Getting Started With LEGO Spike Prime (Full Lesson)

Key Takeaways

everyone welcome to the stream today we are going to look at our first lesson for spike prime okay so today we're not going to do too much building what we're going to do is we're going to understand the Smart Hub beyond the spike right hub and also to get to know how we can do some basic debugging exercises and also at the same time to look at the different peripherals that we have that come with spike prime so if you are following at home then make sure that you have your spike prime hub ready and then we can turn it on and begin okay so it's knowledge to turn it on make sure it's fully charged if it's not fully charged there's a USB cable you can plug into the computer and then you will challenge by a USB cable but to turn it up you press the middle button in the middle here we place up you over here so I press this a little back [Music] you then we start off with this symbol okay so first thing we want to do is we want to test out the motors okay with EB 3 there is a very handy port view where you can look at a glance in on the AV 3 hub and see what the angles are of all the motors and all the other different things that are plugged into the ev3 hub with Spike Prime it's slightly different because there is a limitation with the screen obviously it's not as high resolution as an 83 hub but it is still going to be very useful so grab yourself the medium motor and then plug it in to port pay okay miyamoto so unlike Eve III spike Prime doesn't doesn't mind if you plug an input or output port in any of these port and letters it's because they are all input and output ports and you can see just from the side here if i zoom in a little bit you can actually see there's a really small symbol that's that's pointing that's two arrows is pointing up and down so it's to symbolize that these are both input and output ports and it's just really useful so that you can have multiple important words and output boards and not be limited by the the four maximum or ports so here we've plugged in our motor so here we have our heart what we need to do is we need to press the middle button here and then you can see that it is now lighting up at a okay it's just a symbol that represents that port a is being occupied by a peripheral and obviously that's correct because we have our medium motor here in order to test it so so just by looking at this you can see that a is active all right a has a motor inside but if we wanted to move the motor then we can press the these arrows so here I can keep pressing and then press the other direction to slow it down and also to eventually spin it the other way they're being able to control being able to control the motor like this is going to be really handy because we're able to do a very simple functionality to test different parts of your robot right you don't have to plug it into your computer and do some code blocks and then run the test that way you can just simply run the test off your block and that makes it a little bit more handy okay and the cool thing is that this works was not just the medium motor it also works with the large motor as well so if I plugged in the large motor as well it's plugging the large measure into port B here's my large motor into port B yes I got two motors connected and I'm at the heart so I can press the middle button and you can see now that both a and B lit up it's just to show that both these ports are occupied by your peripherals and then I can press these arrows to increase the speed of these motors and then I can crisp other arrow to reduce the speed and adventury spin it the other way and if I want to get out of this then all I have to do is press the middle button again okay pretty cool right so it also means that if you had a very simple robot that does not require any programming this is how you can write you can for example if you're doing some sort of kinetic sculpture or a very simple say great ball contraption module for example then you can just simply switch on the motor and then adjust the speed and then just keep it like that okay so you don't have to do whole standard programming unless you needed to have more logic inside your app okay so that is how we can test and also do an onboard control of our motors but now let's look at my favorite sensor for well spike Prime and that is the force sensor okay so the force sensor looks a bit like it looks a bit like the touch sensor now this is the force sensor okay it has a little button here that takes that is able to measure your resistance okay so let's plug this in to see okay so in order to test the force sensor what we need to do is do the same thing let's go back into that this motor control view and then you'll see that here we have C is occupied okay and you'll recognize that this this flashing light is moving away from C okay so this just represents an input port an input object if I unplug the the last memory you'll see that on a it is an output okay you can see it's an output because there is a dot that's moving out of a right whereas in C it's coming into the machine so you can tell that a is a motor and C is a sensor okay so that's how we can tell the difference and now if I press on C the hotter I press the more squares will light up and there's actually also partial lit up squares divided into play if I press really gently as well you see that so just like this you'll be able to measure how how effective or how your force sensor is recognizing different forces different measurements very cool now let's look at the ultrasonic sensor sonic sensor is also known as a distance sensor and will plug this into E because then we won't have any too many that's running into each other so here you can see that E is also a an input port because the dot is coming into E and it's coming into the the machine right but also if I put my hand in front of it it will also track the distance of objects that are in front of it okay so if I'm really close then it all lines up but as I move further away it starts to fail yet it's not doing it very well for me at the moment but you can see that it will start to fade out based on the distance of my in my hand okay let's Travis you it looks like it's so it's not doing it exactly as I as I wanted to but that's the that's the idea okay so the idea is that you're able to test the measurements of your ultrasonic sensor even though it's just plugged into the hub and you haven't opened up spike grime and the last sensor that we're going to have a look at is our color sunset so the color sensor looks very similar to the ev3 version of sensors that's the cube version with the two lenses let's have a look at that one so first of all that attract the other equal parts then I'll plug in my color sensor at this interview as well in the consensus White's up and again showing that it's an input port and now it is also showing I believe that this is the reflected light intensity so if I if I move it away and shine it further away from my hand then it's going to show a lower reading but then as it gets closer and it gets brighter it's going to show a higher reading right there you have it guys so that is our first lesson on Spike Prime and to understand how the different peripherals and the spike up can interact with each other and it is a very crucial step in understanding how to debug your programs and also your robot if there are any problems and you weren't sure well is it is the motor working or is it plugged into the wrong spot or is the sensor working well with these on hub controls and and these little visual guides you'll be able to have a very quick look without even plugging in your robot into the computer just to check and make sure so hope you enjoyed the lesson I'll see you again