April 1st, 2017  | Kaitlyn Straub

        The Sphero SPRK is a ball shaped robot which can be controlled through a 

Bluetooth app on a smartphone or tablet.  In the app, you can control the Sphero like

a remote controlledtoy car or use coding to program Sphero's actions.

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        The app for Sphero is called Lightening Lab.  In the app,you can complete 

activities, create programs for the ball, or just drive it around.  When you are program,

you can choose from three formats: draw, blocks and text.  

Draw:

        In draw, a grid is displayed which you can freely draw on.  When the "start button is pressed,

the robot will follow exactly what you drew.  You can draw lines for the ball to follow or just dots which the ball will recognize as travel points.  The speed which the lines are drawn also indicate the speed of

the ball.

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Blocks:

        You can choose from a large set of actions, controls, and mathematical operations which are drag and dropped into a program.  Each action or control has to be manually imputed with information about what the programmer wants the ball to do.  For example: the roll action requires the duration of the action in seconds, the speed, and the direction the ball is heading in angle degrees.; a spin control requires how many degrees the ball will spin, and for how long (in seconds).  For a little more advanced programming, you can individually control speed, stabilization, aim, and the left and right motor power to create more specific lines and curves.  Some other fun programmable actions in blocks includes setting or changing the light colour, dding sounds of a variety of animals, effects, mechanical noises, and "personalities" (what a robot would sound like if they were happy, sad, confused, etc., very similar sounds to the ones made by R2D2 and BB-8 in Star Wars) and even custom text to talk.  You can also add math equations to each setting such as setting the speed to 255-75.  Operations that can be used include addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, exponents, square roots, rounding up, down, or to the nearest.  Other programming options are creating code "if, then" statements such as "if speed is > 100, then spin 360".

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Text:

For more advanced users, text requires programmers to actually wright html code for the ball.  For example:

{

setRBGLed (0, 0, 255);

controlSystemTargetSpeed = 60;

delay (1)

controlSystemTargetSpeeed = 0;

setRBGLed (255, 0, 0)

}

The code exampled above tells the Sphero to set the colour to blue, roll at speed 60 or one second then stop and change the colour to red.

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        For primary grades I using the blocks method promotes math skills by learning time and speed as well as angles.  Additionally, you can also add in addition and subtraction operations into their programming.

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        All programs can be saved to individual profiles and shared between users.  You can see what other people have recently done with their Sphero's and even share pictures and write posts on things you have done.

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        Additionally, the app Lightening LAB allows teachers to create an educators account which they can then use to set up a class and student accounts.  Once a class it set up, teachers can assign projects and tasks to students and view their progress on their account.

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Check out The Shpero website:

Sphero.com

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