Damien Kee, a VEX IQ and EV3 Super User, has created another cool project! This time he used one of his kids toys, the Tumble Bug Ball Drop, to test out how often the ball comes out of the left foot / right foot with a 50% probability. Damien says, “My boys got this toy for Christmas one year and I thought I’d put together a little device to check the probability of how it works. I used Ultrasonic Sensors with the EV3 and Colour Sensors (Proximity mode) with the IQ to keep track every time a ball went through the toy…. This would make a great experiment to run in class, not just with the Tumble Bug but all different types of kids toys.” We couldn’t agree more!

Damien used the VEX IQ and LEGO EV3 programmed in ROBOTC to run his tests. The programs figure out the percentage and display them on screen. Here is a full breakdown video of how the project was done …

Not only does this project allow for the practice of programming, but it gives the opportunity to assess variables when determining the results. Damien says:

“What I love about doing these sort of extended investigations in class, is that rather than being a final conclusion, this now opens up a huge range of other questions and scenarios that you can test.

Why was there a difference?

Was the table level?

Do the different balls have an impact?

Does the placement speed in the mouth affect the results?”

Want to try it out yourself? Here are the code files Damien used:

EV3 ROBOTC – EV3_tumblrbug.c

VEX IQ ROBOTC – tumblrbug_VEX.c

To see the hardware setup and find out the final results, check out his full blog here – Testing the Tumblebug (EV3 and VEX IQ)

Do you have a cool ROBOTC project you want to share with the world? If so, send us an email at socialmedia@robomatter.com and we’ll post it on our blog and social media pages!