Brick in the Cloud

The Lego Machine Cloud Project

Category Archives: EV3 Programming


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EV3 Machine Cloud Software Uploaded

I’ve now uploaded the binary Java Archive (JAR) for the EV3 control software, as well as the Force.com software in AppExchange packaged form. These coupled with the required hardware and installation of LeJOS, is all you need to control your EV3 creations from Salesforce. You don’t need to be a developer, but quite competent with installing tools and following technical instructions. I’ve written up some instructions as follows, enjoy!

  1. Setup your EV3 as described here, confirm LeJOS is installed and you can see the menu. It must also be connected properly to your Wifi. This can be a challenge sometimes, but there is an excellent LeJOS forum here!
  2. Install the Machine Cloud package, this provides the Robot, Command and Program objects used to control the robot and connect it to Salesforce, using the Pairing process, more on this later. You can learn more about these objects and how to use them in my session video. The package install link is here, after installing…
    1. Got to Setup and under Connected Apps, edit the EV3Force Pairing app
    2. Select ‘Admin approved users are pre-authorised‘ and press Save
    3. Add your profile to the list of permitted profiles, by scrolling down and selecting Manage Profiles
  3. Got to the Robots tab and create a new record, name does not matter, after saving the record you should see a prompt to enter a Pin number (if you don’t check step 2 sub-steps). Leave this for now open.
  4. Download the ev3force.jar file from here and copy to the EV3 robot using the EV3Control tool, as described here (if you have a problem running the EV3 tools on your Mac/PC check the LeJOS forum).
  5. Run the ev3force.jar program on the EV3 using the LeJOS menu on the device, after a while you should see a Pin number on the screen. Go back to the Robot record you created in step 3 and enter the Pin number. Your device will then be paired with the org.
  6. Go ahead and create a Command record, to switch on the robots LED for example, more examples are in my video.

 

Refer to my Dreamforce 2015 slide deck for further screenshots and instructions and also my video. Finally please feel free to ask questions here or preferably i can offer help via the GitHub Issues page here.

IMPORTANT NOTE: I will also in due course upload the source code for both Java and Apex code, in the meantime, here is a quick Gist of the EV3 Java code. Note also that their is a pairing aspect to this, currently hosted on Heroku, this can be shared by all robots using the code above. Though please use only developer or test/play orgs with this service.

 

 


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Declarative Robot Programming via Salesforce on your Mobile with Salesforce1

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20131119-081643.jpgThe Lego MachineCloud project has received a massive boost in the form of two great technologies from Lego and Salesforce! I’m so pleased to confirm that my test to get the Salesforce Streaming API working on the EV3 has been a raving success! This technology allows the robot to be highly responsive to commands from Salesforce, including the hugely exciting brand new Salesforce1 mobile app.

Having uploaded the required Java libraries to the brick and adapted some Java code from a previous project. I then extended the Force.com objects I created for the previous robot to create a more “declarative” programming approach. That can be driven by Command records created by the user in the latest Salesforce user web and mobile interfaces!

Streaming Commands from the Force.com Machine Cloud

robotHere you can see a screenshot of the Robot record showing a list of commands that it has executed, note the New Command button! Simply click this button and select the type of command you want, hit Save and often before the screen can even refresh the EV3 will get the streaming API event notification and perform the command! I literally lept up from my chair the first time it did this. I’ve uploaded the source code to the project to GitHub, feel free to take a look and see how its all done!

Declarative Robot Programming via your Mobile!

programI have extended the Robot and Command objects with another object called Program. This is a container for multiple Command records, allowing you to design a program in the Salesforce UI and then create a single Command record to execute that Program!

mobilecommand

Having updated my version of the Salesforce mobile app, now known as Salesforce1, i quickly found that my Command object is now also available in this application. Within a few taps my EV3 was now also responding to commands sent via my phone! Now that is a true “No Software” reality! Amazing stuff Salesforce!

Dreamforce

I’ll be bringing the robot you see in the video to Dreamforce with me next week, where I cannot wait to see what people think of this approach to programming the EV3 in the “Internet of Things Lab” session. Its a basic framework at this stage but the potential is huge for having Robot’s socialise (from all over the world!) on the Salesforce “Machine Cloud” platform. See you at Dreamforce next week!

Brief Demo Video


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Programming the new Lego Mindstorms EV3!

EV3RSTORMI’ve finally got my hands on the next generation of Lego programmable bricks, the Lego Mindstorms EV3. It has a number significant improvements over the NXT shown in my previous posts. Most notably for me is the improved processor and the fact that it actually runs Linux, not only that but Lego have shared the source code to the firmware as well! Bravo Lego!

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It has only been out a short while and already it has been embraced by the community and a surprise corporate interest from none other than Oracle themselves! I  wanted to try Java on the last brick, but read that it had a number of limitations and caveats. Not so with the EV3, Oracle have provided a fully fledge Embedded version of their JVM for use on the brick, more on this in a moment! Thank you!

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I also of course needed to get the brick talking to the internet, once again the EV3’s improvements gave it big step forward from the rather large third party Wifi receiver I found for the last robot. This time, its time to plug in the worlds smallest Wifi USB dongle, the Edimax EW-7811Un (note this does not work with the standard Lego software currently)! Check it out its tiny, ideal for cloud enabling robots!

Finally a Micro SD card slot gives the ability for extra storage, as well is the ability to create a bootable partition on it. Meaning you don’t have to replace the standard firmware to get started, just build an appropriately formatted and configured SD card image (not quite as easy at present as you’d imagine, but worth the effort!) and the device boots from that if installed.

lejosLogoThis is exactly how the clever developers at leJOS have provided a toolkit to run the Oracle JVM with the appropriate configuration to run regular Java code! With a little help from Juan Antonio Breña Moral and his website on EV3 programming. I was also soon up and running with a pretty slick Eclipse based devleopment environment and a deployment script taking the otherwise heavily clicky task of pushing the code to the device down to a matter of a few seconds using an Ant script. Next step Salesforce connectivity! I’d settle for nothing less than using the Salesforce Streaming API for this robot, and I was not to be disappointed…

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