Today we are going to talk about “MyBlocks.” MyBlocks allow you to create your own programming blocks (AKA subroutines or functions) made up of any combination of EV3 blocks already available! How cool is that? As you program your EV3, MyBlocks can be very helpful and can help take your code to the next level!
We hope our City Shaper tips will help all of you at your competitions! Here is 2019’s last Moment Maker Tip!
Sometimes when EV3 robots are turning on, they glitch and get stuck in the “Starting” phase. It is important to turn on your robot early so you have time to fix this problem, should it happen.
To restart your EV3 without erasing all of the brick programs, follow these steps:
While we were creating our project prototype out of LEGOs, we found awesome aftermarket equipment from a company called Mindsensors that allows an EV3 to be able to talk to a Power Functions IR Receiver, enabling an EV3 to control LEGO Power Functions! Power Functions is a sub-section of LEGO that is mostly used in older motorized LEGO Technic sets, LEGO train sets, and the original WeDo. LEGO Power Functions included motors of different sizes, as well as lights. The Mindsensors’ PFMate controller can hook up to an EV3 with just a regular EV3 wire! Mindsensors also has a downloadable EV3 block already available! These Mindsensors after-market components are not made by LEGO, though, so they cannot be used as part of the FIRST LEGO League robot game (actually, even the Power Functions elements are excluded from the robot game). However, they might help you with developing a project prototype (how we discovered them) or you may just want to use them for fun with your EV3! In this article, we will show you how this interesting after-market component is used.
