Tutorial Details:
Difficulty Level: Basic
Topics Covered: Basic motor commands for Mindscript.
Assumed Knowledge: THe Basics, my first program
Written By: BILL LANE

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In My First Program we saw how easy it was to make our robot move. In this tutorial we want to take things a bit further. We'll be looking at all the basics of movement. Moving forward, stopping, reversing, amd we'll also spend some time improving our turns. To start with let's have a look at our original script:

program myFirst
{

   output left on 1

   main
   {

      on [left]
   }

}

There are a few things we'll want to take note of in this context. The first is the output left on 1. Here we're telling the program that we'll be using output 1 and that we'll be calling it left. In Mindscript it is essential that you declare any outputs (or inputs) before you use them.

The second thing to note is within the main command block, which is where we'll be putting all our commands for today. It quite simply says on[left], and it turns on the motor called left. Note the square brackets around the output name. You need to use these if you want to control more than one output at a time (e.g you wanted to turn on left and right). While the brackets were no essential in this example, they are a good habit to maintain. Here's the example modified to run both motors (and therefore move forward):

program myFirst
{

   output left on 1
   output right on 2

   main
   {
      on [left right]
   }

}

N.B. The use of square brackets is quite different from NQC where you would use round braces "( )". Also note the absence of a semi-colon after the command to seperate different commands, which is required in NQC.

This is great! Now if only it would stop! We can stop it easily enough using Off. But if we use it as the next command then it will turn on and then turn off again straight away and we won't see much of anything. Therefore, we would like it to pause between commands so we can see it move. We do this using Wait:

on[left right]
wait 100
off[left right]

The number after wait indicates how long to wait. It is stated in 100ths of a second (i.e 100 = 1 second, 200 = 2 seconds). So in our example the robot will move forward for 1 second and then stop. Mindscript also offers a simpler version of this sequence. We can use on for, it looks like this:

on [left right] for 100

This will produce exactly the same result as the previous sequence of commands. The next thing we'd like to be able to do is to change direction. We can do this by using forward or backward to set the motors direction. It looks like this:

on[left right]
wait 100
backward [left right]
wait 100
off [left right]

Both backward and forward have abbreviated forms that work just as well; for forward use fd; for backward use bk. It is also possible to replace off with float. Off creates a sudden braked stop while float allows the robot to coast to a halt.

At the start I mentioned that we'd look at a better turn. The original turn used only one motor and produces a slow jerky turn. But we can produce a much better turn by using two motors. We simply need to get our motors to run in opposite directions. Heres the code:

fd[left]
bk[right]
on [left right] for 100

To make it turn in the opposite direction we could use reverse. In NQC reverse tells the motor to go backwards. But in Mindscript reverse tells the motor to go in the opposite direction. Which means if we use it at the end of our left-hand spin; our forward motor will go backwards and; our backwards motor will go forwards. The end result being a right - hand spin. Try this:

fd [ left ]
bk [ right ]
on [ left right ]
wait 100
reverse [ left right ]
wait 100
off [ left right ]

We can simplify the first two lines of our code using direction (abrreviated form dir ). Direction allows us to set the direction of more than one motor at a time, by listing them after the command name. The first output named will go forward and the second output named will go backward. Allowing us to replace the top two lines of the previous code block as follows:

dir left right

We can also use direction to set both motors forward or backward as in the following examples:

dir [left right] [ ]   //both motors forward
dir [ ] [left right]   //both motors backward

Substituting that into our code heres the completed script for moving our robot forward for 1 second, backwards for 1 second, spin left for 1 second, spin right for one second:

program test{

output left on 1
output right on 2

main{
  dir [left right] [ ]
  on [ left right ] for 100
  dir [ ] [left right]
  on [ left right ] for 100
  dir left right
  on [ left right ] for 100
  reverse [left right]
  on [ left right ] for 100
}

}

Mindscript offers us even more scope for controlling our Spybots movement by using some of it's built into programs. But that's a bit beyond the scope of a Basic tutorial. Have a look in the Intermediate topics to learn more about controlling you Spybot's movement.