Discovery · Coding Project 1

Wake Up Your Wombat

Get your robot's brain powered on, connected, and running its first program.

Student PIN:

Project: Coding Project 1
Strand: Coding
Phase: Get Connected
Time: One class period
What You Are Doing: Powering on the Wombat, connecting your computer to it, and running a program that is already written for you.
Before You Start: Nothing. This is the first project.
What You Need: Wombat
Battery
Charger
Your computer or Chromebook
This project sheet

Before you start: type your PIN in the box at the top of the page. Your teacher gave you this number. When you finish, press Submit & Download to turn in your work and save a copy.

Try It — Meet the Machine

Before you turn anything on, look closely at your . It is a small computer, and it is about to become the brain of your robot.

Find each part below. Check the box when you have found it.

The power switch — on the side, right next to the battery cable
The yellow battery connectors — one on the battery, one on the Wombat
The touchscreen — this is where the Wombat shows you things
The USB — on the side
The motor ports — you will use these later
The red power light and the yellow light next to it

⚠ You Are In Charge of This Battery

The battery can be ruined permanently if it is treated badly. These rules are not suggestions.

Use only the charger that came with your controller.
Never leave a battery charging unattended.
Charge in a cool, open space — away from anything that can burn.
When you are finished for the day: turn the Wombat off, then unplug the battery.

If you leave the battery plugged in and the Wombat switched on, the battery will drain so far that it can never be charged again.

Why do you think leaving the battery plugged in overnight would be worse than leaving a phone plugged in overnight?

Learn It — How You Talk to a Robot

You will not write your programs on the Wombat itself. You will write them on your own computer, in a web browser such as Chrome, Edge, or Safari — and then send them over to the Wombat.

For that to work, your computer and the Wombat have to be on the same network. So the Wombat makes its own.

The Big Idea

Your Wombat creates its own small Wi-Fi network, like a tiny hotspot. Your computer joins that network. Then your browser can reach the Wombat’s programming tools.

Two numbers you will need

Every device on a network has an . Think of it as a building address — it tells your browser which machine to talk to.

But a single machine can run many different services at once. So you also need a — think of it as which door to knock on. For the Wombat’s programming tools, that door is always 8888.

You put them together with a colon between them, like this:

192.168.125.1:8888
   ↑              ↑
which machine   which door

The Wombat makes its own network, and on that network its address is usually the same on every robot — it is the port that never changes at all. Check yours anyway and write it down; if your Wombat is joined to a school network instead, the address will be different.

What you will see

Once you get there, you will be looking at the — the place where you write code, check it, and send it to the robot.

In your own words: what is the difference between an IP address and a port number?

Do It — Get Connected

Work through these in order. Check each one off as you finish it.

Step 1 — Power on

Use only the power supply that came with your controller.

Flip the black power switch on the side of the Wombat. Wait for the home screen to appear.

Home screen is showing

Step 2 — Find your network information

On the Wombat’s screen, tap About. Look for the rows labeled SSID, Password, and Wi-Fi. Write them on your card below — you will need them every time.

If the Wi-Fi line is blank

This is a known problem on older Wombat software. The real fix is to update the Wombat (instructions are at kipr.org). The quick fix:

Set Event Mode to Enabled.
Go back to the Home Screen. Wait at least 5 seconds. Return to About.
Set Event Mode back to Disabled.
Go Home again, wait 5 seconds, return to About. Numbers should now appear.

Step 3 — Write down your Wombat’s information

Record these values:

Wi-Fi IP address

Wombat SSID Wombat password Wombat Wi-Fi IP address Full address with port

Keep this card. Every project after this one starts by connecting the same way.

Step 4 — Join the Wombat’s network

Open the Wi-Fi settings on your computer. Find the network name from your card, select it, and enter the password.

This warning is normal

You will probably see something like “no internet connection” or “connected with limited access.” Nothing is wrong. The Wombat is not the internet — it is just a robot. Keep going.

My computer is connected to the Wombat’s network

Step 5 — Open the programming tools

Open a web browser. In the address bar, type the full web address from your card — the IP address, a colon, then 8888. Match the punctuation exactly.

You should land on the KIPR Software Suite. Click KISS IDE.

I can see the KISS IDE

Step 6 — Make your own folder

Project Explorer --- click + to add a user.

In Project Explorer, click the + to add a user. Type your name. Click Create.

⚠ Naming rules — these matter

No periods. No apostrophes. No exclamation points. No emojis. No symbols of any kind. Letters, numbers, and plain spaces only.

Good:

sarah folder
Botguy folder
First Project

Bad:

m.j.c.
my amazing project!
Mrs Davis's project
:)

A bad name will not fail right away. It will break something later, and it will be hard to find.

Do not use the default user folder. Make your own.

Step 7 — Add a project

Go back to Project Explorer and pick your folder from the drop down. Click + Add Project.

Name it First Project. Leave the language set to C and the source file name as main.c. Click Create.

User folder name Project name

You will need both of these in a moment, when you go to the robot to run your program.

Step 8 — Look around the editor

This is how every new project looks when you open it.

Find each button before you use it.

Button	What it does
Menu	Takes you back to the main menu of the Software Suite.
Save main.c	Saves your code. A successful compile also saves it for you.
File Menu	Delete or download `main.c` to your computer. One way to back up your work.
Project Menu	Delete or download the whole project.
Undo / Redo	Undo your last keystrokes, or put them back.
Indent	Cleans up the spacing so your code is readable. Use this often.
Compile	Turns your code into something the robot can actually run.
Run	Runs the program that was compiled.

Step 9 — Compile it

Compilation succeeded --- your project is now on the Wombat. — "Compilation succeeded" --- your project is now on the Wombat.

There is already code in the editor. You did not write it and you do not need to understand it yet — that is Project 2. Press Compile.

translates what you see into instructions the robot’s processor can follow. If it works, your code is saved automatically. If it doesn’t, you get a message telling you where the problem is.

It compiled with no errors

Step 10 — Run it — on the robot

The Wombat's Home page --- where you find Programs.

Pressing Run in the editor sends your program across and runs it, but the output comes back to your computer, in the console at the bottom of the browser. The Wombat’s own screen stays where it was.

To watch it run on the robot, go to the Wombat itself:

On the robot	Do this
1	From the Home Screen, tap Programs.
2	Find your user folder, then find your project in the list.
3	Highlight the program in the list — tap it once so it is selected.
4	Press Run. Now watch the Wombat’s screen.

Two Different Run Buttons

The one in the editor is for checking your code quickly from your computer. The one on the Wombat is how the robot actually runs on its own — which is what it will be doing in a match, with nobody touching it.

What appeared on the Wombat’s screen?

I ran it from the editor and saw the output on my computer
I ran it from the robot’s Programs list and saw it on the Wombat’s screen

Step 11 — Shut down properly

Wait for it to finish before the switch.

Do not just flip the switch. Do it in this order:

On the Home Screen, press Shutdown.
Press Yes to confirm.
Wait for it to finish, then flip the power switch off.
Unplug the battery — hold the yellow connectors, never the wires.

Shut down in the correct order

Back Up Your Work

Code that only exists on the robot can disappear. Three ways to keep a copy:

Copy the code out of the editor and paste it into a document.
Download it from the File Menu or Project Menu.
Plug a USB drive into the Wombat, then Settings → Backup → Backup.

To bring code back from a USB drive, use Settings → Backup → Restore.

Lost the Home Screen?

If the Wombat’s screen ends up showing a desktop instead of the usual home screen, tap the Botguy icon in the top row to get back.

Score It — Checkpoint

There is no field mission yet. Your score for this project is whether you can do the whole thing again without the sheet.

Can you do it again?

I can power the Wombat on and off correctly, in the right order
I can find my Wombat’s IP address on the About screen
I can connect my computer to the Wombat’s network
I can reach the KISS IDE in my browser
I can create a user folder and a project with a legal name
I can compile a program and run it on the robot
I know at least one way to back up my code

Trouble log

Something almost certainly went wrong. That is normal and it is worth writing down — you will hit the same thing again.

What went wrong

How I fixed it

Think about it

You pressed Run and the robot did something. Who decided what it would do — you, or the person who wrote the code that was already there?

Name one thing on this sheet you would tell a teammate to be careful about, and why.

In Project 2 — Your First Program, you will open that same code and find out what every line of it actually means. Then you will change it and make it yours.

When you are finished, press the button to turn in your work and save a copy.

KIPR · Botball Explorer · Discovery