Another Screen-Capture video
I received an email asking if I could show how the wiring works when connecting blocks...
Well, it's very simple and I hope you're not disappointed - no fireworks or any special animation... you just click on a port/plug and drag to another... if the wire is colored (in this example, yellow) it means you've got a valid connection... a dashed line indicates a broken wire meaning you've incorrectly connected two plugs (for example, an output plug that puts out TEXT connected to a plug that is expecting an Integer).
It's another .EXE file... sorry, but that's how the software saves it... view it here.
Well, it's very simple and I hope you're not disappointed - no fireworks or any special animation... you just click on a port/plug and drag to another... if the wire is colored (in this example, yellow) it means you've got a valid connection... a dashed line indicates a broken wire meaning you've incorrectly connected two plugs (for example, an output plug that puts out TEXT connected to a plug that is expecting an Integer).
It's another .EXE file... sorry, but that's how the software saves it... view it here.
Comments
I think that's a feature of the screen-capture software... it doesn't do that when I'm actually using the software.
Jim
When the program runs there is a 1% chance that the NXT says 'Hello' and a 1% chance that the NXT says 'Goodbye' and a 98% chance it doesn't seem to do anything. :)
If it were wrapped in an infinite loop, it would randomly say 'Hello' or 'Goodbye' every so often.
I assume, based on the mouse-shaped cursors showing a click that to get a wire to 'bend' that you have to click mid-way through the drag?
Very intuitive.
Thank you Jim!
I was wondering - when you program one motor, lets say "start turning left with 2rps when i press that button", do you also have to tell him when to stop? In what way do you do that?
I would like to have few options here:
- stop when i un/press button
- stop after 5 rotations / 10 seconds
- stop when the torque is higer than x Ncm
I think the last one should be build in automatically, otherwise i will defenetly break my LEGO ... :(
I hope someone understood me, i am new in this exciting field of robotics!
Have fun :)
Unlimited - keeps going until another BLOCK (such as a LOOP or Sensor-Check) triggers it to stop.
Rotations - You can specify a number of rotations for the motor to perform before stoppign (this answers one of your questions).
Degrees - specify a number of degrees (positive integers - rounds decimal points down)
Seconds - specify time frame for motor to operate in number of seconds.
You could tie a motor's motion to the touch-sensor in either the pressed or released position. For example, holding down the touch sensor could start the motor spinning - releasing the sensor will also stop the motor.
There is no way that I know of to determine torque and to disable a motor if the torque is too high. You can stop a full-power spinning motor with your hand, so breaking a motor due to high-torque seems unlikely. When a rolling bot hits an obstacle, the motors will stop spinning if the resistance is too high... this happens a lot when I'm testing and so far I haven't damaged any of my motors from burnout.
Now i am wondering how powerful motors are. Can they run a heavy car on slope, etc.?
I've tried to download CamStudio twice, but no luck - either site is down or it times out on the download... thanks for pointing me to it - I'll try and download again at a later time.
Jim
> reading somewhere that NXT motors have
> very high torque
They *do* have high torque... for a LEGO motor. Philo has a very nice comparision on his web site, but the short form is that the new NXT motors are about 8 times higher torque than the "old" LEGO gear motors (when stalled). That's a significant increase.
Another factor about how to drive the motors is that you can tell the NXT to try to maintain a consistant speed on the motors, so that if the load is increased (which would normally slow the motors) the NXT can be told to compensate by increasing how hard the motors are driven.
--
Brian Davis