Lego Mindstorms

[BART]

Anyone have it? Opinions? My boy wants it for christmas and seeing as how it is pretty pricey i thought I would ask around about it.

[Sweed]

I have/had it. It looks really cool and is really fun for like three months. It's pricey, and you loose interest fast becuase the programming part is a pain in the ***. It's fun to build with though.

How old/what grade is your boy in?

[BART]

He will be 13 in january, has always loved legos and plays some game on the computer all the time where he has to build machines and make them work, also plays the crap out of ratchet and clank.

[Sweed]

Is he still in middle school?

Theres a Lego Mindstorms compitition called First Lego League (see www.usfirst.org) where kids (primarily middle school students) build robots that are full autonomous for a theme every novemeber. It's worth looking into if he likes the kit or if you want a test run first.

It's fun building, but imo, it's a little overpriced at $200. But it's a large kit and lots of fun if you keep it up. You can make some interesting things with it, I've seen vending machines, printers, scanners, maze bots, all kinds of things.

If he likes legos alot and is fairly smart, yes it's fun.

[mycrors4]

Hmm, it seems pretty koool, and im positive with your R/C skills you can upgrade it just like a regular r/c car, just there would be a lot of servos, for the arms, and legs and knees.. etc. i remember having something similar to this, it was from Lego again, some type of Robot(basically battle bots for kids) that was kool too, but that was a cheaply made thing, it broke within the first month(it cost about $50)
but this seems a lot kool, but if you have a spare $10,000 you can always make yourself an "R2 Unit" its pretty kewl, we had the one they used in the first star wars episode they made(episode 4 i believe) and the guy said it costs about $10,000 to make 1, but they are really fun, soo many different things to do with them, but no time!

[65mustangrock]

accually i went and watched a first lego league compition locally for a guys Eagle project and those kids were really into it. it was cool to watch the kids try out the robots,fix paths for them, and crete the robots. i think if little bart got into and joined FLL he would like it for a while.

[winner]

bart why dont you just get him 1 or 2 xmods?

[Donziikid]

Originally Posted by Sweed

Is he still in middle school?

Theres a Lego Mindstorms compitition called First Lego League (see www.usfirst.org) where kids (primarily middle school students) build robots that are full autonomous for a theme every novemeber. It's worth looking into if he likes the kit or if you want a test run first.

It's fun building, but imo, it's a little overpriced at $200. But it's a large kit and lots of fun if you keep it up. You can make some interesting things with it, I've seen vending machines, printers, scanners, maze bots, all kinds of things.

If he likes legos alot and is fairly smart, yes it's fun.

x2. I was in FLL back in middle school and had a blast with it. You should see if he can join still.

Cheers,
Kyle.

[BART]

Originally Posted by winner

bart why dont you just get him 1 or 2 xmods?

We have more rc cars than we can drive as it is. I need to look into this thing Sweed and donzi are talking about. There also must be more than one kit because the one I found is 300. Not 200.

[xmodkidd33]

I did one of thise FIRST competitions in 8th grade. It was a ton of fun. We used a program other than the normal Mindstorms one (I forget what it's called), it was supposedly easier to use.

[garder121]

I use it at school right now and will be entering the first competition sometime this year. They are really fun to build but programming can get really hard, annoying, and repetitive. Keep in mind that some of the parts (specifically the tires) that can be used with modding xmods.

[GearHeadV8]

There is also something called vex. it is like Lego mindstorm and Erector sets had a baby lol. Its 300 and its a very cool kit. I would really like to get one.

http://www.vexrobotics.com/

[mr.hotrod]

hmm my radio shack has the hex bug from the vex site. What gives???

[BART]

Well toys r us had it for 299, but on "cyber monday" target had it for 201 online with free shipping. In casual conversation with my son, he also said that next year in school they offer the robotics class with Mindstorms so hopefully everything comes together nicely. Thanks for the info guys.