Blink and Move at the Same Time
In this lesson, you will learn how to make the robot blink its light while it moves by using the blinkLEDNB block. This video shows how the “NB” version lets the robot blink and do other things at the same time. You will also learn how to use the blinkWait block to make sure the blinking finishes before the program ends.  

 

 

1. Blinking and Moving at the Same Time with the blinkLEDNB Block

The blinkLED block makes the robot’s light blink on and off. This works on both virtual robots and physical Linkbot robots. But, the robot can only blink or move, one at a time. When you use the blinkLED block, RoboBlocky waits for the blinking to finish before doing anything else, like in Example 1. This is called a blocking block. It blocks the next part of the program from running until it is done.

If you want the robot to blink and move at the same time, you need to use a special block called blinkLEDNB. The “NB” stands for non-blocking. This means it does not wait. The robot starts blinking and keeps going with the next block right away. This lets the robot blink its light while it drives or does other things.

The blinkLEDNB block has three inputs. The first tells how long the light should be on in seconds, the second tells how long it should be off in seconds, and the third tells how many times to blink. By default, the light stays on for one second, off for one second, and the robot blinks two times.

The order of the blocks in your code matters. If you want the robot to blink while it drives, put a blinkLEDNB block before any movement blocks, like driveDistance. That way, the blinking starts first, and the robot moves while blinking.

If your program ends before the blinking is done, the blinking will stop early. To fix this, you can add a blinkWait block at the end of your code. You can see this block in Examples 2 and 3. This tells RoboBlocky to wait until the blinking finishes before ending the program.

You cannot change the color of the light while the robot is blinking. So if you want the robot to blink a certain color, use a setLEDColor block before a blinkLEDNB block.