Description
We love Python and we (most likely) love Lego, so what's not to love about programming Lego robots with Python?
Lego Mindstorms EV3 is the latest programmable robotics kit released by Lego. It comes with a controller brick, sensors, motors and Technic Lego parts. There are tens of detailed official projects describing step by step how to build bots and program them. There are hundreds more fan projects available for inspiration.
Officially Mindstorms are programmed in LabVIEW. LabVIEW is graphical programming language, which makes it easy for non-programmers to write instructions for their bots.
We are not "non-programmers", so the good news is that the controller brick can boot from a micro SD card, which allows us to run ev3dev, a Debian Linux-based operating system. This is the key to running Python on Lego Mindstorms.
In this presentation you will learn:
- what is possible to build with Lego Mindstorms
- how to run the ev3dev on your bot and how to connect to it
- how to control the motors and sensors with Python
- about popular third party suppliers
- how to extend your Python EV3 library to support new sensors
- how to run a Jupyter Notebook and control your bot remotely (don't ask about security).
Come and learn the basics, then program your bots and (optionally) take over the world.