To turn on EV3, insert the batteries (or the battery pack in the case of the Education set) and then simply press the Enter (center) button. The LEDs light up red, and the LCD displays MINDSTORMS Starting.... Once EV3 has finished booting up (which can take up to 30 seconds), the LEDs turn green, a small welcome sound is played, and the top-level menu is displayed.
EV3's menu consists of a top bar and a larger bottom section. The top bar displays information about the EV3 and is visible in all the menus. It displays the connection status of the device (USB, Bluetooth, and/or Wi-Fi) and the charge remaining in the battery.
The top-level menu has four tabs. You can navigate between them using the Right and Left buttons. The Up and Down buttons help you to move between items in the current tab. Press Enter to choose an item and press Back to go back one level in the menu hierarchy. The four tabs are discussed in the following sections.
The Recent Programs tab shows a list of the recently executed programs, as shown in the following figure. To run a program, simply navigate to it using the Up and Down buttons and press Enter. Pressing Back exits the program:
The File Browser tab shows the directory structure of the brick. Use the Enter key to expand a folder and show its contents. Audio files can be played and programs can be executed by navigating to them and pressing the Enter key. If the EV3 is connected to a computer, it will ask you whether a program should be executed or copied to the computer. The following figure shows the File Browser tab selected and displaying the contents of the brick:
The Apps tab shows a list of the applications currently installed on the EV3. The following image is of a Home set and contains an IR Control application that is used to interface with the IR remote controller.
The Port View application allows you to view data from sensors in real time. The Motor Control application can be used to control motors directly, and the Brick Program application can be used to program your robot on the brick itself.
These applications are an excellent means of learning about EV3 and its components. We will cover them in greater detail in Chapter 2, Sensors and Motors, and Chapter 3, EV3 Brick Programming.
The last tab is Settings. You can use it to change the speaker volume, the length of time that has to elapse before the EV3 turns itself off (to conserve battery power), to enable/disable Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and to get information about the brick, such as hardware, OS versions, and the amount of free memory remaining, as shown in the following screenshot:
To turn off EV3, press the Back button repeatedly until you arrive at the first tab of the top-level menu. Pressing Back once again will display a prompt, asking the user whether they want to power off the device. Select the tick icon for yes and EV3 will shut down. Similar to any computer, it will take a few seconds to do so.