Today we finished building our MindCub3r Rubik’s Cube Solver robot. While James, Tamsin, and Sara continued working on the robot chassis, cube turner, colour sensor arm and cube flipper (MindCub3r Education Sets Building Instructions), I downloaded the code from the MindCuber website and followed the instructions to download it to the robot.
The files consisted of a .ev3b file, a .ev3 file, a .rtf file and a .rbf file. The .ev3b file includes the My Blocks necessary for the project (there are lots of them). Without the ev3b file, we would have to copy and paste the data from the My Blocks into new ones of the same name or re-open them. The .ev3 file is simply the program, like every other program in the editor. The .rtf file is a Rich Text File. EV3 Firmware Release v1p1 uses the .rtf extension to enable the files to be downloaded using the standard LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 software. The .rtf extension is intended to be used for files containing text so using if for the executable program is a work-around. It is an executable program, compiled from C++ that implements an efficient solving algorithm that can find much shorter solutions than the older NXT MindCuber variants. The .rbf file is a script file that installs a program on the EV3 to run the code from the programs menu.
And the robot was built. The cube-turning arm was complete, the spinning base was constructed, and the robot’s brain attached with all it’s 32 million bits of memory filled with cube-solving patterns. It was perfect and good to go… or was it?
We placed the cube in the base and pressed the robot’s button The colour sensor went to work, scanning the faces of the cube. But when the arm went to flip it, it couldn’t get a grip on the cube and the colour sensor ended up scanning the same face again and getting confused. However the robot tried to twist and turn, the cube was never solved.
We got to work. We would change the arm so it was lower and got more of a grip on the cube. But, just as the plan was laid out so carefully in our head, the bell rang outside and our plans were postponed until next week.
Wait and see…
Fact of the Day: Earth is the only planet not named after a god. Does that mean the planet called GJ 581g is also a god..?