Totally off topic....LEGO Mindstorms

[duff_duffy]

For those with kids, these LEGO mindstorm kits are amazing. My 9 year old just built a Rubik’s cube solver with instructions off internet....crazy cool! Expensive but really fun. Not sure if link will work but here it is in action:
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6420314082259333120

Ok....back to bike stuff....I mean work...

[Spaghetti Legs]

My son has one and built the same little gadget. Really cool! Pretty neat device and I’d recommend it for anyone whose kid is a tinkerer. Good way to introduce a kid to computer coding as well.

[Tandem Rider]

I bought one for TR Junior when they first came out. He learned a lot and figured it out himself, he is a pretty good problem solver now, partially because of this. It's an awesome learning tool. 286 microprocessor, at least when they came out, I've seen several 286's take a lightning hit and come back to life.

[Louis]

When I was a kid Erector Sets were the fun stuff, and Lego was pretty basic and static. Today it looks like Lego's surpassed the Erector Sets.

[seric]

The Lego Mindstorm stuff is pretty amazing, you can do stuff that took me forever to do with basic stamps back in the day. I hope to introduce my nephew to mindstorm later this month. My friends publishing company does a series of books on the subject for those who like "tree format": https://nostarch.com/catalog/lego-mindstorms

[Bruce K]

Many school district STEM programs use the Mindstorm kits as the first level of robotics before moving the kids on to Vex systems.

There are competitions out there for robot design with these kits

Great stuff - and not just for the kiddos

BK

[efuentes]

Bought one for my kid back in the day and started a robotics club in his high school, a few years later he is a mechatronics engineer with his own business :banana:

[deechee]

Any thoughts on the differences between the various versions? I played with the original version (the yellow one) long ago, and played with the 2nd gen at a friend's house a long time ago as well but didn't get around to programming it. Either way, I've got a number of years before my son will be old enough to enjoy it.