(gentle music)

Hello, everybody, and welcome to the VEX classroom. I'm so excited that you'll be joining us to learn about the new V5 sensors. I'm really excited to show you these, to show you how fun and easy they are to use. But before we get started, let me tell you a little bit about myself.

My name is Lauren Harter. I'm a senior educational developer here at VEX Robotics. So what exactly does that mean, what exactly is it that I do? I play a big part in writing most of the extracurricular materials we have here at VEX, such as STEM labs, knowledge-based articles, and all of the educator support that we provide. I get to play a big part in that.

A little bit more about my background: I come from a teaching background, having taught high school and at the collegiate level. My area of expertise is Mathematics, with a blend of Computer Science and STEM education. When I was teaching at the collegiate level, I taught both mathematics and educational pedagogies related to teaching mathematics and STEM. During my master's degree, I fell in love with STEM education and wanted to develop resources to help other teachers. This passion led me to curriculum development and creating resources at VEX Robotics.

Because of this passion, I decided to continue my education and am now working on my doctorate in STEM education. I'm currently still a student, wrapping up that doctorate at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is where we're shooting the webinar from. I'm very excited to share all of that with you.

Not only do I come from a teacher's perspective and educational development, but I also wanted to pass on my experience to other students. This led me to start a VEX Robotics competition team here in Pittsburgh, based out of CAPA, a high school in downtown Pittsburgh. Last year was our first season, and I'm a really proud teacher. I'm going to show you some pictures of the team, just so you can get a better feel for them.

The competition team is very excited in this photo because they just won the Build Award last season. We're really, really proud of them. This team is amazing; they made it all the way to Worlds last season. Also, what's pretty amazing about this photo is Nico, who's all the way on the right. You'll actually get to hear from him in this webinar. He took some time out of his busy schedule as a high school student to talk to us about how he and his team plan on using a bunch of these different sensors in their competition robot this year. We're very, very excited about that as well.

If you've attended the webinar before, welcome back. If this is your first time, I am going to go through a little bit about how our webinar's going to run. It's approximately 45 minutes long. For the first 30 of those 45 minutes, I'm going to demo a bunch of the different sensors here for you, and I will talk about the layout that I have up here.

Thank you for joining us today. I hope you find this session informative and inspiring. We appreciate your time and interest in VEX Robotics. Enjoy the webinar!

So I have a rig with a camera set up here, so that you can see my V5 brain screen. This is really helpful so that you can see some of the values as I am working with a bunch of the different sensors and kinda comparing them for you. I also have Crunch, our hero robot for this year. So we actually have Crunch set up with all of the different sensors that I'm going to be showing off to you tonight.

I'll be referencing Crunch, so that can kinda show you how this can be used on a competition robot, and kinda show you where placement is and things of that nature. We also have some game pieces over here, that I'm gonna be using in the demonstrations for a few of the different sensors, and interacting with Crunch, so you can see how that would look on an actual competition robot. So we're gonna be doing all of that.

I'm gonna be comparing some of our V5 devices to some of our other 3-wire sensors as well. So you can get a feel for some of the demonstrations. So what you should be walking away with is a few things. What are the sensors, how are they used, some of those different demonstrations, and also you'll get to hear from Nico, for a real competition perspective on a student that's actually using these for his competition team, and how he plans on using it as well.

A few other things about the webinar; there is a QA feature here in Zoom. So if you have any questions as I'm going through the webinar, and you'd like to ask them, please do so. I'll also be talking about a bunch of different resources that we have for these sensors and a few other supporting resources as well. So we'll put all the links to all that information in the chat, so you can reference that at any time. Also, I'll leave a few minutes at the end, if you have any other questions, or things of that nature, I'll open it up for a few questions at that time as well.

This is also going to be recorded. So if you would like to watch this later, or if there are certain segments that you'd like to show either to other faculty, or teacher members, or if you have certain students on your competition team that you think could benefit from some of these demos, you can take the recording and show them at another time.

We're really excited to get started with all these sensors. As I mentioned before, Nico having all that experience and our competition team and me starting that team in Pittsburgh, I wanted to take all that information and actually show you tonight what a bunch of those sensors are and how our team plans on using them here. I'm really excited to share that experience with you.

So we're gonna get started. I'm gonna start off with the distance sensor, that's going to be the first sensor that we're gonna cover.

Before we dive into a few demonstrations on the sensors, I'd like to first show you what that sensor looks like up-close, so I'm gonna show you an image of that sensor here.

So here's a better image of the distance sensor, so that you can see it a little bit better because I know that on the table here, they may look a little bit small. The distance sensor is a sensor that uses a narrow laser to measure distance. It's really accurate, it can measure up to two meters, or approximately six feet, and this is really helpful, especially, on a competition robot.

I'm gonna show you all on Crunch here. We actually have the distance sensor mounted in the front. As I mentioned, this is really helpful on a competition robot, so I can measure the distance between my robot and other game objects. As you can see here, if I had a game ball I can see the distance that my robot is, or the sensor is away from that game piece. It can also be used to measure the distance between my robot and different objects on the field, such as field walls or even other robots.

Thank you for joining us tonight. We hope you find this session informative and helpful for your projects. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out.

We appreciate your time and interest. Have a great evening!

The distance sensor doesn't only have to be used in a competition setting; it can also be used in a classroom setting. For example, maybe you want a robot to navigate a specific maze, but you want to do it without touching any of the barriers. You can use the distance sensor for that. You can take the values from the sensor and write an autonomous project so that your robot can stop before it hits certain obstacles, like walls or other barriers. This makes the distance sensor a great tool for fun classroom activities.

Let me dive into showing you some examples and comparisons between the V5 distance sensor and the 3-wire ultrasonic range finder. I'm going to show you a different view here so that you can see both my V5 brain screen and the sensors at the same time. You can see here, I have two things: the distance sensor and the 3-wire ultrasonic range finder.

The first thing to note about these two sensors is that one of the main differences between the distance sensor and the ultrasonic range finder is that the distance sensor uses a narrow laser to measure distance, while the ultrasonic range finder uses sound waves. Why is this important? For example, I can use the distance sensor on my competition robot to measure distance. However, if I'm using more than one ultrasonic range finder at a time or within close proximity, you may experience some interference, making it unsuitable for competition settings. The V5 distance sensor, because it uses a narrow laser, does not experience this interference, making it ideal for competition robots and providing a significant advantage.

The first thing I want to show you on the brain screen is how easy it is to get started with this sensor. As soon as I plug it into one of the smart ports on my brain, I can launch the devices screen, and a bunch of different icons pop up. I have a lot of sensors connected, and you can see in port one, I have the icon for the distance sensor. As soon as I launch that, an amazing graphic appears. I'm going to take one of my game pieces to show you exactly how it measures the distance. As I move an object closer or farther away from the sensor, various data points are reported. In the top left, it gives me an approximate size of the object. In the top right, it gives me the approximate velocity, indicating how fast an object is moving towards or away from the sensor. You can also view it as how fast your robot is approaching a certain object. My favorite part of this graphic is the bottom, where I can see the robot and the object moving, with the distance changing in real time.

Something else to note is that the units are reported in millimeters. If I press and hold on the screen, I can convert those to inches if preferred. This allows you to see both units of measurement, depending on your needs, whether in a competition or classroom setting.

Another thing to note about the difference between the ultrasonic range finder and the distance sensor is how they report values for different shapes of objects. I'm going to show you a project I created to demonstrate the difference between both sensors and how they report values. Starting with the cube, you can see both distances are reporting approximately the same for both the ultrasonic range finder and the distance sensor.

Thank you for your attention, and I hope this information helps you understand the capabilities and advantages of using the V5 distance sensor in various settings.

But as I mentioned earlier, the V5 distance sensor uses that narrow laser to measure distance, so it's more accurate, while the ultrasonic range finder uses sound waves. So that's a more broad, as far as reporting values, and kinda getting those sound waves back, it's not as narrow and precise. On this flat object that you can see right here, the distances are reporting somewhat similar. But I'm gonna change now to a different shape of an object, for example, this year's game piece.

As you can see, this year's game piece is not necessarily flat. If I move it around, sometimes the ultrasonic range finder will jump and things of that nature. That's just to note that again, because the V5 distance sensor does use that narrow point of focus, it will report distances more accurately. And again, just to reiterate from earlier, this is super helpful in a competition robot. I'll bring Crunch up a little bit, so that you can see my distance sensor mounted there. What's really helpful about that, as I mentioned before, is that you can use this in a competition setting because you won't experience the interference like you would with the ultrasonic range finder.

I'm now gonna send it over to Nico, who's gonna give you an introduction on how he would use the distance sensor this year on his team's competition robot.

[Music Cue]

Thanks Lauren, hey, I'm Nico from VRX team 72963. The distance sensor is great to use on a competition robot. The ability to measure distance from my robot to a game piece provides a lot of information when writing an autonomous program. In this year's VRC Game Change Up, we're using the distance sensor to scan the area in front of the robot. As soon as one of the game pieces is detected, the robot's intake will spin and pick up the game piece. This frees up a lot of time I would have to take as a driver to pick up game pieces manually. Now, I can just focus on my driving and the next move on the field.

I hope sharing my plan to use the V5 distance sensor helps you and your team.

[Music Cue]

Thanks so much, Nico. A few more things about the distance sensor, it is available for purchase right now. So you can go to vexrobotics.com and check it out. If you'd like to buy them for either your competition setting, or to also use in a classroom setting, it would be a great addition. The links are available in the chat as well. So if you'd like quick access to those, they are there for you as well.

So let's hop into our next sensor, which is gonna be the inertial sensor. I'm going to show you here, I'm gonna move Crunch back a little bit, just so I can show you the inertial sensor of Crunch here in a second. I also have a few other sensors lined up for you here. So we're gonna compare the differences between the inertial sensor and some of our other 3-wire devices as well. I'll show you what that looks like in one second. I am going to show you a close-up version of the inertial sensor, because I do wanna point out a graphic that is actually on the sensor, so I'm gonna show you that sense of up-close.

This is the V5 inertial sensor, and as you can see there, it does have a little graphic on top for the X, Y, and Z axis. So what exactly is the inertial sensor and what does it do? It combines the functionality of the 3-wire gyro and the 3-wire accelerometer into one sensor. This is super helpful because it allows me to see the orientation of my robot in any direction. So thinking about how I can use this either in a competition setting or in a classroom, bringing back Crunch over here, I actually have our sensor mounted in the center of the base.

Thinking about it from a competition perspective, I can use the inertial sensor to make very accurate turns. As I'm turning the base, as I'm gathering some of these data values from the sensor, and I'm using them to write an autonomous project, maybe for the competition or something else of that nature.

I can use the inertial sensor to make sure all of those movements are very accurate and precise. From a classroom setting, I can also use it to accomplish a bunch of fun challenges. Again, navigating a maze autonomously, making very accurate turns and movements, and also being able to explore the x, y, z space. So the inertial sensor is excellent for both of those different scenarios.

I'm now going to show you the sensor and some of the different projects that I created for you here up-close, so that you can see the inertial sensor in action. So as you can see here, I'm gonna move Crunch over a little bit. I have the inertial sensor, I also have our 3-wire accelerometer, and our 3-wire gyro all mounted up here for you.

The first thing I'm gonna note is it does have a very similar plug-and-play functionality like I showed you before with the distance sensor. So I can automatically launch the devices screen and you can see the icon for the inertial sensor there, located in port two. As soon as I select that icon, I get a bunch of different, really amazing readings here on the screen. I am actually gonna zoom this in just for one second so that you can see what that looks like, as I explain it for one second.

We have a bunch of different values being read here on the left, such as the gyro readings, the accelerometer readings, the heading, but you can also see on that right-hand side there is a cube, and this represents the 3D space. So if I come back here to my inertial sensor, you can see that as I rotate this back and forth, that cube is moving but more so if I'm orienting this in the X, Y, and Z direction, you can see that, that cube is mimicking my robot in 3D space. This allows me to see the orientation of my robot at any time. And again, what's so amazing about this is that I can see all of this information without having to write any code first. So I can plug this into my brain, take my robot out to the competition field, and I can start gathering these values and seeing this data without even having to write any code first.

So we have here, it says auto calibrated. Talking about calibration for one second, what exactly does that mean? You'll also note in the project that I bring up here in one second, it takes three seconds to calibrate, so what exactly is calibration? From the inertial sensors, since we are using some of those gyro values, the sensor has to be completely still in order for it to calibrate because it's considering what its zero position is going to be. If I'm using the sensor, I want to make sure that it is completely still as it is calibrating, and bringing Crunch over a little bit, I do have it in the base there of Crunch. If I'm going to use this for the first time, I wanna give it that time to calibrate, so that whenever I am taking these values they are accurate and precise. I wanna make sure that there's no movement on the sensor during that calibration so that it can determine its zero position.

I am going to move over here to a project that I created, to show you some of the differences between the 3-wire sensors that I have here and the inertial sensor as well. Doing the calibration takes about three seconds, as I noted before, I wanna make sure the sensor is still. I'm gonna zoom in on this just for one second to cover a bunch of these different values that you see here on the screen. Towards the top, we see the heading from the gyro, so we have that 3-wire gyro. Towards the middle here, you can see the acceleration from the 3-wire accelerometer. Those bottom three rows there, IS stands for inertial sensor. So those are gonna be the readings from the inertial sensor. One other thing to note here is you can see the acceleration values, both from the 3-wire accelerometer and the inertial sensor.

The 3-wire accelerometer reports positive acceleration from gravity, while the inertial sensor reports negative acceleration from gravity. As you can see, those values are quite similar, but I wanted to note the difference there between the positive and negative values.

Another thing to note about the inertial sensor compared to the 3-wire sensors here is that the inertial sensor is a digital sensor, whereas our 3-wire devices are analog sensors. So what exactly does that mean? As I continue to move this around, you can see the values changing. Over time, the inertial sensor is going to report more accurate values. It's also just a more modern sensor and is being used in a lot of the latest technology. The inertial sensor, as I mentioned, is going to report more precise values and more accurate values over time.

I'm now gonna throw it over to Nico, so that he can tell you how he plans on using the inertial sensor this year on his competition robot.

[Music Cue]

The V5 inertial sensor is great to use on a competition robot. The ability to report the rotation of the robot in the X, Y, and Z axis, as well as the acceleration, is extremely valuable. This increases your chances of winning the autonomous period of a match. In this year's VRC Game Change Up, I'm using the inertial sensor to ensure precise movements and to detect if the robot falls over. If the robot falls over, the motors will shut off to ensure the safety of the robot. I hope my plan to use the V5 inertial sensor helps you and your team.

[Music Cue]

Thanks so much, Nico. A little bit more about the inertial sensor: it is now available for purchase, which is amazing, so you can check that out at vexrobotics.com. All of the links are in the chat, so if you'd like access to those links, you can absolutely check that out there as well.

Let's move on to the next sensor, which is the rotation sensor. Once again, I would like to show you a picture of this up-close, just so we can talk about how it's structured and things of that nature. Here's our rotation sensor. What exactly is this sensor and what does it do? The rotation sensor is an absolute rotation sensor, meaning it will report the same rotation value even after the robot is turned off. This is super helpful in a competition standpoint.

I'm gonna bring it back to the Crunch over here, so I can show you a little bit about what I mean by this. On Crunch, we have the rotation sensor set up right here. It's going to be used when moving my arm up and down, reporting a bunch of those values. Why would I use this, and why is it important? From a competition standpoint, if I am using a robot with some sort of manipulator, either an arm or something similar, the rotation sensor can report that absolute rotation value. Not only will it report the current position of the arm, but it can also report how many times something rotates. If I place this sensor on a wheel or something similar, it can report rotation as it continues to spin 360 degrees and beyond.

What do I mean by it continues having the same value even after the robot is shut off? Comparing it to some of the other sensors, which I'll show you here in a second, what's nice about the rotation sensor is it will remember, for example, if this is position 100, even after the robot shuts off or moves to a different position, that position still remains position 100. Some of the other sensors, which I'll show you in a moment, don't necessarily always remember that current position. They start from zero or reset to zero every time.

So it's really nice that even after the V5 brain shuts off, it will remember those positions, and I'm actually gonna show you what that looks like on the V5 brain screen. So I'm gonna bring over my comparison here to show you a bunch of the different sensors that I have. I have three here: the rotation sensor, our 3-wire potentiometer, and our 3-wire optical shaft encoder.

The first thing that I'm gonna note is, just like all of the other new sensors, it does have a really amazing dashboard. If I go into my devices screen and select the rotation sensor, I automatically start to get this really nice graphic. I am gonna zoom in on this graphic just a little bit, so you can see it a little bit better. As you can see right now, I currently have it rotating at approximately the 90-degree position there. That little tick mark at the top shows me the zero position. I have the current angle, and I also have the number of rotations. If I spin it all the way around, you can see that I've made one rotation and the current velocity of that rotation as well.

Like I said before, even if I turn my robot brain off, it's still gonna remember its current position. I have this set zero down here at the bottom. If I'd like to reset that zero position, or I don't want it to remember for a certain aspect, I can reset that zero position. I'm gonna show you a little bit of the comparisons between the rotation sensor and the other 3-wire devices. I'm gonna show you a project that I wrote here to compare the two.

A few different things are happening on the screen right now. I have three different things. I'll zoom in for one second, just so you can see. I have the rotation angle from the rotation sensor, the potentiometer angle, and the encoder position as well from the optical shaft encoder. Let me go back so you can actually see me rotating these sensors. As you can see here, the rotation sensor, the first row there, does two things. It's going to report my current rotation here, and that goes all the way from 0 to 360, which is really nice. So it goes that full rotation.

Now, the potentiometer, for example, can remember its current position. Let's just stick with this right now, and I'll do the optical shaft encoder as well. You can see each three of these have an associated value. If I stop the project and start the project again, or if I shut the brain off and return, you can see that these two values remain. The rotation sensor does remember its current position, and so does the potentiometer, but the encoder position gets zeroed away; it does not remember.

The potentiometer can remember its position. However, as I'm rotating, you see that it starts to cap out at around 250 degrees. Even though the potentiometer can remember its current position, it cannot spin that full flexibility there, 360 and beyond. The optical shaft encoder, however, can go 360 degrees and beyond, but it cannot remember its current position. The rotation sensor does both; not only does it remember its current position, but it also can spin that full 360 degrees and beyond, which makes this really helpful in both the classroom and a competition setting, as I mentioned before.

It also supports high-strength shafts, so mouthful there (chuckles). It also supports those as well, which is a really helpful thing in a competition setting. Back to a classroom setting as well, if I wanna use this, it would be really helpful to take the data from this sensor, the values that are being reported straight from the devices screen, even like I just showed you. You can use that to program autonomous movements. A really fun classroom activity would be to take the values from that sensor and have the arm move at three different levels, for example.

So let's say I'm in a classroom, and I wanna take readings from that sensor, and I ask my students to pause at three different heights, or three different positions of the arm, I can do that with the rotation sensor. It has a lot of applications not only in a competition standpoint, as you can see, it's a very huge advantage to be able to remember its current position. Because if I'm running from match to match and I don't wanna worry about if my arm is correctly placed every time, I don't have to worry about that as much with the rotation sensor. It has a lot of really nice values both in a competition standpoint, and also in a classroom setting as well.

So I'm gonna kick it over to Nico so he can talk about how he plans on using this sensor on his competition robot this year.

[Music Cue]

The V5 rotation sensor is great to use on a competition robot. The ability to determine absolute angles is such an advantage. This allows the robot arm to maintain the same zero position, even after the robot has been shut off. This saves a lot of time and programming effort between matches to ensure the accuracy of the robot arm. In this year's VRC Game Change Up, I'm using the rotation sensor to score game balls autonomously. As soon as one of the game balls is picked up, the rotation sensor will then accurately lift the arm. I hope sharing my plan to use the V5 rotation sensor will help you and your team.

[Music Cue]

Thanks so much, Nico. The rotation sensor is available for purchase right now. You can check it out at vexrobotics.com. Once again, we are providing the links in the chat, so you can see that as well. It would be an amazing addition to either your competition platform, or also your classroom as well.

[Music Cue]

So let's move on to the next sensor, which is the optical sensor. I have to say, I love this sensor, it is so fun to play with. I am gonna show it to you up-close, just so you can see exactly what I'm talking about here. So here is our optical sensor. As you can see, it does look similar to the distance sensor. However, the window there is a little bit wider. We're gonna be using this for detecting color, which is the main aspect of this sensor.

So what is the optical sensor and how can it be used? It adds color detection to the V5 system, which is a huge advantage, not only in a competition setting but also in a classroom setting as well. So what exactly does this mean? How would I use this in a competition setting? Well, let's just think about Crunch that I have right here. We have the optical sensor mounted on Crunch right here in the front. The best use case for this is, let's say I am programming autonomous movements, and I see a colored ball. In a competition match, maybe I'm on the red team, maybe I'm on the blue team, and I wanna program my robot to perform certain movements depending on the color that's picked up, or the color of this object.

As I continue to see a game piece here, I can see the optical sensor is pretty close to the colored object and I can detect, "Oh, is it red, is it blue, what actions should I perform based on those movements." In a competition setting, this provides a huge advantage for being able to program autonomous movements just based on seeing the color of an object, which is awesome. It's also really fun in classroom activity to create a sorting challenge. So maybe I mount this on a claw bot, or another type of robot that I build, and I wanna sort certain objects. I can even navigate a color maze with this, which would be super fun. So maybe the object sees red and I turn right, or the object sees blue and I turn left, or something of that nature. There are a lot of fun classroom activities that I can do with this sensor, which is super exciting.

So I'm gonna show you some of the comparisons that I have here with the optical sensor, and some of the other 3-wire sensors that I have.

So I'm gonna move Crunch out of the way, just for a second here, so I can show you a little bit closer what the differences between these sensors are. I'm also gonna switch my views, so that you can get a better view here of the different sensors and also my V5 brain screen.

So as you can see here, I have a few different sensors. I'm gonna show you here a little bit zoomed in. I have the optical sensor, the 3-wire light sensor, and the 3-wire line tracker. I'll talk about a few differences between these in one second. Similarly, to the other sensors that I mentioned, it does have that plug and play design. As soon as I plug it in, I can take my robot onto the competition field, or start using it in the classroom immediately.

I can launch the devices screen and I can see right there the icon for the optical sensor is plugged into port 12. I can select that, and I get this really colorful, bright, and amazing dashboard, which I have to say is one of my favorites. I'm gonna zoom on this just a little bit, so you can see. So what exactly is going on here? Well, I have the brightness reported, I can see the distance, so, you know, is an object close, near, or far, and I can also see this color wheel here, which shows color hue values.

So what exactly is a hue value, what does that mean? When I'm talking about different shades of colors, let me bring it back to... So you can see some of these objects here. If I'm talking about different shades of red, you know, we have in VEX coder V5, the ability to detect if something is red or blue, and actually say what those colors are. But there may be different shades of a color, and I may want to do certain things, or perform certain behaviors on my robot depending on what that color is. Using a hue value allows me to get, not just four colors: red, blue, green, whatever, but it gives me a whole spectrum of 360 different options here, different hue values. It gives me a wider spectrum that I can work with, instead of just, I see red, I see blue, it can be a different threshold of values. When you see this color wheel here, it is representing hue value. Just to give you a little bit more context, you see both, you see the actual color there and you also see the hue value associated with it.

A little bit more on what's being reported here compared to some of our other sensors. You can see brightness, our light sensor here does report brightness, so does the optical sensor. Distance as well, so if I can show you here with my hand, if an object is close, near, or far, and then down here, which is really nice and very unique to the optical sensor, which is a huge advantage, is it has its own LED built-in. As I continue to turn that up, you can see the lights are turning on right there. This is really helpful in different settings. Especially, if I'm programming autonomous movements, maybe I'm at a huge event like VEX Worlds, or something else, or a different classroom setting, and I need a consistent light source. When detecting colors, it's really important that I can read those colors accurately. This provides a consistent light source so that even in dark lit situations, or if the light in the room changes drastically or something of that nature, I can still get those values and get them reported accurately because we have that built-in LED there. It's extremely helpful in different situations.

And then you can see here, it's pretty bright in here. We have lights in here compared to classroom lights, and if we just have all the windows open in the classroom, it might look a lot different compared to if I turn all the lights on and things of that nature.

I'm gonna show you a project that I created here to show you the difference between the optical sensor and some of the other sensors.

I'm gonna zoom in on this screen just a minute to talk about the different values that I'm showing you here. At the top, we have both values being reported from the optical sensor. We have the brightness being reported, and we also have the color. Towards the bottom, I have the line tracker value and also the light sensor value. Let me show you how these are working with some different game pieces.

Let me start off with this red game piece here. As I get closer, you can see it is reporting as red. What's nice about the optical sensor is not only can it perform the functionality of these other two, 3-wire sensors. With the light sensor reporting brightness, we can see the optical sensor does that as well, and the line tracker reporting proximity detection. Is an object close or far away? Did something pass in front of the object? The optical sensor does that as well. You can see from the devices screen that I just showed you reported close, near, or far. Not only can the optical sensor combine the functionality of both the light sensor and the 3-wire line tracker, but it also adds the ability to report color. It combines the functionality of those other two 3-wire sensors with the additional functionality of color detection, which is super helpful.

You can see here it's reporting red. Let me just grab one more game piece so you can see it changing to detect the color blue. You can see here it can report a wide range of colors, which is super, super helpful. Now, I'm gonna turn it over to Nico so he can talk about how he plans on using this awesome sensor this season on his team's competition robot.

[Music Cue]

The V5 optical sensor is great to use on a competition robot. The ability to determine the color of game pieces provides a lot of information when programming. Object and color detection provide helpful information when detecting game pieces or goals on the field. In this year's VRC Game Change Up, I'm using the V5 optical sensor to scan the area in front of my robot arm. As soon as one of the game balls is detected, the V5 optical sensor will then report if it is red or blue. If the color of the ball matches our team's color, the robot will then drive towards the ball in order to pick it up. This frees up a lot of time I would have to take as a driver to drive towards our game ball. Now, I can just focus on my driving and where to score the ball. I hope my plan to use the V5 optical sensor will help you and your team.

[Music Cue]

Thanks so much, Nico. So again, this amazing optical sensor is available for purchase right now. You can check it out at vexrobotics.com. We'll also put the links in the chat, just in case you wanna view it there as well. This is a really amazing resource, both to add if you are a competition team or you're just using this as an educator in your classroom. You can see there's a wide array of different scenarios where you might want to use this sensor.

Now, I'm gonna show you one more device that's not technically a sensor, but I'm gonna cover the 3-wire expander. So what exactly is that, why would I wanna use it, and things of that nature? I'm gonna show you a picture up close just so you can see exactly what I'm talking about here.

Here's our 3-wire expander plugged into a V5 brain. So what exactly is the 3-wire expander and why would I wanna use it? The 3-wire expander allows me to add up to eight additional 3-wire ports to my V5 brain by plugging it into a smart port. So those eight additional ports, what exactly does that look like? Here's a little bit closer version, just so you can see, because I know when I pan back to my different view here, it might be hard for you to see exactly what I'm talking about. But this is the front of the sensor here, so you can see where the 3-wire devices are going to be plugged in.

So again, it adds up to eight additional sensors there that I can add to my brain. I'm gonna change over here so that you can see the view. I want to show you some things about the sensor, and I also want to show you what it looks like on the device's screen, so I'm gonna show you that up-close.

You can see here, I have my 3-wire expander, and I'm actually using it right now because all of the devices that I've been showing you tonight wouldn't be possible to plug into the brain without the 3-wire expander. As you can see here, I know it's a little hard to see, but all of the devices currently on my brain are plugged in here. All of my 3-wire ports are currently filled up with plugging in all these different devices. Using the 3-wire expander allowed me to have all of these devices on my robot at once.

Why would I want to use this, and why would I need this in any sort of circumstance? Well, either in a competition setting or in a classroom setting. If I want to write more advanced projects, or maybe I want to learn more about sensor detection, or in a competition standpoint, maybe I want to enhance my robot so that it can perform more autonomous movements, sensors help with all of that. Being able to use a variety of sensors on my robot, especially a competition robot, is a huge advantage. Being able to use the 3-wire expander makes all of that possible.

One thing I'd like to point out about this is, I'm gonna zoom in here just a little bit so that you can see my brain. When I go into the device screen, you can see at the top here, that little icon for the 3-wire devices, this is gonna report all of the values from the eight devices that are plugged into my brain. You can see here all eight devices are filled up, and it's reporting a bunch of different values. If I go back here, you can see that in port 11 is the 3-wire expander. It shows the exact same icon. I'll show you here in a second, it uses the same A to H different values here that are being plugged in. I can go back to that other image I showed you earlier with the different ports, showing you all the different eight options, once again using those letters. If I select this, you can see again A through H, it's the same sort of screen that you would see from plugging in those 3-wire devices to the brain, it reports the exact same thing here. You can see it says port 11 up there. The difference would be, again, this one's being plugged into my actual brain showing those eight different devices. Then I get the same sort of reported values from being plugged into the 3-wire expander. This makes everything a lot more possible. If I want to add more sensor detection or if I want to write more advanced projects, once again, the 3-wire expander allows me to do all of those things.

I showed you a lot of different sensors tonight and some of their functionality, and how they can be compared to other 3-wire devices. I know that's a lot of information, so we have a bunch of resources available for you as well. I'm gonna show you exactly what some of those different resources look like, and we'll also throw them in the chat so that you can access them quickly.

I'm gonna go over to my computer here because I want to show you where a bunch of different knowledge base articles are. I'll show you here. If I go to help.vex.com and I go down to V5 and I select the electronics, you can see there's a whole sensor section right there. We have a bunch of different articles that show how can I use this with VEXcode V5? How can I place it on my robot, and things of that nature? It covers a lot of the different concepts that I also covered today, and it also shows new things like how I would use this in VEXcode V5, and things of that nature.

Some other really exciting things I'd like to share with you, speaking of VEXcode V5, is that all of these are supported right now in VEXcode V5. Let me show you the devices window in VEXcode V5, so you can see exactly what I mean. I'm going to show you the configuration right there. This is the current version of VEXcode V5. You can see in the devices window all of those are being shown right there. It currently is being supported, which is really awesome and really amazing.

Next week, not only is VEXcode V5 going to add a few things to it, but it will also support C++, which is super amazing. We'll have C++, Python, and Blocks all available in VEXcode V5, and it will also be supported on Android and Fire tablets as well. We are super excited about that, and again, it's going to be released next week, so super, super excited.

I'm going to leave a few questions here at the end. Let's see what we have here:

"Where can I find the build instructions for the Crunch robot?"

We have that on VEX's website. You can go to build.vex.com. It's also going to be linked in the chat there. If you'd like that resource, you can as well. I'm going to show you exactly what that looks like, so let me pull that up for you. Let me switch to that window so that you can see it. If I go to build.vex.com, I can click on V5, and from there, I can find a bunch of different builds here, and you can see Crunch is right there. A bunch of different ones are being offered, so that's definitely one of them.

Another question that I have is:

"Where do I find the cool parts poster?"

You can see back here, we have a bunch of different motors and things of that nature. I'm going to show you we also have that in the knowledge base as well. We have a knowledge base article called "Using Posters in Your Classroom," which is somewhere under the education tab. Let me scroll down to the bottom here, and you can see that we have the V5 sensor poster. If you'd like to add that to your classroom, or you would also like to use it just in your competition space or anything of that nature, that's also available to you as well.

Let's see if we have any other questions:

"Where can I get more information on these if I'm just getting started?"

You can go to getstarted.vex.com. Let me show you exactly what that looks like. Pull that up for you. (tracking pad tapping) So if you're just getting started here, Get Started with VEX, getstarted.vex.com, I can scroll down to VEX V5, and I can learn more, or I could get started, and it gives me a ton of information. If I want to learn about how to find educator resources, how to learn to code, things of that nature, a bunch of that stuff is there.

Another question:

"What's the difference between the optical sensor and the vision sensor?"

Great question. I actually have a slide here that I'd love to show you a little bit about what this exactly looks like. Let me pull that up for you real quick. The main difference, as you see here, is what's being reported from a vision sensor. Yes, the vision sensor does report color. However, compared to the optical sensor, the vision sensor is going to report where a certain device is, a certain color of that device, and what the vision sensor can do. It is a sensor that we have in the V5 collection, and what it does is you can train it to learn certain colors, and then it can track and trace those different objects. If more than one of them is being shown in a specific area, the vision sensor can be used to find that as well. The main difference is that the vision sensor has to be trained for those values. It's going to show you where an object of that color is, in a particular window. For example, here, it's going to show you the width and height of that color cubed, you know, it is red, where is that showing up here?

Thank you for your attention and participation. If you have any more questions, feel free to reach out. We are excited to see what you create with VEXcode V5!

Where the optical sensor is concerned, none of those signatures and none of those predetermined colors need to be programmed into the sensor in order for it to work. One of the main differences is that the optical sensor can start reporting those colors right away, while the vision sensor needs to be trained.

So those are all excellent questions. Thank you so much, again.

A few things I would like to note is that if you'd like to contact me, you can email me at [email protected]. I also have a Twitter account, and you can reach out to me there. I hope all of this information helped you as you plan on using the sensors, either in a competition setting or in a classroom setting.

Thank you so much for joining tonight. I look forward to hearing from you as well.

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