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Newbie With Urgent Mindstorms 2.0 Ballshooter Question

I just purchased a LEGO NXT 2.0 kit for my son for Christmas and have - unfortunately - run into my first issue. We built the 'simplest' robot listed on the disc that came with the set, the crawler track 'ball shooter'. After successfully assembling the unit with the color and ultrasonic sensors, we carefully went through the programming tutorial.

When we download the program onto the NXT 'brick' it downloads successfully and shows as in 'my programs' (ballshooter 2.0). When I activate the program to 'run' the icon 'spins' on the brick... but the unit just sits there and does not move. I have tried running the 'demo' program and that works fine, the tracks run and the servo motor that contols the ball shooter moves as it should.

I am suspecting I did something incorrect in the programming, but and gone through and checked it repeatedly and cannot find my error. So I am stumped. Help!

My son has been incredibly patent since Christmas day, and we seem to be unable to get our first robot going... I am hopeful someone on the forum can help!

Thanks in advance for any assistance, and Happy Holidays!

If you posted your code, I could probably figure out what's wrong with it.

Can you post a picture of the program you're trying to use?

One idea to help you debug your program is to add "display" blocks, and have different pictures show up in different parts of the program. So, the first picture may be a smilie face, and the second a thumbs-up.

These will be kind of fun for your son, because he can pick out the pictures, and together you can see which pictures show up on the display.

If one picture stays on the display, the problem is somewhere after that block.

Hope that helps.

Steve

inxt-generation... can you walk me through how to post the code and photos of the robot? I will gladly get both up ASAP!

Thank you

hassenplug: thank you for the idea of using objects to help find issues in the code. Is there a tutorial somewhere so I could learn how to do this?

Thanks!

kartman01 wrote:can you walk me through how to post the code and photos of the robot?

Certainly!!

To display your pictures, you'll have to have them hosted on a external website (such as Brickshelf or Flickr), and then use the tags with a direct link to the photo in them to have them here.

How to upload your program:



Choose the file to upload. Then upload it.



Does that explain your questions?

kartman01 wrote:hassenplug: thank you for the idea of using objects to help find issues in the code. Is there a tutorial somewhere so I could learn how to do this?

In this case, it's pretty simple. You put move blocks into your program, right? There is also a display block that puts stuff on the NXT screen. The software comes with a bunch of pictures that you can select from.

Put one of those blocks at the very beginning of your program. Then, you can insert those into your program in other places, and see what comes up.

Steve

inxt-generation, thanks for the info, however some key images didn't load on the forum, so I can see whatever they were explaning... can you email me directly at [email protected]?

Or perhaps try to re-post?

Thanks!

Hmm, that's odd. I don't know why it wouldn't display them. It worked fine on other computers here. Anyway, I've attached a file with the images.

inxt-generation, here is the program I wrote based on the 'Shooterbot' tutorial.

I will add some photos of the shooterbot we built as well.

Thanks in advance for your help in checking my programming