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How to Get Mindstorm to Follow Sound

The Lego Mindstorms set has a number of sensors included in it, including the sound sensor that can be used to respond to sound stimuli. Learning to program a Lego Mindstorms robot is done with drag-and-drop software. Programming the robot to follow a sound does take some programming experience with the software, because it is a fairly advanced program, but once you learn it you can program the robot to move how you want it to.

Instructions

- 1
  Build a Tribot from the manual or a robot with two motors, treads or wheels and the sound sensor.
- 2
  Connect the robot to the computer using a USB cable or the Bluetooth chip on your computer.
- 3
  Open the Mindstorms programming software and begin a new program. The software is included with the Mindstorms kit, and it will present you with a blank sequence beam on which you can write a new program.
- 4
  Program the robot to spin in a slow circle by dragging and dropping "Move" blocks to have one motor in one direction and the other motor in the opposite direction. Use the configuration panel at the bottom of the screen to set the speeds to be the same, just in different directions. Set the robot to stop moving when a sensor reacts.
- 5
  Drag and drop a "Wait" block onto the sequence beam, and set it to pick up the sound sensor. Use the configuration panel to set the sensor as sensitive as you think it needs to be, bearing in mind any background noise that may be in the room.
- 6
  Drag "Move" blocks into the sequence beam, and set them to move both motors forward using the configuration panel. This programs the robot to stop turning because of a sound, and start rolling forward.
- 7
  Drag and drop a "Loop" block onto the sequence beam. Set the "Loop" block around the rest of your program so if the robot stops hearing sound it goes back to turning and scanning for sound.

Construction Toys