Lego Mindstorms EV3 Review

[nicklmg]

Buy Lego Mindstorms EV3 on Amazon: http://geni.us/tIuz

 

Does Lego still hold the title of "best introductory robotics kit," our has the competition surpassed them?

 

 

[ThinkWithPortals]

YES! MOAR TARAN!

[pagani123]

I liked the nxt 2 better 

[JMY1000]

Typo in the description, says "our" instead of "or."

[nicklmg]

3 minutes ago, JMY1000 said:

Typo in the description, says "our" instead of "or."

thx!

[Ronda]

Wait wait wait wait!

It runs Linux? So I could say... turn the wifi interface into a hotspot and serve a website from it or put an IMAP client on it and have a robot controlled by email?

You could have gone into detail about what utilities it gets OOTB and what the package management's like.

[aaron_de]

I have to totally agree with your opinion on the development of the Mindstorms products. 

 

I am a student who teaches LEGO- and other programming to younger students and I have worked with LEGO WeDo for the last couple of years. I have also worked and wned an NXT but that is not the topic for this post.

Generally, the programming with WeDo is a mess. Programs execute different commands every time you run them. That is especially the case with motor direction blocks. Students try showing their programs to me but they fail. And the next time they run, everything works fine. 

 

But the new WeDo 2.0 is even worse than the previously described WeDo 1. The new 'intelligent' brick only communicates over a very unreliable Bluetooth LE connection which gets even worse if you use more than three sets a time. We have 15 but I wouldn't want to use any more than 5 at a time because even with those many, I had to restart three laptops during my last course to fix broken connections. Sometimes, the robots actually show up in the connection window but you can't select them. 

But the bigger problem actually is the fact, that LEGO went mobile first - and did really bad. The app is more than a gigabyte in size and only works on a selected number of mobile devices. At least my school doesn't have that many compatible tablets to run these courses. (And isn't interested in buying any either.) We have to use the desktop software that is only compatible with windows 7 and a special Bluetooth dongle. Rightnclicks are not available in that software. Everything has to be done with long clicks and hovering. I actually had to explain to my students that what they were using on a laptop was literally a mobile app so that they could understand the control concepts. 

By now, my only hope is the integration of both the old and new WeDo into Scratch since LEGO doesn't seem to care. But for now, I am switching to Arduino. At least for eleven-year-olds, that is going to be much more educational and possibly even easier. 

 

(Please excuse my potentially bad english; I am just a german student and this is literally one of my first english posts on any online platform.)

[MoonlightSylv]

1 hour ago, nicklmg said:

thx!

So does the post  

[ninjapants]

Actually, some of the supposedly non-existent pieces do exist. Source: I have them.

[Bigpumkin]

1 hour ago, ninjapants said:

Actually, some of the supposedly non-existent pieces do exist. Source: I have them.

That's the great thing about Lego. All lego bricks that have ever been made are compatible with one another!(excluding Duplo in most cases)

 

-Edit: Typo

Edited November 7, 2016 by Bigpumkin

[Bigpumkin]

I have worked with the NXT and EV3 extensively (FLL anyone?) and have to say that even though the EV3 is ugly and takes about a decade to boot I still prefer using it because it offers quite a few advantages:

1) 3 motors connected at once(compared to 3 with the NXT)

2) The NXT was notorious for not being able to drive straight but the EXV3 fixed this somehow even when using NXT motors

3) The software makes it easier to add very advanced functionality and runs smoother

and 4) The Brick's OS lets you store software in folders

[JMY1000]

5 hours ago, nicklmg said:

thx!

Woo Senpai noticed me!

[Zagna]

I still prefer Mindstorms grandpa, dacta.

[romano21A]

I'd like to see what you would think about the fischertechnik computing sets (http://www.fischertechnik.de/en/Home/products/computing.aspx).

[adrutu]

Hello LTT FORUMS! (and anyone else watching) 

 

LONG time lurker here, decided to finally join after the Lego video.The question burns so bad I couldn't lurk anymore : anyone got a link for the shop Taran mentioned? Or maybe the files?

 

I have myself found some very interesting software that will generate the STL files for gears (cogs) up to any number you want. I'm working on a drawing project and decided to print some at work :

 

I can link that up if anyone is interested. Its a code/math based generator for the STL files and it basically creates a very good render of the maths functions at work that you can save as a 3D print ready STL file. I've read some of the code, i didn't really liked trigonometry so I'm not gonna get involved in the coding, but if this sounds like something worth anyone's time, let me know, I will post the links. 

 

Kind regards, 

 

Andy

 

TL;DR : Alorithmic LEGO(r) Technic compatible gear generator

[Omon_Ra]

21 hours ago, Zagna said:

I still prefer Mindstorms grandpa, dacta.

-snip-

Oh man, I remember that. I used Lego-LOGO robotics stuff in middle school ('98-'99). It was pretty much BASIC programming, but I liked it. The 'turtle' thing was kind of bad at recognizing paths, but it was satisfying when you got it to work. I haven't followed any of the Lego robotics stuff since then. It's something that looks cool, but I don't think I'd really buy it unless I had kids.