Missing the point...

I've had fun with the Clustrmaps widget that we've recently popped into the blog - it's kind of fun (and now I want to know who the uber-user is on the edge of the Hudson Bay that hits the blog so many times :) ). But recently one of the ads caught my attention - for having robots built for you. Clicking through to the JFRobot site, at first I thought I had hit a spoof ad. These nice people will build any of the four stock robots for you, and ship it to you complete... for a hefty price jump ($299 for Alpha-Rex, for instance). Is it just me, or has this company completely missed the point of the NXT, MINDSTORMS, and LEGO? If these were kits for robotic lawnmowers and I just wanted to get my lawn mowed, I'd understand - but the whole point of kits (& especially LEGO) is to build it yourself - or am I missing something very fundamental here? Some of the text on their webpage is more than a bit misleading as well. For instance, they mention:

...but you also find out that 100 hours of research and assembly work is unafordable.

(yes, that's their mis-spelling this time, not mine - I love Leopard). "100 hours"?!? What are they building, a general-purpose Turing machine? I've watched a 10-year-old build some of the stock models in 30 minutes, including programming.

So somebody tell me - should I be upset at this, or just sad that perhaps there's actually a market for such a misdirected market demand? I'd be curious if anyone has bought one of these, or knows someone who has. Perhaps I just have a very unusual viewpoint - that the reason you get something like the NXT is so you can do it yourself, and learn something, If I want a coffee-table display, there are plenty of inflexible slick-looking options.

--
Brian Davis

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 3

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these Fall and Winter remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Braill3 by Jerry Nicholls Braill3 is an EV3-based LEGO Braille bricks reader. This robot uses its fingertip, made from three touch switches, to read messages written using the LEGO Braille bricks and will speak out what it detected. If it sees a simple maths problem it will attempt to solve it and give the answer as well. To learn more about the process of creating this machine, read Jerry's blog . Braill3 can be viewed here . Set Review: The Braille Bricks set is well thought out. The ratios of the letters is suitable for general use and the addition of some punctuation and arithmetic operators is excellent. There is a card showing what bricks there are and their quantities, but no form of sort...

Celebrating MINDSTORMS with a Remix - Part 2

The ROBOTMAK3RS continued their celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS through these summer and fall remix projects. Each ROBOTMAK3R was tasked with selecting one LEGO set of their choice and combining it with a MINDSTORMS set. Below are the five amazing models they came up with. Remote controlled material handle r by Jozua van Ravenhorst (aka Mr Jo) This remix combines the LEGO Technic Material Handler (42144) with MINDSTORMS EV3 (31313) It uses the power of pneumatic cylinders to move objects around. By using a bluetooth remote control, very precise movements can be made with this model. Touch sensors in the base chassis prevent the turret twisting the cables that go through the turntable to much. The program has several protections to prevent over pressurizing the system for each of the 3 individual pumps and valves that control the 2 booms and claws. The real version of this machine is mostly used in waste material sites to bring the material to machines that sort and...

Celebrating 25 Years of MINDSTORMS

In celebration of the 25th Anniversary of MINDSTORMS, we take a trip through history. Please also visit ROBOTMAK3RS Community every week as we highlight different projects all through 2023 in celebration of the anniversary. Some of the early history is based on the content shared by Coder Shah in our MINDSTORMS EV3 Community Group . Some of the text and links may have been edited from his original posts for consistency and clarity. 1984 - Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen watched a TV program called "Talking Turtle," where MIT professor Seymour Papert demonstrated how children could control robot "turtles" using LOGO, a programming language he developed. 1988 - The collaboration between MIT and LEGO resulted in LEGO TC Logo in 1988, which allowed students to control LEGO models using computer commands. The video shows Papert demonstrating TC Logo. 1990 - LEGO TC Logo was hampered since the robots you built had to be tethered to a personal computer. LEGO and MIT...

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