We created a video on how how to create and iterate your FIRST LEGO League team’s Innovation Project as you progress through the season by using one of our own past Innovation Projects as an example. We will talk about how we went from just a drawing of our solution idea, to a proof-of-concept prototype, to a full-sized functional model. We thank Droids Robotics and the Share & Learn Community for featuring our video as part of their FIRST LEGO League Challenge Rookie Team Webinar series.
Author: amomentmaker
New LEGO Education SPIKE Essential Set (#45345)
We were excited to get to play with this 45345 LEGO Education SPIKE Essential Set. You can have fun learning about building LEGO machines and motorizing them with your own programs with the help of LEGO minifigures Maria, Daniel, Sophie, and Leo. Although this robotics set is geared for younger audiences than the SPIKE Prime or Mindstorms, it’s a great set for learning to love robotics and comes with lots of awesome new pieces! Even adults may prefer using its smaller sized hub for compact building projects. We will give you an overview of the set and the software and let you know some of the aspects we really liked about it.
Fun with EV3: LEGO Technic Ballerina
Whether you have a LEGO Mindstorms or a LEGO Spike, robots are so much fun! Just use your imagination to create your own robotic invention!
We had so much fun building a ballerina robot using an EV3 to control her dance and play her music. We named our robot “Minnie Fay,” after a character from the musical Hello Dolly!. We love ballet, and we thought that it would be fun to build a robot dancer! Robots can be anything that you have an interest in!
How to Run EV3 Lab/EV3-G on an Up-to-Date Computer (even Macs)
Even though SPIKE Prime and the Mindstorms Robot Inventor Kit are here and are awesome tools, the EV3 is still here to stay for a lot of schools, teams, and home users. The current EV3 Classroom from LEGO Education has Scratch-based programming (similar to the SPIKE Prime and Mindstorms Robot Inventor Kit). However, many people have grown to love the older LabVIEW-based block language currently known as EV3 Lab/EV3-G. If you get a new Windows computer, you have to search a bit for the EV3 Lab download, but it will still run on even Windows 10. We will show you how below. However, do you have an updated Mac computer and are sad that you can no longer run the older EV3 programming language EV3 Lab/EV3-G on it? If your Mac computer is updated to 10.15 (Catalina) or higher, the old EV3 Lab software cannot run. However, we have figured out a way around this, so that you can have the best of both worlds – an up-to-date Mac and EV3 Lab successfully running.
Today, we are going to walk you through the steps we used to run EV3 Lab/EV3-G on current Windows and Mac computers. Please note that EV3 Lab will no longer be updated by LEGO Education, but it still has a place in many homes and schools.
LEGO Mario Fun with LEGO SPIKE Prime
What could be better than LEGO Mario? How about combining LEGO Mario with LEGO SPIKE Prime?!? We connected the SPIKE motors to Technic treads and put regular LEGO bricks on them (we also added some action bricks for more fun), making our own conveyor belt Mario course! We learned a lot, and also had lots of fun along the way!
LEGO Inspiration: 71360 Adventures with Mario Starter Course
In LEGO Inspiration today, we will show you what we found interesting in LEGO set number 71360 Adventures with Mario Starter Course. LEGO Mario has a lot of advanced features packed into his small little body. As kids learn to understand his features, they will have a lot of fun along the way! In a future continuation of this article, we will combine the Mario set with the LEGO SPIKE Prime to have a longer running track for Mario.
LEGO Inspiration: 10273 Haunted House
The tapping of LEGO chains… The creaking of LEGO gears… Are you ready for some spooky-good fun? Since it is Halloween, in LEGO Inspiration today, we will show you what we found eerie and interesting in LEGO set number 10273 Haunted House. This giant LEGO build has mechanical surprises hiding in all of its dark corners!
LEGO Inspiration: 75254 AT-ST Raider from The Mandalorian
In LEGO Inspiration today, we will show you what we found interesting in LEGO Star Wars: The Mandalorian set number 75254 AT-ST Raider.
This set has many cool features, including the fact that it is a blend of both LEGO bricks and Technic beams. We are so exited to show some of the AT-ST’s neatest and most creative properties.
This is the way.
Building for Reliability
We were so excited to present on the subject of building for reliability in the FLL Share & Learn Community Webinar Series. We hope that you find it useful regarding how to build a sturdy and durable robot and how to optimize your robot’s build for mission consistency.
Gears: Gear Trains
In a past article here, we discussed many of the different gears that LEGO has available for use. In today’s article, we will talk about different ways to maximize your gear train. Gear trains can serve different purposes. One is to simply allow rotation movement at a location away from your motor itself. Another purpose for gear trains is to “gear up” to increase rotational speed or to “gear down” to increase torque. Depending on what the gear train needs to accomplish, you need to find and place the appropriate gears! Keep reading to see how!
The Moment Makers 
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