You will program your EV3 brick using python. We will access the brick interactively and also download programs to it using Visual Studio Code.
Wireless connection works by connecting both your computer and the EV3 brick to the same wireless network. The brick isn't by default capable of connecting to wireless networks: it requires a Netgear dongle. If the dongle is not plugged into the brick, plug in the dongle through the USB port on the EV3, and restart the brick.
Using the EV3 menu, go to Options > WiFi > Connections. Select the wireless network you want to connect to, choose the encryption type, and enter the password. We set up a dedicated wireless network for this course, named "Lego". There is no password, so for the Encryption, select "None". The brick's IP address is written on a sticker, but you can verify it under the WiFi menu.
On the computer, locate and launch the Visual Studio Code (VSCode) application, we will be using it for everything in this class. From VSCode, open a command line Terminal. You can confirm that your connection to the brick works by typing ping <brick-ip-address> into the terminal. The output should look something like the following:
PING 192.168.1.82 (192.168.1.82): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 192.168.1.82: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=61.894 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.82: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=6.645 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.82: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=6.664 ms 64 bytes from 192.168.1.82: icmp_seq=3 ttl=64 time=6.266 ms
Using the Explorer (top left) tab in VSCode, find the "EV3DEV DEVICE BROWSER" item and toggle the arrow, find the "ev3dev" device and click on it. Once the connection is established, the dot next to it turns green.
You can now connect to the brick, by right-clicking on the green dot, and selecting "Open SSH Terminal". This will open a new window within VSCode and drop you into a linux command shell on the LEGO brick. In order to run python commands on it, type
brickrun -r -- pybricks-micropython
Once in the python environment, import a module
from pybricks.hubs import EV3Brick
Then create a python object that represents the brick
ev3 = EV3Brick()
And now we can issue commands, here is the first one
ev3.speaker.beep()
You can hopefully guess and hear what it did!
You can exit from the python shell by pressing Ctrl-D.
(Make sure you are not connecting to someone else's brick by mistake. Each computer should default to connecting to the corresponding brick, but they all see each other over the wireless network!)
The interactive environment is good for learning to use single commands, and sometimes for debugging, but for longer programs, it is cumbersome. Once you have a bigger program, you can download it onto the brick by hovering the cursor above the "EV3DEV DEVICE BROWSER" item and pressing on the down-arrow icon that appears on the right. It downloads the contents of your currently open folder from VSCode. A good way to open a new folder and start coding is by clicking on the EV3 tab (it has the symbol of the lego Mindstorm: <o>, rotated by 90 degrees) on the left and then selecting "Create a new project". It gives you a new file called "main.py" to start with, including some of the necessary import commands to start using motors and sensors.
When you have a "main.py" from a project folder open, you can also select "run" from the menu (or press F5) and if your ev3dev is connected with a green light, VSCode will download your program and run it on the brick.
Note: while you are connected to the brick interactively, you cannot download programs to it and run them remotely. So make sure you exit out of the micrpython environment (Ctrl-D) and close your SSH connection before you attempt downloading programs.