The missing commentaries
The education version of the EV3 software contains a 'Robot Educator' section with many sample projects illustrating various programming techniques. Each project is accompanied by a little video that shows what the program does but, surprisingly, there is no text to explain how the programs work in detail. You have to figure it all out for yourself, which might be a good idea in principle but might also make the exercises quite time-consuming or difficult for some. I've seen a lot of complaints on the internet about the lack of explanation of how the programs work. Never fear, Ward is here!
I do actually agree that you should try to figure out how each program works without help - the programs are designed to be reasonably easy to comprehend. But if there is something about a program that you don't understand then this is the place to look for help!
The lessons should be worked through in order for later lessons assume comprehension of earlier lessons.
All these lessons are compatible with the standard 'driving base' model shown below. The photos also show a 'sound sensor' which is not part of the standard 'driving base' model.
In the standard model, motors and sensors are connected to the ports of the intelligent brick as follows:
- Motor port A is connected to the medium motor which drives the 'gripper'
- Motor ports B and C are connected to large motors that drive the main wheels
- Sensor port 1: touch sensor
- Sensor port 2: gyro sensor (detects angular position, rotation)
- Sensor port 3: color sensor (measures brightness or color)
- Sensor port 4: ultrasound sensor (measures distance)