Author Archives: Andrew Brown
Madcow Torrent Build – Part 6
I’ve been a little distracted and have not been posting as regularly as planned. I’ve more or less finished the main build. Since the last post, the rocket has been filled, primed, sanded, and painted. It’s hard to tell from … Continue reading
Madcow Torrent Build – Part 5
Things are starting to really take shape with the Torrent. I’ve finished a few steps where I didn’t take photos and post. I performed the following steps: glued the spacer ring to the altimeter bay/coupling, drilled the vent hole for … Continue reading
Madcow Torrent Build – Part 4
It’s time for this to take some shape and put the fins on. After dry fitting the fins, I applied epoxy to the root edge and attached them to the motor mount tube. The slots are a really tight fit … Continue reading
Madcow Torrent Build – Part 3
I got carried away and progressed further with the build and forgot to take photos… The motor mount was installed the other day. I used 30 min epoxy to glue the forward centering ring to the main body tube. I … Continue reading
Level 1 Rocket Build – Madcow Torrent, Part 2
I’m pretty slow at building, and I tend to over do everything. Therefore, I decided to taper and fiberglass the fins. While it only adds about 5 grams of weight, it seals the fins, and the paint tends to coat … Continue reading
Return to Rocketry – Madcow Torrent Build
We took a small break in robotics this year. After a several year hiatus, I decided to return to rocketry. My son convinced me that we should go big and each get our NAR level 1 high power certification. We … Continue reading
Sending Bluetooth Messages from Raspberry Pi to LEGO EV3 (stock firmware)
I recently came across a need to send messages from a Raspberry Pi to an EV3 running the stock EV3 firmware and programmed in EV3-G. This pretty much limits the methods available to using the EV3-G Bluetooth Messaging block. … Continue reading
Zumo 32U4 Synchronize Motor
I received a recent question on how to make the Zumo drive straight. There are a few ways to do this, but the easiest way is to synchronize the motors. In this post, I’ll briefly discuss a simple method to … Continue reading
LEGO EV3 – Saving an Array to a File
I was recently asked in a forum on how to save an array from the EV3 to a file. Imagine you are taking data with a sensor, then storing the sequential measurements in an array, and you would like to … Continue reading
Motor Regulation: Part 2 – Using a P-Controller to Regulate Rotational Velocity
In the last post, we calculated the rotational velocity of the motor. In this post, we will begin applying feedback to regulate the motor rotational velocity with a simple P-controller. Like line following, a P, or proportional, feedback method is … Continue reading
Motor Regulation: Part 1 – Calculate Rotational Velocity
The next several posts are going to deal with writing functions for regulated motor blocks. So far, everything shown in this blog for the Zumo uses unregulated motors. At some point, having regulated and synchronized motors will be necessary for … Continue reading
Zumo 32U4 – Using the Buttons the Select a Start Move
This post discusses one way to handle setting up the Zumo to perform one of three initial moves prior to entering the main body of the program. If you go back a couple of posts, we discussed the simple state … Continue reading
Read Data from the VL53L0X ToF Sensor Mounted on the Zumo 32U4
In this post, we will write a short program to read the data from the VL53L0X and display the data to the Serial Monitor. As usual, we will need the Zumo32U4 library, but we will also need the I2C library … Continue reading
Attaching a VL53L0X Breakout Board to Zumo for Accurate Range Finding
The IR sensors on the Zumo 32U4 left us wanting with a desire for a lot more range. We came across the VL53L0X Time-of-Flight range finding module. The VL53L0X is capable of up to 2 m range with mm level … Continue reading
Simplified Sumo State Machine for Zumo
This post will talk about a simple state machine that could be used for robot sumo. The target here is the Robofest Senior BottleSumo rules, so the state machine is adapted for long searching on large tables. If you want … Continue reading
Zumo 32U4 Unregulated, Unsynchronized Motor Steer Block
This post brings us back to motion and navigation. One of the goals was to make the Zumo behave a bit more like a LEGO EV3. The EV3 has these very useful MoveSteer block. While this seems like a very … Continue reading
Zumo 32U4 Sensor Read Times
Last post had the Zumo rotate and face a target. I’ve been working on driving towards the target in an attempt to push it off of a table like done in Sumo competitions with great success with the rare occasion … Continue reading
Zumo 32U4 – Using the Proximity Sensors to Point Towards the Closest Object
Assuming you want to use the cute little Zumo for a Robot Sumo competition, you need to make the Zumo turn in the direction of the highest proximity. This may be a competing robot, or in the case of Robofest … Continue reading
Zumo 32U4 – Squaring to an Edge or Line
This post talks about a common step for any robotics competition, namely, squaring the robot to a line or an edge. This builds off of previous post where you worked on having the robot drive to an edge. The program … Continue reading
Display of the Zumo IR and Light Sensors on the Serial Monitor
In this post, we are going to measure both the downward facing light sensors and the proximity sensors, and display their data. The previous several posts discussed the reading of the light and proximity sensors, so we will not spend … Continue reading