Lego Robotics with David Lechner and Denis Demidov

00:00:00
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00:44:01

September 17th, 2017

44 mins 1 sec

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About this Episode

Summary

Do you like Legos, robots, and Python? This week I am joined by David Lechner and Denis Demidov to talk about the ev3dev project and how you can program your Lego Mindstorms with Python!

Preface

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  • Your host as usual is Tobias Macey and today I’m interviewing David Lechner and Denis Demidov about using Python with the ev3dev platform for programming LEGO robots

Interview

  • Introductions
  • How did you get introduced to Python?
  • Can you explain what the ev3dev project is and some of the story about how and why it got started?
  • What is LEGO’s opinion of the ev3dev project?
  • For anyone who isn’t familiar with the MINDSTORMS EV3 product from LEGO, can you give a brief overview of the hardware that they come with?
  • Other than allowing users to program in environments other than the block-based editor that LEGO provides, what capabilities does the ev3dev project add to the MINDSTORMS EV3 platform?
  • How are the language bindings generated and how do the different implementations compare to each other?
  • What are the most challenging aspects of building and maintaining the ev3dev distribution and various language bindings?
  • One of the things that my son is curious about is the possibility for integrating his MINDSTORMS with projects such as Kalliope or Mycroft to allow for voice controlled robots. Are you aware of anyone having done so or how you would approach something like that?
  • What are some of the most interesting or innovative projects that you have seen people make with the MINDSTORMS platform running ev3dev?
  • Why would someone want to use MINDSTORMS instead of any of the other robotics platforms that are available?
  • For someone who is interested in learning more about intermediate and advanced robotics, what are some resources that you would recommend?

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The intro and outro music is from Requiem for a Fish The Freak Fandango Orchestra / CC BY-SA