Lego Mindstorms EV3: The Better, Faster, Stronger Generation Of Robotics | Hacker News Reader

Lego Mindstorms EV3: The Better, Faster, Stronger Generation Of Robotics

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124 pointsshawndumas28 comments

Mindstorms is pretty cool...but the price puts it out of reach of any but the well-heeled.

I run an after school tech program for kids in grades 5 - 8 where we've worked with Scratch quite a bit, and did one session on robotics using the Pololu 3pi line-tracing/maze solving robots and the Parallax Mini-Sumo bots. These robots run $100 - $150 each as opposed to the Mindstorms $250+ (now $350) price point.

There is a huge untapped market for a programmable robot at the $50 - $100 price point.

It's tough to get down that far, especially without volume.

For example, the TI Evalbot, which is _literally_ just a PCB on wheels, is still $150: https://estore.ti.com/Search.aspx?k=evalbot

Even the iRobot Create, which benefits from the Roomba production infrastructure, sells its cheapest model for $130 (which includes no battery, charger, or brains).

Not saying it isn't possible; just that it's difficult.

There is a huge untapped market of people like me who would gladly put up $50 to help you buy a set for your class. Setup a form somewhere and I will gladly donate.

http://www.donorschoose.org/ was built for just this thing.

>>> Mindstorms is pretty cool...but the price puts it out of reach of any but the well-heeled.

I have tested the Parallax Sumo bots and Mindstorms and I'm firmly of the opinion that the Mindstorms set represents better value.

The thing is that at the end of the day the Parallax Sumo bots are one trick ponies and have a fixed chassis and configuration around which you really can't extend without some effort. Even if you do put in the effort, then your design is constrained by the type of chassis the machine came with. For example, you can't easily convert the sumo bot into a hexapedal or bipedal walker. The value proposition for these machines rests solely on programming them in beautiful ways and it really isn't possible for a child to extend the machine itself. Assemble it yes, but it extend it? Not yet.

On the other hand with the Mindstorms set you have these precision milled parts that can be combined in endless ways by anyone to create anything from walkers to holonomic drives. There's also the benefit of the entire Lego range, you can easily mix and match all of these parts and combine them in countless ways with one another to give you literally any type of machine you want without getting out a file or a drill. That's something that instantly appeals to children and I remember the amazing feeling I used to get out of playing with Mindstorms when I was a little girl. I could actually create something that was "alive," and there was nothing better than that. Programming seemed dull and useless to me as compared to putting these pieces together and bringing them to life, somehow. It was captivating and it's what gave me the real push towards actually learning engineering. That's a miracle if you think about it and it represents great value.

>>> There is a huge untapped market for a programmable robot at the $50 - $100 price point. <<<

It's actually quite easy to build something yourself at that price point. Get $3 DC motors, waste aluminium channelling from build sites, acrylic, gear boxes + wheels, wires, an arduino, and a few screws. Build a frame out of the channelling, use the acrylic sheets as a type of wall, drill and mount motors on the acrylic sheets and put the arduino on somewhere with pencil cells. You're good to go.

> On the other hand with the Mindstorms set you have these precision milled parts...

From the video it looks like the regular old injection-molded plastic Lego bricks - are there new milled parts being used in the EV3 kit?

Yes, you are right the plastic bricks are injection-molded. Sorry for not being clear, but I was actually thinking about Mindstorms + TETRIX, which includes precision milled metal parts; http://www.legoeducation.us/eng/categories/products/universi... . There was an and over here that got deleted during editing. Lego's tolerances are crazy, btw. In some cases it's as low as .04 mm.

Price is one of two reasons why I chose to give my kids Arduino's instead of Mindstorms; the other being they're going to learn more about electronics and robotics than they will from Mindstorms.

As someone relatively inexperienced with both Arduino and Mindstorms, how do you feel the learning curve differs between the two? Without a knowledgable parent like yourself, do you think most curious kids would have the wherewithal to bend the Arduino to their will as easily as could be done with Mindstorms?

Maybe there are some great "Arduino for Kids" books out there that help solve this problem, because I expect a lot of the Arduino documentation might be a little dense for a middle school aged child.

Having used both arduinos and mindstorms the learning curve is significantly higher with arduinos. You can basically directly build robots with mindstorms with no knowledge of programming. With an arduino it would take significantly longer to reach that point.

We are trying to build something , with online ide and out of box program ability -

http://baseapp.com/2012/12/basebot-basic-robot-kit-v1-specs/

I couldn't disagree more. $350 is about what it costs to get your kid an xbox/ps3 for Christmas. My family danced with the poverty line through my entire childhood and they could manage a one-off $300 purchase once every few years (provided I agreed to getting nothing else for birthday or Christmas).

Excellent! The NXT 2 set is wonderful for introducing robotics and programming concepts to students. I hope the programming interface and software in general is improved; the current version is very difficult to install on Macs. I switched my kids over to the Enchanting software[http://wiki.scratch.mit.edu/wiki/Enchanting_(Scratch_Modific...] which allows you to program NXT robots in a Scratch-based environment.

I think we cannot over-estimate the importance of this.

Lego got many of us into the mindset putting stuff together until it matched our imagination. It's great the bring this onto a new level for the future generations. (And myself… as soon as I have ordered it ;) )

google "thymio". IEEE's Spectrum had a nice write up on it. My son has one now.

I looked it up, here is the link https://aseba.wikidot.com/en:thymiophilosophy

This robot seems to be the right price as well €100 with shipping. At this price and with the amount of sensors, lights and switches built in they must be building them at cost. I'm trying to do something similar with sparkfun and dfrobot and its just killing me that 2 sensors alone cost a plumb.

This is awesome!

Well, I never could get it to realize my imagination. However in retrospect that could have been a good thing- I spent countless hours trying to render my imagination in plastic blocks, and it required quite a lot of creative thinking.

A much better article was previously posted: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5019835

don't underestimate the power of video...

Another, more advanced robot building system (great for high schoolers) at around this price point is VEX Robotics. It has a great community, with friendly competition.

http://www.vexrobotics.com/vex

That is awesome! It reminds me of the old Erector Sets.

> Mindstorms has been around for almost 14 years now, but Mindstorms EV3 marks the first time that users can program directly onto the brand-new EV3 Intelligent Brick. In past iterations, users were only allowed to program their robots from the computer

This isn't correct at all. I've had a MINDSTORMS kit for several years now, and I've been able to program on-brick since the beginning.

Can someone please explain to me the differences in Lego's following lines?

Technic, Mindstorm, EV*, NXT

I'm looking to get something for an 8yr old to pique his curiosity.

Technic is just mechanics. The other three are quite the same, plus sensors/actuators and programmable.

For a 8 years old I'd start with plain LEGO. And then introduce the rest a little later.

But this depends on what the kid already likes. I see no problem in going straight to programmable stuff if he/she already showed interest in it.

My first ever programming job was a project for Lego and as a bonus they gave my friend and I a Lego Mindstorms set each. This was version 1.5 of the first edition. I remember we installed legOS (now brickOS) which allowed you to run code on the RCX. Definitively gonna buy EV3. Would be fun to try some of the algorithms Sebastian Thrun taught in his Udacity robotics course.

This is one of a few products I wish we had cheap clones, priced at say less than $100, preferably in Android.

why is there nothing on lego's site about this? (i'm assuming there isn't; google doesn't turn anything up and none of the blog posts and press articles i can find link directly to lego)

There is actually something: http://mindstorms.lego.com/en-us/default.aspx?icmp=COUSFR29M...

It says "Coming Fall 2013: LEGO MINDSTORM EV3..." - Now I am a disappointed to wait for 9 months.

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