Possible simple file to run from EV3 without MQTT?

[jessephillips]

Again, maybe this is a dumb question. If it is, PLEASE PLEASE forgive me!!!
I think it would be helpful to newbs like me to have a file I can run on the EV3 to test the machinery without having to also get MQTT up and running. Maybe this is asking too much. I'm am currently stuck because my ev3 battery is charging. But, before this project was updated, and I was stuck on RPyC, I remember thinking I would LOVE it if there was a simple file I could run on the EV3 to test the machine itself. I'm just saying, once you assemble the machine, it would be nice to run a little program on ev3 and watch all of the parts working together. Something that would run the motors and just ignore the camera aspect. Here are the benefits:

1. It gives closure to the first step: building the machine. You built the machine, you connected it to your EV3 BUT you're still fumbling around with the Raspi, you're still 3d printing the camera holder, your lights haven't come yet from China, etc. It would be GREAT to build the machine and test it with some semi-accurate motor code - so it's doing things semi-close to what it will soon be doing with all the software connected.

2. It will allow you to fiddle with the little arms that need adjusting to see if it's putting only one lego in front of where the camera. Independent of getting ssh & MQTT setup

3. Let's you test the mechanics of the rest - are the gears working properly, am I running into issues with the turn-table?

So: if there was a machine_test.py file or something like that, that I could simply transfer over to my Ev3 from the USB cable, that would be awesome, in my humble opinion. And it would be really easy to make, right? Maybe I should read the code and understand it enough to suggest such a test file so you (Peter) don't have to waste time on that?

[jessephillips]

Forgive me if this is a waste of your time. Please let me know if I'm being too verbose and I should just make these things shorter, so as to be less annoying.

[pbackx]

Don't worry. I may need a bit of time, but I don't mind answering.

[pbackx]

If you want to test the machine, you can copy parts of the code in the main.py file into a separate file.

I would suggest that you check out some general Python3 tutorials and the ev3 dev documentation. For instance, this Python tutorial:
https://github.com/ev3dev/ev3dev-lang-python

A very minimal program to get something running would like as follows:

from ev3dev2.motor import OUTPUT_A, MediumMotor, SpeedPercent
from time import sleep

camera_belt = MediumMotor(OUTPUT_A)
camera_belt.on(SpeedPercent(70))
sleep(2)
camera_belt.stop()

I am not sure if I will document all of this.
This is not a plug and plan solution (yet?) and I am pretty sure you'll need to make some adjustments to the code that is going to follow later, so understanding the code, at least at a basic level, will be extremely helpful. I may add some comments in the future to the code to make it easier to understand.

[jessephillips]

Yes, good point!