Easy Programming
To keep the cost of my home AI lab down, I searched until I found all the right software for free – and learnt that there are some great researchers who have made their code available for others in the scientific community (these guys are heroes – please support them if you can!).
Lego Mindstorms Programming App
I do want to just make you aware that a lot of fun can be had, especially for those completely new to computer programming, by just working with the Lego Mindstorms visual robotic language which you can download on your computer and which ships with your EV3 purchase (download it free from here). Read up about this option if you do not plan to write complex programs or just want to get some next generation ‘engineers’ interested in robotics and the basics of programming.
Programming in Java
For doing simple, but also much more complex programs, you can follow our instructions to get a Java programming app on your PC. If you are now saying ‘But I have never programmed in Java before!‘ – welcome to the club. I was concerned when I started off because I had programmed in many different program languages in my life (Fortran, Cobol, Basic, Python, C++, etc.) but NEVER in Java before.
I was really not in the mood to learn a whole now programming language. Well, here is the good news: The way you can start off doing simple experiments with your robot only needs really simple bits of code and what I found was, as I tried more and more things I found all the code for it on the Internet. One of the main reason I was happy to change to Java was because it is so popular at the moment and there are literally millions of sample programs on the Internet. You will be shocked to learn that most of my brain model programming, I did by ‘re-purposing’ pieces of code I found for free on the Internet.
I am a big fan of How to… pages that take you by the hand and lead you systematically through a process – even better if they show screen-grabs and what buttons you must click. And that is what I will provide soon. But if you are one of those rare types that enjoy whizzing through sites and downloading and installing the software by yourself, here are the shortcuts without any step-by-step help.
- Go to LeJOS here, and build an SD card. Place it in the EV3 SD card slot.
- Go to Eclipse here and install the latest free version for Java.
- Go back to LeJOS here, and install the LeJOS plugin into Eclipse.
- Write a simple program for your robot in Java using the LeJOS motion commands, compile and run…bzzzzz… your robot should be making its first brave moves across WiFi and Bluetooth!!! (Example programs here)
- Your LAB is up and running! Give it a funky name!