I genuinely can't wait for the kids in my family to be old enough to expose them to this ( I will admit that it will be a great excuse for me to play with it as well ).
I don't know if I'm a bit younger than most on here (late twenties), but my parents got me into Lego Mindstorms quite young. I was 8 when they bought me the the Robotics Invention System 2.0 set. For those that remember, it was the yellow RCX brick based on the Renesas H8/300. That single gift basically kicked off my entire interest (and later career) in computing. The hacker community surrounding them was _insane_.
I got really tired of the block based programming after a few weeks. My first "text" programming language was NQC ("not quite C") for the RCX, which was a C-like language that ran on top of the standard lego firmware. My first experience with proper C was legOS/brickOS, a toolchain to write software for the RCX with GCC. My first experience with Java was leJOS, which managed to fit a functional Java VM into the 32 KiB of RAM of the RCX. My first experience with Linux was because both of these tools functioned better there (except leJOS for NXT, bluetooth downloads always caused me trouble).
My dad kind of regretted it when his 10 year old built the disk launcher from the ultimate builder's set and hooked it up to the mindstorms vision command set to make a disk launcher that fired at anyone entering the basement...
So, Mindstorms introduced me to programming, then Linux, C, and Java.
Nope. He wants to play fortnite and football and nothing else matters - can't get him interested in it - thought I had him with a remote control plane but nope.
The worst part is he is very bright but very lazy - he kills his homework and then has no intellectual curiosity at all and I've tried lots of things to see if he likes any of them.
Now I just play fortnite with him and let him do his own thing til he shows an interest in anything.
The instructions are clear and interactive on the app itself, at least when building "Vernie" the robot it becomes functional quite quickly. Actually asking the builder to make it some arms and legs after the torso and head are done :)
I recently started playing mindstorm ev3 with my 5 year old. Although I have to help her a lot, she seems to be loving it.
I didn't expose my kid to lego technics for the sake and benefit of STEM/robotics, but simply that I was so sick of playing with toddler toys day in and day out that I decided to buy something I would enjoy. I guess preempting fortnight is another benefit of starting early.
I bought the EV3 when it was launched. I found it relatively complex even for adults. When I say complex I mean that you need to spend days or months to try yourbown designs. This is not a Lego where you just fit the pieces, even wheb the pieces (e.g. gear) fit together there are details you jeed to deal to have firm mechanics.
I have great memories of building and programming things in my OG Lego Mindstorms. I consider the day when I started building things from my imagination rather than from the instructions book to be the start of my career as a programmer.
It's expensive, but if you have children with interests in technical things this set is one of the most fun and productive things you can buy.
My elementary school teacher actually got the school a bunch of RCX units through some external technology teaching grant. No idea if it actually sparked the joy of programming in kids, but I think people enjoyed playing with them anyhow.
That definitely piqued my interest as well - I distinctly remember getting comfortable with the drag and drop programming interface, and wanting to write real "code" for it, but struggling to figure out how.
The scratch and python support are very welcome additions. my father still has the EV2 laying around here in the house even tho no one has played with it in the past 2 years.
I have 2 "robots" I bought last year to try to get my daughter (7) into coding.
One of them is Dash, from Wonder Workshop. The other is a Jimu BuzzBot from UBTECH.
It's incredible how fast the novelty of these wears off.
The BuzzBox we used it exactly once. Dash has seen a lot more action, but only because there are several apps with different ways of using them (One of them is a Scratch based app) and my daughter likes to use it as an RC car, plus some other fun things like sound recording.
Anything that doesn't have an open way to program them, in my opinion, are not more than rather complex toys, that do not give more entertaining that a box of Legos (As a matter of fact, I think there are not that many toys that can give as much fun and entertainment as a box of Legos - unless there's fire involved).
I'd be curious to know how this will stack up against the EV3 system. It's also interesting that they include 4 motors, ultrasonic and color sensors, but no touch sensor.
EDIT: other interesting notes: the motors have absolute positioning, and the stuff uses new connectors.
> Dan: Yep that's correct. We had it early on in our product exploration, we found we used it very little in the play. It was something we were weighing up; should we have an extra motor or should we have a fourth sensor? And very very quickly we said we'd much rather have four motors in the set, than a fourth sensor, because we could use the tap of the hub or the buttons on the hub. We often use the color sensor as a button as well, because it's very good at detecting a finger and a touch.
I've heard that this is because the color sensor can be used in place of a touch sensor in most cases, though I haven't tried that myself. Also nice that the hub has a 6 axis gyro/accelerometer.
Does anyone else find the studless beams and associated pieces much more difficult to build with than the old (very old as in Robotics Invention System) beams and pieces with studs? This was my second year coaching an FLL team. The kids seem to have difficulty building the things they need, and I don't blame them. One has to think in multiple dimensions at once. With the studs, you think vertically up or horizontal at once.
The design grammar is different. But I find it easier, because you don’t have to deal with the 4-4-5 assymetrc geometry.
That said, finding the connector that re-orients holes the way you need can ne a challenge. I have a collection of all the technic connectors and spend a fair amount of time trying multiple prototypes.
So I guess overall it is much easier to get a robust structure, but it can take some time to get there.
When I used to coach my daughters' FIRST Lego League team, I think I had more fun than the kids in my team. This new version of the brick and electronics promises to be really interesting.
We have the EV3 (31313) and this is a very interesting development. The PoweredUp vs EV3 connectors is not reassuring. At the moment I have PoweredUp, PowerFunctions, and EV3 motors. None are interchangeable. But if it looks like they are retiring PF and EV3, RJ11, for PoweredUp across the entire brand that is reassuring.
It's awesome that they have Python as an option out of the box. Kids bringing their lego creations to life is a great way to introduce programming.
I remember using LeJOS to run Java applications on my RCX back in the day. Had to figure out how to install and use Cygwin on the family computer. Kids these days have it so easy ;)
The EV3 can run Linux which allows interesting stuff. I've written a Prolog API which we used in University AI teaching (interleaving planning and action).
I was hoping to write a purescript API but we lost funding.
I wonder how limited or versatile the new system will be.
I have helped run one-off workshops for children to use EV3 mindstorms robots. Having also run similar workshops with other robots, the EV3's seem to generate the best response from the children. One simply needs to make a maze out of tape show some basic instructions for how to program the EV3 motors and the children will enthusiastically go about getting the EV3 to run the maze. I have also helped students build some more complicated robots for a robotic musical orchestra which was really fun, and a task the EV3 robots are well suited for. These are great robots, I only wish they were a little more affordable for poorer schools.
I can't understate how much I love the Mindstorms sets. It's almost a perfect learning toy - it's straightforward to get started (following the instructions and building the robots) and you can easily graduate to getting creative and building other robots and programming them to do whatever.
I still remember discovering how gear reductions work while playing with the original mindstorms set at age ~11. I had to explain this to high-school kids in FIRST Tech Challenge a couple years ago, they had never worked with gears before.
The IMO most amazing EV3 project (that you could even build with one set) was the Mindcuber, a Rubik's Cube solver. The robot would first scan the colors and then start solving.
On a birthday party there was an 8 year old who could solve 3x3 Rubik's Cube, so the other kids wanted to see him compete against the robot. You can only imagine the cheer when the kid won by a slight margin.
We bought an Anki Cozmo when they were heavily discounted following the announcement that the company was stopping operations. It's been great. This looks like a step up!
The first generation of Lego Mindstorms were such a game changer for me, introduced me to programming while keeping it simple enough that I could figure it out by myself.
If you want something cheap you can check out the Edison robots [0] or the micro:bit plus accessories [1]. I have played with both, and they are quite easy to use and make things with. The micro:bit is probably the better option since it is cheaper to start with and can be extended in more directions. There is a large ecosystem of first and third-party add-ons one can buy for the micro:bit to do pretty much anything a child might be interested in.
[+] [-] A4ET8a8uTh0|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Teknoman117|5 years ago|reply
I got really tired of the block based programming after a few weeks. My first "text" programming language was NQC ("not quite C") for the RCX, which was a C-like language that ran on top of the standard lego firmware. My first experience with proper C was legOS/brickOS, a toolchain to write software for the RCX with GCC. My first experience with Java was leJOS, which managed to fit a functional Java VM into the 32 KiB of RAM of the RCX. My first experience with Linux was because both of these tools functioned better there (except leJOS for NXT, bluetooth downloads always caused me trouble).
My dad kind of regretted it when his 10 year old built the disk launcher from the ultimate builder's set and hooked it up to the mindstorms vision command set to make a disk launcher that fired at anyone entering the basement...
So, Mindstorms introduced me to programming, then Linux, C, and Java.
[+] [-] noir_lord|5 years ago|reply
Nope. He wants to play fortnite and football and nothing else matters - can't get him interested in it - thought I had him with a remote control plane but nope.
The worst part is he is very bright but very lazy - he kills his homework and then has no intellectual curiosity at all and I've tried lots of things to see if he likes any of them.
Now I just play fortnite with him and let him do his own thing til he shows an interest in anything.
[+] [-] theshrike79|5 years ago|reply
The instructions are clear and interactive on the app itself, at least when building "Vernie" the robot it becomes functional quite quickly. Actually asking the builder to make it some arms and legs after the torso and head are done :)
[+] [-] afterwalk|5 years ago|reply
I didn't expose my kid to lego technics for the sake and benefit of STEM/robotics, but simply that I was so sick of playing with toddler toys day in and day out that I decided to buy something I would enjoy. I guess preempting fortnight is another benefit of starting early.
[+] [-] rb808|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wslh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mFixman|5 years ago|reply
It's expensive, but if you have children with interests in technical things this set is one of the most fun and productive things you can buy.
[+] [-] Hamuko|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xur17|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sneeuwpopsneeuw|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ericol|5 years ago|reply
One of them is Dash, from Wonder Workshop. The other is a Jimu BuzzBot from UBTECH.
It's incredible how fast the novelty of these wears off.
The BuzzBox we used it exactly once. Dash has seen a lot more action, but only because there are several apps with different ways of using them (One of them is a Scratch based app) and my daughter likes to use it as an RC car, plus some other fun things like sound recording.
Anything that doesn't have an open way to program them, in my opinion, are not more than rather complex toys, that do not give more entertaining that a box of Legos (As a matter of fact, I think there are not that many toys that can give as much fun and entertainment as a box of Legos - unless there's fire involved).
[+] [-] neuronexmachina|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fenwick67|5 years ago|reply
EDIT: other interesting notes: the motors have absolute positioning, and the stuff uses new connectors.
[+] [-] tspike|5 years ago|reply
> Dan: Yep that's correct. We had it early on in our product exploration, we found we used it very little in the play. It was something we were weighing up; should we have an extra motor or should we have a fourth sensor? And very very quickly we said we'd much rather have four motors in the set, than a fourth sensor, because we could use the tap of the hub or the buttons on the hub. We often use the color sensor as a button as well, because it's very good at detecting a finger and a touch.
There's an interesting interview with the product designers over at New Elementary: http://www.newelementary.com/2020/06/lego-mindstorms-51515-r...
[+] [-] fprog|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vturner|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dbcurtis|5 years ago|reply
That said, finding the connector that re-orients holes the way you need can ne a challenge. I have a collection of all the technic connectors and spend a fair amount of time trying multiple prototypes.
So I guess overall it is much easier to get a robust structure, but it can take some time to get there.
[+] [-] 2sk21|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yardie|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsaferite|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] luhn|5 years ago|reply
I remember using LeJOS to run Java applications on my RCX back in the day. Had to figure out how to install and use Cygwin on the family computer. Kids these days have it so easy ;)
[+] [-] danvoell|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Lunchrion|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrfusion|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maweki|5 years ago|reply
I wonder how limited or versatile the new system will be.
[+] [-] ImaCake|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fenwick67|5 years ago|reply
I still remember discovering how gear reductions work while playing with the original mindstorms set at age ~11. I had to explain this to high-school kids in FIRST Tech Challenge a couple years ago, they had never worked with gears before.
[+] [-] jansan|5 years ago|reply
On a birthday party there was an 8 year old who could solve 3x3 Rubik's Cube, so the other kids wanted to see him compete against the robot. You can only imagine the cheer when the kid won by a slight margin.
[+] [-] saboot|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bootloop|5 years ago|reply
Edit: My brother owns that set, I am a few years younger and got to play with all his LEGO. Great times.
[+] [-] Scaevus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andrepd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qrybam|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] belval|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] amelius|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ImaCake|5 years ago|reply
0. https://meetedison.com/ 1. https://www.microbit.org/
[+] [-] amiga_500|5 years ago|reply