LEGO EV3 Tutorial

This tutorial for LEGO Mindstorms EV3 is divided in two sections. The “Essentials” are things every EV3 programmer should know. Some of these movies have exercises directly under them. It’s important to do these exercises, not just assume you “get it.” 

The “Advanced” section is for reference purposes. When you need one of EV3’s advanced functions, check it out.

These lessons assume you have a basic robot with two drive motors, a touch sensor and a light sensor.

The Essentials

  • Watch video here.

  • Program your robot to move around. Do at least two turns and three straight segments in a single program.

  • Watch video here.

  • Watch video here.

  • Use a loop to program your robot to move in a square. The program should include no more that two move blocks.

  • Watch video here.

  • Write a program that will cause your robot to drive forward forever until it hits something with its touch sensor at which point it backs up and turns before continuing to drive forward again.

  • Watch video here.

  • Create a program that tells your robot to back up and turn whenever it sees a black line over and over again.

  • Watch video here.

  • Create a program that uses switches to watch for both black lines and bumping into something with the touch sensor. When either a line or a collision is encountered, the robot backs up and turns.

Advanced Tutorials

  • Watch video here.

  • Watch video here.

  • Watch video here.

  • Watch video here.

If you need to run this tutorial at a location with poor internet service or where YouTube isn't allowed, you can download a special copy here.  It’s a big file so Google may warn you with standard boilerplate about not being able to scan it for viruses (it’s clean to the best of our knowledge.) You may have to set the security settings of your browser to allow local files.  Firefox seems to work best for this.  Open the index.html file to kick things off.  It took a good deal of effort to create this special version.  How about clicking that donation button above?

LEGO®, the LEGO logo, Mindstorms and the Mindstorms logo are trademarks of the LEGO Group, which did not create and does not sponsor or endorse this tutorial.  Likewise, although Catlin Gabel School uses this tutorial extensively, it does not support or take responsibility for it.