Help.
Anyone shed any light on this educationally?
My eldest is showing interest and I need some knowledge on it. He’s 9 and home educated so this needs to be a lot more the a toy (which he has lots of inc Lego)
Thanks
Tim

Smallest_oab’s school and Stirling council have lots.

They have designed and built many robots, automated processes etc.

They entered a Scottish Schools mindstorm competition – and were runners up against mainly secondary school.

They had challenges such as picking up object, move, and place down accurately in a new position, sensing when a fishing net was full, sorting red blocks from white blocks automatically etc.

I dont have a set and tried to convince my 10yo lad that he might want a kit, to no avail.
From the time I spent on looking at this, it looks very well supported by third party programmers.
There is a video of a bridge building tank operating autonomously which looks ace.
Asda seems to be cheapest place to buy it.
Lego Boost is coming out at the end of the year which looks similar, if pssoibly a little more basic.
M-Bot also looked like a possible, similar idea and slightly cheaper.

And you can build a robot to solve a Rubik’s cube!

I have a set from years ago – but the software is a bit of a pain on modern PCs (needs Windows XP I think). You can download tablet apps to do the controlling for you.

It’s a shame because the original drag and drop programming tool was very cool.

A mass of Youtube videos showing how it’s used at Uni level to teach students.
Do it but research the software issues.

Had it years ago and it was fine. Only problem was needing bluetooth when it was fairly new so not that well supported on desktops. I’m sure it’s better now. The software is based on Labview, so a real programming language (but some software engineers may debate that!).

Funnily enough, I’ve just dug out my sons NXT set from 6 or 7 years ago – he never took to it. I initially had a bit of trouble getting the software to run with OS10.11. Bit of googling came up with a solution tho’. The instruction book that it came with was pretty piss poor, but as above, there’s loads of 3rd party stuff on line, community forums etc. Can’t comment on the latest incarnation: EV3 tho.

I have two NXT 2.0 sets that I have been meaning to sell for ages, same as this:

https://shop.lego.com/en-US/LEGO-MINDSTORMS-NXT-2-0-8547

Let me know if you are interested.

Daughter did the same thing with school in Clacks. Big step up from Lego as building the robot is only a small part of it. More about logical sequencing and programming instruction ‘blocks’ to achieve tasks. So things like turn left wheel x degrees, turn right wheel y degrees.
Without the teacher and group tasks she’s lost interest now…

I picked up a BrickPi and some Mindstorm servos and sensors (and some USB webcams and things to keep me entertained while I was stuck with a fractured hip the other summer.

The NXT stuff was a pain in the arse compatability wise, the Pi interface was a lot easier to use, as was then interfacing with stuff like OpenCV, though I didn’t get much past basic turn robot arm holding camera to track face in a creepy way, and scuttle around pissing the dog off type applications.

I’ve got the original (pre-NXT, yellow bricks) somewhere. Had it given, never really done anything with it. I think the IR programmer might be problematic…!

We use it and the EV3 stuff at the school I teach at, lots of stuff on the web. I can send you some of the education stuff if you like. The software (educational one at least that we have) comes with a comprehensive set of tutorials. Most of the stuff I have now is for the EV3 sets as that is what we use, but the tasks can all be done on the NXT bricks. Cheers

I picked up a BrickPi

Yeah, I’d been eyeing those up. It’d probably end up in a drawer with the Pi though…

We use the Vex IQ robots at our school. I took a team to the Uk finals last week! 🙂
Kits start from £219 and have different programming languages that you can use.
http://www.vexrobotics.com/vexiq/products/kits-bundles/starter-kit-with-sensors-uk.html
Might be worth looking on YouTube to see what they can do before shelling out on the Lego.

I picked up a BrickPi

Yeah, I’d been eyeing those up. It’d probably end up in a drawer with the Pi though…

Yeah…

Pi one is currently behind the TV connected to a strip of lights, running a Boblight server for the Kodi box.

Pi two is in the BrickPi. I haven’t used it for a while, though I keep meaning to try and build a Machines of the Isle of Nantes style Elephant/ATAT
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7imhmmLD3To[/video]

Next time I’m broken.

More about logical sequencing and programming instruction ‘blocks’ to achieve tasks.

You could do that part just by letting them play with Scratch which uses a very similar plugged-together-blocks programming language style (and is free).

As above ^ Scratch is free, and an excellent way to start learning coding using a building block style format.

Moving on from that you could get hold of a BBC:Microbit. They can be programmed using 3 different formats. A simple building block code (similar to scratch), an intermediate coding format called MS Touch Develop, or for ‘proper’ coding Python.

Some students and I are currently playing with robots that you plug the microbit into and then use your phone to control via bluetooth. You have to program all the controls and functions.
You can also set up the robots to be autonomous line-followers, or maze-solvers, etc.

My son (aged 9) has an EV3 set and it gets tons of use. He is currently building a custom ‘wheelie car’ robot based on an episode of Scrapheap Challenge and he has also learnt a lot of useful programming techniques along the way. The block based visual programming is very similar to Scratch (which is also great).
Also encouraged his reading as he has worked his way through various large EV3 building/programming books.
Overall, it’s really well done and despite the somewhat hefty price tag he’s more than got the money’s worth out of it.

My son (aged 9) has an EV3 set and it gets tons of use. He is currently building a custom ‘wheelie car’ robot based on an episode of Scrapheap Challenge and he has also learnt a lot of useful programming techniques along the way. The block based visual programming is very similar to Scratch (which is also great).
Also encouraged his reading as he has worked his way through various large EV3 building/programming books.
Overall, it’s really well done and despite the somewhat hefty price tag he’s more than got the money’s worth out of it.

I tried to get a sort of Segway type thing going, using the IR sensor to figure out distance to the ground and trying to keep it balanced from there. Never got it to properly work (about a minute of increasingly wobbly action before it buggered off towards the coffee table), but had a good couple of days learning about PIC algorithms.