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Comment by playing_colours | Hacker News Reader

Maybe Lego Mindstorms Ev3? [0] It's super cool and programmable with UI programmer app and PC/MAC assistance, though still with programming blocks. But I see people managed to use Python for programming it [1]

[0] http://www.lego.com/en-us/mindstorms/?domainredir=mindstorms...

[1] http://bitsandbricks.no/2014/01/19/getting-started-with-pyth...

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Also Java via Legos. The mind storms main brick supports booting off the Microsd card without modification into alternative environments. The hardware is more expensive than Adriuno, but it's a lot quicker startup to getting it to do something.

About 8 years ago, I used LeJOS to do Java programming on an NXT brick. It looks like they've updated to support the newer EV3. It's nice to see that they're still in active development.

Playing with Mindstorms+NQC (http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nqc/) is one of the main reasons I love programming. I am sure there is an updated version for the latest evolution.

I later got into Handyboard+IC, which is even more powerful/hackable.

The NQC implementation for the new Mindstorms kits hasn't been updated since 2011: http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/

A better and more up-to-date C implementation for Mindstorms is RobotC: http://robotc.net

Seconded, Mindstorms EV3 are great. Check out ev3dev (www.ev3dev.org) if you want more programming options. You can build some serious robots with this setup, but it's still pretty easy to use.

Did your kids use it? what was your experience? I took a look and it looks damn complicated - so many parts, how do kids manage to assemble this; Me as a kid would have lost interest fast ...

As a kid I had many big Lego sets but not Mindstorm. I always enjoyed building those. Recently, I bought Mindstorm set to play with. I don't see it much different than regular Legos. Only difference is programming part but you can always download pre-built program and just tweak a bit.

I don't have first hand experience, just discussed the thing with a friend of mine.

Looking to get one of these for my nephew during the holidays

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