Sound – Make some noise!
INTRO AND LEARNING GOALS
Get your robot to play sound effects, music or even your voice! In this tutorial, we’ll explore how we can use the Sound block in our program.- Understand how to program your robot to play one of the LEGO Education sound effects
- Record and program your robot to play your voice
- Program your robot to play music
- Investigate the possibilities of using sound with your robot
THE POWER OF SOUND!
Getting the robot to play sound is a great way to add character and entertainment to your robot… and it’s really satisfying! It can be quite noisy on a Friday afternoon! Once you introduce students to sound – there is no going back! You have been warned! 🙂LET’S GET PROGRAMMING…
Use the Sound block to get the robot playing sounds and talking. The Sound block is a very straightforward block. It is very similar on both the Desktop and Tablet versions of Mindstorms – so the video just shows it on the Tablet…THE DIFFERENCE WITH THE DESKTOP VERSION…
There is not a huge difference, but I would hate you to miss out on the Sound editing:
Simply go to the Tools menu and select Sound Editor:
Then the Sound Editor will appear. It works in exactly the same way as the Tablet version – check out the video above.
When you want to add it in the Desktop version (very similar to the Tablet Video) simply click in the top right of the Sound Block and you will see that the name you gave the file is listed there – ‘ColinSound’
If you have created a sound recording of your own outside of Mindstorms, the easiest way to get it on to your EV3 is to use the above method to record the sound.
SOME TEACHING THOUGHTS… from Colin
- By default, the Sound block is ready to play one of the LEGO sound effects – choose the effect by clicking in the top right of the Sound block.
- In a noisy room, you probably want to set the volume to 100% – you should also set the volume on the brick itself in the ‘spanner’ tab.
- The noise of the motors can drown out the sound. You can put the speaker towards your ear but beware of spinning motors with long hair and ties!
ROBOT WORKOUT (WHERE NEXT?)
- Explore the different types of sound available – we’ve worked with musically talented students who’ve loved creating a tune using Play Note.
- You can add other sound files – exciting music maybe.
- Develop programs where a sound is played in response to your robot completing a task – maybe in response to a sensor being activated.
- Investigate how sounds can be played at the same time as other actions are happening – everyone loves a bit of multi-tasking!
