EV3

The long awaited EV3 building and programming book by Laurens Valk is finally available!  It’s called “The LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 Discovery Book” and it’s 370+ pages of awesomeness. Where to start?  The book has been printed in full colour, which is a massive improvement over his previous book and a real pleasure to read.  The colours are very bright and ...

The firmware used by National Instruments and Robomatter for their respective programming environments has been pushed to Github.  It is based on the sources of LEGO’s firmware version 1.05A.  Please note that only the master branch has been pushed out, the private development branches will remain as such. The extended firmware sports a number of improvements, including: opcodes to turn ...

It’s here!  The first beta of ROBOTC for EV3 has arrived! It took a bit longer than we’d hoped for but the wait is over.  You can now program your EV3 with ROBOTC.  This is the first public beta and as with all betas, there will be some missing features and bugs.  The basic functionality is mostly all there: General ...

Virtual Router Manager In an earlier article, I had written about how to allow your EV3 to connect to your laptop (or desktop) with a shared WiFi network, using a feature called Hosted Network.  It essentially turns your computer into an Access Point (AP).  Since then I’ve had a bit more experience with it and I’ve found a very easy ...

The EV3 has a lot of cool features but a push-to-eject micro-SD card drive isn’t one of them.  It’s fine for users who don’t work with custom Linux distributions on their brick, but a major PITA (no, not the Döner Kebab kind) if you’re like me.  It takes a needle nose pliers and a lot of patience to remove the ...

Ralph Hempel is no stranger to MINDSTORMS and he’s been quietly working on something very special: a port of Debian Wheezy on the EV3.  The folks of the Debian organisation wouldn’t let him use the Debian name (for copyright reasons), so this project is called ev3dev. What is ev3dev? It’s a complete Linux distribution for the EV3.  What do I ...

I was contacted Joeri van Belle last week about a new project that he is working on, a C# project that allows you to send messages to your EV3.  Using it, you can send and receive messages between your EV3 brick and PC. On the brick you can use the standard BT communication blocks, so you can do this without ...

Finding the right USB cable for your EV3 daisy chaining needs is not easy.  Most of them will stick out like a sore thumb, but not this one.  It features 90 degree angled connectors that work with you, rather than against you.  I came across this one on Deal Extreme two weeks ago and ordered it straight away.  I wasn’t ...

HiTechnic has brought out a couple of EV3 programming blocks for its sensors. The blocks and instructions on how to import them into your software can be found here: [LINK]. With these blocks you will be able to use the Angle, Compass, Accelerometer, IRSeekerV2, and Gyro sensors.  Cool!

The new LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 website is live! You can download the software while you wait for your set to arrive.  You can also see all the cool bonus models in great detail.  So what are you waiting for?  Point your browser here and check it out!