Lesson 2: Driving the Speed Build

(upbeat music)

Welcome back to the VEX Classroom. Now that you have updated the firmware of your controller and charged the controller's battery, you are ready to pair your controller to your robot and start driving. For this lesson, you will need your built Speed Build, a charged controller with updated firmware, and a VEX IQ field. I have a 2 x 2 field, which uses four tiles together. I do not have walls, but you could use walls if you wanted to. I also have a cube to use as an obstacle for my robot. If you don't have a field or cubes, you can tape out a roughly two-foot by two-foot space and use another small obstacle like a water bottle or something similar.

The first thing we need to do is pair our controller to our robot brain. To do that, we need to turn both of these on. I'm going to select the check mark to turn on my brain and the center power button to turn on my controller. I can see that they are both on because they both have a solid green light for their indicator lights.

In order to access the Settings on the VEX IQ brain where I can pair these two together, I need to navigate the menu. It's a little hard to see the menu from this angle, so I'm going to show you a different view. However, you won't be able to see the buttons as I do this. Let me explain what the buttons do. These buttons move left and right along the menu screen for our VEX IQ brain. To select something, use the check mark. To escape or go backwards to the previous menu, select the X.

Now you can see the screen of my brain a lot clearer. I will go through and tell you how I'm navigating the screen. I'm going to select the right-hand arrow to move. I'm selecting that button and moving to the right three times until I reach Settings. I need to open the Settings menu, so I'm going to select the check mark. Here, I can see the Settings. If you needed to change the language, you would do that here. I'm going to select the right button one more time, which will take me to Link. This is where I can link my controller and my brain, as shown in the icon. I'm going to select that by choosing the check mark.

Here, it's showing me what buttons I need to press on the controller to do this link. Let me show you that with the actual controller. With this open, my light is solid yellow on my IQ brain. I need to press the buttons to connect my controller to my brain. First are the buttons on the back. These two buttons here, the two L buttons, I'm going to hold both of them down. With my other hand, I am going to select the power button twice, and I need to do it very rapidly. Holding these two down, press, press, this light turns yellow and starts flashing once it connects to my robot brain. You can see that light is flashing now as well, indicating that I have paired my controller to my brain.

The other indicator that these are connected is at the very top of my brain screen, where I can see a controller icon and a battery icon. This shows that there is a controller paired and that I have a full battery on my controller. Now that we have paired our robot and our controller, we are ready to start driving.

To exit out of the Settings menu, use the X button to go back or exit a menu. I'm going to select that button. Now I am back on my home screen, and I can use the left arrow to move all the way back to the beginning, which is the Drive option. It says Drive and also has that IQ controller icon on there. I'm going to select the Drive option with the check mark and then select Run, also using the check mark.

Now, my VEX IQ controller and brain are paired.

I am running the drive program, and I can use my controller to drive my robot forward, backwards, right, left, et cetera. So let's talk a little bit more about the controls for our robot.

Now, the first thing to think about with your robot is what is forwards and what is back. The front of the robot is where these traction wheels are. The omni wheels are in the back, so I know that this is the frontwards direction, the forward direction. Now, I can start looking at my controls to see how they connect to my robot and how it moves.

If I use the left joystick and I push it forward, the left motor is moving, and I can see that with that omni wheel. So if I move it backwards, the left motor is moving in reverse. Let's try it with the right joystick. Moving the right joystick forward, the right motor is spinning. If I move it in reverse, the right motor is spinning in reverse. This is what we also call tank drive. Each joystick corresponds to one motor, left motor, right motor.

Now that we know what the controls are on our controller, we can set ourselves up for a little activity. This is why I have this cube to create some sort of obstacle. What I'm gonna do is place this directly in the center of my 2 x 2 field, and I'm gonna drive my robot around the cube. This may take a few tries as you go through. I'm gonna go ahead and test it together with you. Or you can pause, go and do this on your own. What we're gonna try and do is get around the cube two times.

Here, I know to go forward, I need to press both joysticks now. So I'm gonna press them both forward. Now, I need to turn to the right, so I'm gonna move, let's see, I'll move my left joystick forward. I'll move the right joystick backwards. A little pivot. Now, my robot is almost falling off of my field, which is kind of a problem. I didn't do a great job with that turn. Let me try and do better on this turn. So I'm gonna go forward, uh-oh, backwards.

(motor revving loudly)

You'll notice too that the amount you are pressing these joysticks changes the velocity. The further forward you push it, the faster your robot is gonna go or faster that motor is gonna spin. The slower you push it, the more controlled it is. In this case, I wanna have a really slow drive forward, so I'm just barely gonna press these joysticks forward.

(motor revving loudly)

If you're not ready to use an obstacle yet, that's totally okay. You can practice just driving around the edges, and that's still a lot of work if you're brand new to driving with a robot. Forward, turn, forward, avoid the wall.

(motor revving loudly)

No one said our square would be pretty, but you can go through and practice this and keep driving around.

I hope you had fun driving your robot. It does take some time to get used to those controls. If you weren't super comfortable with each joystick controlling an individual motor, that's also okay. In a future lesson, we're gonna walk through how to change that so you can have your own customized driver control and have all of those controls on a single joystick however you want to do that. We'll walk through that together.

Go ahead, keep practicing with your driver skills if you'd like to. Or if not, I will see you in the next video, thanks.

(upbeat music)