Tag: datalogging

GPS accuracy testing with LEGO bricks

Unlike normal GPS units, commonly found in smartphones or your car, that are accurate to roughly three meters, differential GPS uses two GPS receivers to get a reported accuracy of three centimeters! That’s a little over an inch! If this holds true, differential GPS could be used for a range of high precision applications. This […]

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Inside a two-step simple line follower

In this unit, we will use the datalogging tools available in the EV3 Software to study the internal operation of a two-step simple line follower with one Light sensor. It is a very simple but powerful example that can help students to understand and to correctly program other situations. One of the most important functions […]

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JumboBooks: An introduction to using microprocessors in LabVIEW

The Center for Engineering Education and Outreach at Tufts University has created JumboBooks, a set of educational tutorials to program different devices in LabVIEW. The microprocessors used include the Arduino Uno, BeagleBone, LilyPad, myRIO, and ProtoSnap, as well as a tutorial for LEGO’s EV3 brick. The tutorials were created for high schoolers and up, and can be downloaded […]

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Why I like educational robots

With all the available STEM options, we often get asked Why Robotics?  So here are some quick thoughts to kickstart your thirty second elevator speech for robotics program support. See what you think. I like educational robots because they make abstract concepts real. With this opening salvo, and depending on your primary expertise and your audience’s understanding of your […]

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Find the hidden letter

In this activity, use a robot equipped with a light sensor to determine the hidden letter message (under a table or in another room). The letter will be determined using light sensor collected data on 3 passes over of the letter.      Resources Find the Hidden Letter lesson plan – ROBOLAB (PDF)  

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Voting booth

Think of an intelligent way to set up a “voting booth” to gather data, and plot this data on a graph for analysis.    Tip 1: What sensor can you implement for collecting this data? Touch sensor? IR sensor? Resources Lesson plan: Voting booth – NXT + ROBOLAB (PDF) Lesson plan: Voting Booth – RCX […]

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Pendulum mathematics

multiple pendulum streams

Pendulums are one of the earliest machines we see and Physics courses can take advantage of that familiarity to reveal fundamental principles and demonstrate the mathematical relationships. In this demonstration, I suspended an NXT with three sensors from above, and let it swing back and forth, recording the data via Bluetooth to the NXT-G data […]

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