Button Bot
Today’s Minion is brought to you by…The Laundry!
I threw the mindstorms gadgetry into the laundry basket as I carried our clothes up from the basement. Such is the way in a homeschool classroom—Laundry and Bots in semi-perfect harmony.
We decided to turn our Shark Hunter into a line following race car. I gave Giant a toy race car that follows lines to compare with ours:
We talked about how the toy race car knew how to stay on the line, and then hooked up a light sensor to our bot.
Just like that. Click, snap.
HAhaahaaahaaaa.Ha.
Ahem. Okay, since I still have a little trouble trying to wrap my brain around connecting and linking lego pieces that don’t join in straight forward ways, I went to NXTprograms for some tips, and borrowed ideas for attaching the light sensor.
Half an hour later we’d attached the light sensor. During construction, Giant saw a touch sensor control on a bot in NXTprograms and wanted to have one in our bot too—and from this point on the touch sensor became our new focus. There was just such an appeal to being able to control the bot directly:
Alright. Programming.(With Enchanting!)
We had two sensors.
I went to “Sensing” but couldn’t quite figure out how to get Enchanting to see our Sensors:
Since DaddyBear Tech Support was at work, I did a quick search for “sensor configuration with Enchanting”:
Ah Ha! It was right in front of my face. Of course.
I clicked on “Configure Sensors” and we were on our way:
We started with the touch sensor, and I got a rather twitchy program going:
It made the robot twitch and jerk and sometimes run both motors when we pressed the button. Giant was happy, but I was curious about what was going on.
Thankfully help came home from work, and introduced me to “Operators” so that I could clarify whether the button was pressed or not:
Which led to a much smoother ride!
This Bot just begs for a puppy costume, don’t you think?
Galoot thought it looked quite tasty too!
Too Cute!
We’ll try programming it’s line sensor next week…