A choice of coding platforms
All the benefits of LEGO® Education solutions
Discover LEGO® Education Solutions- 3rd party support - MINDSTORMS Education EV3
LEGO® MINDSTORMS Education EV3 compatibility
Swift Playgrounds
Swift Playgrounds is a revolutionary app for iPad that makes learning Swift interactive and fun. It requires no coding knowledge, so it is perfect for students just starting out. With Swift Playgrounds students can code and interact with their LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 creations’ motors and sensors. Teachers can also use the free EV3 Animal Rescue Book, a lesson plan designed to teach how to code MINDSTORMS creations with real Swift code. The EV3 Animal Rescue Book engages and motivates students to solve a real-world problem as they help an injured robotic turtle move and interact with its surroundings.
CoderZ
Teachers can extend their LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 activities with the CoderZ online 3D simulation environment. Students can program their EV3 platform using either a Blockly code editor or Java code, making the experience a great fit for beginners and experts alike.
Microsoft MakeCode
Students can program their LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 with the MakeCode platform which communicates with the EV3 Brick via USB cable and offers both block and text editors to support learners at different coding proficiency levels. With the included simulator, students can tinker with their code, get instant feedback on how their program is running and debug the code before applying it to the EV3 brick. Students new to coding can start with colored blocks that they can drag and drop onto their workspace to construct their programs and when ready, move into a full-featured JavaScript editor with code snippets, tooltips, and error detection to help them along the way.
- Firmware Update
- Firmware Update through EV3 Device Manager
- Getting started
- Block-based coding and Simulation
- Text-based coding
- Tips and tricks
Scratch 3.0
LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 is compatible with Scratch 3.0, the next generation of Scratch. Scratch 3.0 expands how, what, and where you can create with Scratch. New tutorials using Scratch 3.0 with LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 are also available.
ROBOTC
ROBOTC is a cross-robotics platform C-Based programming language for educational robotics systems.
Open Roberta Lab®:
The Open Roberta Lab offers visual programming for LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 (as well as NXT and WeDo 2.0). The cloud-based solution is completely open source, free and adheres to the strict data protection guidelines of the EU. The Open Roberta platform communicates with the EV3 brick via Wifi and USB cable and is available in 14 languages. The Open Roberta Lab also comes with an integrated 2D-Simulation which minimizes hurdles for teachers and schools and makes it easy to integrate coding into the classroom. It is based on the universal programming language NEPO®® that can also be shown as Java, Python and C code. Open Roberta is developed by Fraunhofer IAIS as part of the largest organisation for applied research in Europe.
Python
LEGO MINDSTORMS Education EV3 uses MicroPython to unleash the power of Python programming. MicroPython is an optimized Python version for micro controllers and the skills learned with MicroPython can be directly used within Python programming. The coding editor used for this experience is the well-known Visual Studio Code from Microsoft. It is free for download to both Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. In the Visual Studio Code marketplace the user can find an EV3 MicroPython extension developed by LEGO Education. This extension provides all the needed code and commands to efficiently program the EV3 Brick. The experience requires the use of a Micro SD card in order to run the EV3 MicroPython image on the EV3 Brick. The experience comes with a Getting Started guide that includes installation set-up, get started help, code documentation and sample programs