Since the beginning, December 2015, this blog has been about programming the Lego Mindstorms Ev3 brick with C# and the Monobrick firmware library. This time I’ve chosen to try programming the T-R3X with Python and Ev3Dev.
Ev3Dev firmware replacement
As you may know, the Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Brick comes with a very interesting feature: the Ev3 Brick has a microSD slot on its side which, among other more intuitive functionalities, which you can use to temporary boot the Brick with alternative operative systems.
Monobrick lets you program the Brick using C# and the Microsoft .Net Framework with Microsoft Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition and later versions; it is the firmware replacement I’ve used so far with personal satisfaction.
Ev3Dev is instead a Debian Linux distribution for which several libraries for different programming languages are available (C++, JavaScript, Go, C among others), and Python attracted my interest the most. Moreover, at the time of writing, Ev3Dev is under active development.
T-R3X
You can find the building instructions for the T-R3X in the book of Daniele Benedettelli “The Lego Mindstorms Ev3 Laboratory”.
This robot walks swiping its weight from one leg to the other using one Ev3 Large Motor, and moves forward by advancing the leg not touching the ground with by the second Ev3 Large Motor. There is one Ev3 Medium Motor to actuate its terrible 🙂 mouth.
The Python code proposed let the T-R3X walk around and follow the Ev3 IR Beacon when found. You can download the Python code from the Smallrobots.it repository on GitHub.
Have a look at the video below to see it in action.