RWTH - Mindstorms EV3 Toolbox for MATLAB

Hello, fellow LEGO constructors and MATLAB programmers, welcome to the RWTH - Mindstorms EV3 Toolbox for MATLAB!

This toolbox was designed to simplify controlling LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 robots live using MATLAB. Via Bluetooth or USB you can easily read sensor values or control your robots’ motors. You can choose to either work on a high level, with a virtual twin of your EV3, or follow the EV3's firmware specification by sending commands directly.

This toolbox is being developed at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. It is the successor of the RWTH - Mindstorms NXT Toolbox. Amongst other applications, it is used in the yearly lab exercise "MATLAB meets LEGO Mindstorms" by more than 400 students in the first year of their Eletrical Engineering curriculum at RWTH Aachen University

To get started, take a look at the installation instructions and examples below.

License

This software is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1 (LGPL 2.1).

This software is based on the QUT EV3 MATLAB Toolkit by Peter Corke et al. of Queensland University.
Source: https://github.com/petercorke/robotics-toolbox-matlab/tree/master/interfaces/EV3

The QUT EV3 MATLAB Toolkit is part of the Robotics Toolbox for MATLAB, see:
https://github.com/petercorke/robotics-toolbox-matlab/
P. Corke, "Robotics, Vision & Control: Fundamental Algorithms in Matlab", Springer, 2011, ISBN 978-3-642-20143

This software uses the HIDAPI library by Alan Ott, Signal 11 Software, see https://github.com/signal11/hidapi

How to cite

If you want to cite this software, you can use the following bibtex snippet:

@Misc{rwthmindstormsev3toolbox,
  author       = {Atorf, L. and Sondermann, B. and Stadtmann, T. and Rossmann, J.},
  title        = {RWTH - Mindstorms EV3 Toolbox},
  year         = {2018},
  version      = {1.0},
  organization = {Institute for Man-Machine Interaction, RWTH Aachen University},
  url          = {https://git.rwth-aachen.de/mindstorms/ev3-toolbox-matlab}
}

Prerequisites

If you use Windows, you will need to have the Instrument Control Toolbox installed for USB to work properly.

This toolbox has been developed and tested on MATLAB 2014a/2016a, on Windows 7/10 and Ubuntu 14.04/16.04. If you encounter problems using other configurations, feel free to contact us.

The EV3's firmware version needs to be updated to 1.09, bugs and unsuspected behaviour have been encountered when we used older versions.

Installation

In most cases, you will only need to download the toolbox and add its path to your MATLAB search path. ('Set path' -> 'Add with subfolders')

If you use a Linux system and connecting via Bluetooth does not work, you can try to manually install the HIDAPI, an API for communication with HID devices, which this toolbox uses for Bluetooth connection on Linux - a prebuilt version is delivered with the toolbox. HIDAPI can be installed using the official repositories of your distribution or built on your own.

Examples

Before you can try out the following example, you will need to have your EV3 connected to your PC via Bluetooth or USB. If you use a Linux system and want to try out Bluetooth, we suggest you use the 'btconnect'-script you find in 'Tools'. It is a commandline script which aims to make pairing with the brick more easy. The syntax is 'btconnect brickName' (you can read the name of your EV3 at the top of its display - it should be EV3 by default).

% This example expects a motor at port A and a (random) sensor at port 1
b = EV3();
b.connect('usb'); % OR: b.connect('bt');
ma = b.motorA;
ma.setProperties('power', 50, 'limitValue', 720);
ma.start();
% fun
ma.waitFor();
disp(b.sensor1.value);
b.beep();
b.disconnect();

You can find more information on the toolbox functions/classes either by using help classname.functionname and doc classname.functionname in your MATLAB editor (the .functionname is optional), or in the PDF/HTML documentation inside the subfolder docs.

Building the documentation

The documentation is built using Sphinx and several extensions: matlabdomain, Napoleon and Sphinx Bootstrap Theme.

In order to setup your PC for building the documentation from the comments, you need to install these. Using Ubuntu, you can use the following instructions (for other distros/OS's checkout the websites above):

sudo apt-get install python-sphinx
pip install sphinxcontrib-napoleon
pip install -U sphinxcontrib-matlabdomain
pip install sphinx_bootstrap_theme

Note: If you get 'permission-denied' errors on the pip install lines, try adding '--user your_username' to each pip install line.

You also need to setup your latex parser if you want Sphinx to generate pdfs:

sudo apt install texlive-latex-base
sudo apt install texlive-latex-extra

The build process for different outputs/platforms is controlled with a Makefile. In the doc-directory, use the following commands to generate html or pdf files. Other targets have not been tested.

make html
make latexpdf

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Tim Stadtmann for his effort and perseverance.

Disclaimer

This site is neither affiliated with nor endorsed by the LEGO Group. LEGO, MINDSTORMS, NXT, and EV3 are registered trademarks of the LEGO Group.