LEGO Mindstorms NXT
by LEGO
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Our Price: $698.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $139.99 (click here) Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of LEGO Mindstorms NXT
Customer Review: Lego Robotic Tournaments for kids
Summary: 5 Stars
I am buying an NXT for my 11 year old son who has been begging for one for awhile. He is a member of the Robotics team at his elementary school (his 3rd year) and so he interacts with these every day, but wants one of his own to play around with at home.
For those of you whose children are or may be interested in science/engineering/robotics, etc. or are just looking for something creative to do, there is a worldwide program out there that they can join to help develop these skills and have fun at the same time! Lego created this program about 15 years ago and it is now worldwide. Go to [...] to learn all about it. The FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Program is absolutely wonderful. They start out at age 6, with the Junior FIRST Lego League (JFLL); 9-14 yr olds. [or about 3-8th graders] compete in the FIRST Lego League (FLL), using the NXT or RCX (older model) robots; and when they hit high school, they begin building real, actual working robots to compete with.
If your school does not have a team, look into starting one (anyone can: schools, churches, boy/girl scout troops, community organizations, whatever). The fees are not much after the initial kit cost (around $600, which includes the robot and all tournament supplies) and often you can find sponsors to cover some, if not all, of the fees. The kids do not just play with robots, they also work very hard on a research project which they present to a panel of judges at each tournament (there is usually a tourney for city, region, state, national, and then international if your team qualifies for each next tournament), and there are awards for many things: robot competitions, teamwork, research, robot design, team spirit, overall score, etc. If you are looking for a great extracurricular for your gifted or creative child, this is it!
Customer Review: NXT could use some improvements
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a fantastic but limited INTRODUCTION to robotics for children as well as for adults. What you get are, essentially, a small computer with some nice motors and some plastic body parts. The small computer (which is also the robot body) communicates with your PC to receive instructions to carry out. That's right - you must have a personal computer to use this system.
The main limitation is in the robot computer. It has a VERY small amount of memory to store programs, and the memory is not upgradeable. You only get a few Kilobytes of storage! This severely limits the size and complexity of the programs that you can create for your robot to a few dozen instructions at a time before reconnecting to the PC and downloading again - and less if you want your robot to make sounds.
If Lego had used flash storage, like the kind used in digital cameras, for its programs, then this would have improved the product 1000 percent, allowing for incredible programming potential and maybe even justifying Lego's very high price. With upgradeable storage you could even give your robot an extensive vocabulary.
It's too bad that a product with this high cost and so much potential was limited by short-sighted engineers at Lego.
Here's hoping someone comes out with a similar product with something like SD card storage.
Oh, and the software, for creating programs for the robot, is quite limited as well. Plus the update that came out in August 2007 only fixes Vista compatibility and allows some extra compression for programs, and Lego has the audacity to charge an extra $20 for people who bought the NXT before May of this year! What a shame.
Customer Review: Very fun introduction into robotics. Great for kids AND adults
Summary: 5 Stars
Lego has again released a ground breaking product. This is a great way for anyone to get into robotics. No tools are necessary, not even a screwdriver. Everything is built using lego blocks. These are not the lego blocks that you might be used to. They are not the studded ones that snap together. These are Technic blocks ("studless legos"), which create a more human, less boxy look.
Everything talks to the central computer, which is called a "brick". It is maybe 1/4th the size of a "real brick". It has ports to connect to the four sensors and three servo motors. Additionally, the brick can connect to a computer using USB or bluetooth.
The three motors are controlled using your own programs. You have a great deal of control, you can specify the exact angle a motor should move. Also programming is easy, using a visual block-dragging software application. It works great on both Mac and Windows.
The four sensors are very cool.
Ultrasonic sensor: Can detect distance and movement. The distance sensor is very cool and can make for some cool programs.
Light sensor: Can detect brightness and color. The robot can be programmed to pickup only the blue or red ball, which is included.
Push sensor: Detects when something bumps against it. This is basically just a toggle switch.
Sound sensor: Detects the volume and tone of sound.
Lego gives you a number of plans to follow, as well as some basic plans to build off of. For example, the crawler and driver platforms allow you to start with either an "insect" or "car" type robot.
The brick takes 6 double A batteries. Rechargables work well.
Customer Review: Great toy! Wait if you want advanced robotics
Summary: 5 Stars
I was tempted to give less than five (four, or even three) stars to this product because the programming software is quirky and in much need of improvement to do any interesting robotics, but the truth is that my 12 and 9-year olds and me have already had lots of fun with this toy (toy, yes, that's what it's sold as).
Within about the estimated thirty minutes we had build the first (dumb) robot, and spent a couple of hours telling it to go this or that way using the NXT console and graphic programming interface.
By day two we had all the sensors installed on "Charly" (as the kids decided to name their first robot) and we were able to do some nice experiments different from the ones in the printed and on-line guides.
After playing with the kids I tried to make the robot perform more complex behavior, and my conclusion was that the graphic (LabView-based) programming environment is not apt for that, and that much more precise control over the sensors and more complex logic than what the graphic environment provides is required to be able to do "interesting things".
I already found more promissing stuff for programming the NXT like RobotC and NBC (Next Byte Codes).
RobotC requires downloading new firmware to the NXT, which I haven't done because I think the kids can still learn a lot from the clunky graphical programming interface.
NBC is very low level, and, though I may try it, I might just wait for what comes after Lego releases the NXT SDK.
All that said, from the experience so far, it's a five stars toy, for sure. It can only get better as the SDK and third-party software and hardware components are released.
Customer Review: Wonderful...much better this RIS 2.0
Summary: 5 Stars
I am thrilled with NXT. It is all I expected and more. I have been useing Lego Mindstorms Robotic Invention System 2.0 for a few years now and I love working with robotics. Here are some points most people will want to know:
+ I was suprised to see that NXT is entirely studless. This makes it a bit difficult to make robots with the pieces of both RIS 2.0 (current-gen) and NXT (next-gen).
+ The programing system is a lot more complex. Some people have coplained about this. However, I really enjoy it because it gives you so much control over your creations, but it can be a little tricky to understand at first.
+ The motors a wounderful! Now you don't have to measure only in seconds, you can also measure in degrees or rotations. It will change my robots forever!
+ The speaker on the NXT brick can now play much more complex sounds. You can even program it to speak words.
+ For those who want to make very simple programs, there is a new feature on the NXT brick that allows you to make those simple programs on the screen without connecting to a computer.
+ All the sensors work great. The ultra-sonic sensor is a dream come true.
+ Here is a small item that may interest only me. The set comes with two red and blue plastic balls. I have always found it difficult to find good sized balls for my robots, but now I have some!