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Contents
Preface ___________________________________________________________________2
Acknowledgements____________________________________________________________________ 2
Contents __________________________________________________________________3
I. Writing your first program __________________________________________________ 5
Building a robot ______________________________________________________________________ 5
Starting Bricx Command Center__________________________________________________________ 5
Writing the program ___________________________________________________________________ 6
Running the program __________________________________________________________________ 7
Errors in your program _________________________________________________________________ 8
Changing the speed ____________________________________________________________________ 8
Summary____________________________________________________________________________ 9
II. A more interesting program _______________________________________________10
Making turns ________________________________________________________________________ 10
Repeating commands _________________________________________________________________ 10
Adding comments ____________________________________________________________________ 11
Summary___________________________________________________________________________ 12
III. Using variables_________________________________________________________ 13
Moving in a spiral ____________________________________________________________________ 13
Random numbers ____________________________________________________________________ 14
Summary___________________________________________________________________________ 15
IV. Control structures_______________________________________________________ 16
The if statement______________________________________________________________________ 16
The do statement_____________________________________________________________________ 17
Summary___________________________________________________________________________ 17
V. Sensors ________________________________________________________________18
Waiting for a sensor __________________________________________________________________ 18
Acting on a touch sensor_______________________________________________________________ 19
Light sensor_________________________________________________________________________ 19
Sound sensor ________________________________________________________________________ 20
Ultrasonic sensor_____________________________________________________________________ 21
Summary___________________________________________________________________________ 22
VI. Tasks and subroutines ___________________________________________________ 23
Tasks ______________________________________________________________________________ 23
Subroutines _________________________________________________________________________ 24
Defining macros _____________________________________________________________________ 25
Summary___________________________________________________________________________ 26
VII. Making music _________________________________________________________28
Playing sound files ___________________________________________________________________ 28
Playing music _______________________________________________________________________ 28
Summary___________________________________________________________________________ 30
VIII. More about motors ____________________________________________________ 31
Stopping gently ______________________________________________________________________ 31
Advanced commands _________________________________________________________________ 31
PID control _________________________________________________________________________ 33
Summary___________________________________________________________________________ 34
IX. More about sensors _____________________________________________________35
Sensor mode and type _________________________________________________________________ 35
The rotation sensor ___________________________________________________________________ 36
Putting multiple sensors on one input _____________________________________________________ 37
Summary___________________________________________________________________________ 38
X. Parallel tasks ___________________________________________________________ 39
A wrong program ____________________________________________________________________ 39
Critical sections and mutex variables _____________________________________________________ 39
Using semaphores ____________________________________________________________________ 40
Summary___________________________________________________________________________ 41
