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LEGO MINDSTORMS EV3 is awesome... ev3dev is SUPER awesome!
ev3dev is many things...
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If you are like us, you have probably found that while the software that comes with the EV3 is great, it just doesn't do quite everything you would like it to.
We have rebuilt much of the software for the EV3 from the ground up. We have created our own hardware drivers using sysfs so that you can easily program the EV3 using any programming language. It is as easy as reading from and writing to a file.
This also means that ev3dev is NOT compatible with most other EV3 software and tools.
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Think of it as dual boot. ev3dev is installed and runs on a microSD card and does not touch the existing firmware in your EV3. To run ev3dev, just insert a microSD card with ev3dev installed and boot your EV3. To boot from the firmware, just power off and remove the microSD card.
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We have taken the Linux kernel from LEGO, updated it to v3.16 and enabled many hardware drivers. This means support for lots of Wi-Fi dongles, Bluetooth gamepads and keyboards, USB audio device and more. If your hardware works on Linux, it will probably work with ev3dev.
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The ARM9 processor in the EV3 is one of the Debian supported architectures. This means most of the 37500+ Debian software packages will run on your EV3
- no compiling necessary. Installing a package is as simple as
sudo apt-get install package-name.
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The ev3dev drivers will run on any Linux. This means you can use LEGO MINDSTORMS and LEGO WEDO sensors and motors with anything that runs Linux, from your desktop to you Raspberry Pi.
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This is by no mean a polished product yet. But don't let that scare you away - it is very usable. You can help make it better.
ev3dev can...
- Solve a Rubik's Cube
- Catch a ball
- Speak with an accent
- Attend quarterly meetings
- Draw a dinosaur
- Use WeDo sensors and motors
- Do just about anything you can imagine...
First, you need to download and install the latest image file on a microSD card. Check out the Getting Started page for step-by-step instructions. Or, if you are not using ev3dev with an EV3, check out the DKMS driver package.
Then, you can write a program however you like. You can use just about anything with a SSH client - Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS, Blackberry, etc. The docs page has information about how to use the drivers and has links to libraries contributed by users for some programming languages.
If you need some ideas, check out the projects on our Share page. If you get stuck, check out the Get Help page.