods It is very common to put code that is used more than once into a function This function can then be called from elsewhere in the program This eliminates the need to write duplicate code in a program Functions are also used to group together code that performs a certain task just like blocks Occasionally when you are downloading and run ning a lot of different programs you might get an error message stating that you are out of memory When this happens you can use the Memory Browser to remove programs from the EV3 brick This won’t delete them forever from your computer However it will create free space on the EV3 for new programs If you ever need to use the old programs just open them in the EV3 software and load them onto your brick again In the Memory Browser select the program you want to remove by clicking on its name It will then highlight the things that you can do with that program The option we are interested in is Delete You will have to select each program you want to remove and then select Delete to get rid of them Notice that there 6

Mindstorms: Level 4 — page 4 — MINDSTORMS Level 4 are some programs on the robot that cannot be deleted They include the programs in the Applications folder and the program titled BrkProg_SAVE These are programs the EV3 needs to run correctly Your Memory Browser will look different than the one shown below This is because you likely have a completely different list of programs on your EV3 Another useful tool is the firmware updater To find it click the Tools menu and select Firmware Update There are rare occasions when your robot 7

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