This would be great, if you could buy a Pi.
Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
41–50 of 63 posts
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#42Sadly, LEGO keeps discontinuing great and simple systems like this and replacing them with "smart" versions that you have to use a phone with, since they don't want to ship remotes anymore. Giving an 8 year old a phone to play with their LEGO sets kinda defeats the point(they'll want to play Minecraft instead, from personal experience). There's not even any features like Mindstorms that offer customization/programmin…
It is not the simple system which everyone misses ... because that has no roadmap to a STEM usage ... it is the lack of generic purpose (brickable :) ) remote control to work without smart phone which is the key problem.
For example, a simple remote is super easy to do. A complex behavior config (like steering boxes) or calibration modules could be small plugins into a remote so you keep it with your instruction/set. They could be also remotely programmed and injected there.
SO many ideas how to do this correctly with the original LEGO mindset.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#43I played around with the second generation Mindstorms in college, it was pretty fun even for 20 year old me.
I still have the bricks, motors and sensors! (I even still have the RCX and the weird infrared thing you use to program it). This is going to be a fun project for my daughter and me, especially since the Pi is way more flexible than the RCX.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#44Cute, but the Legos are crazy expensive. What you save by using a Pi, you lose by buying Legos.
The "Prime" set they reference in the article looks awesome but it's over £300! A motor alone seems to be about £50.For schools maybe this is reasonable, not so much for individuals.
Yes, the quality is great, but with limited budget you can learn so much more from buying cheap robotic components from AliExpress.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#45Ok, time to hook this baby up to Prometheus :) https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/projects/lego-data-dash
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#46What kind of motors do they use? Stepper motors, DC motors, ...?
The motors that connect to the Build HAT are servo motors with integral absolute encoders. Encoder resolution is one degree. Power is 7V DC ish.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can't be long, until Lego start to change the brick size.
What if I told you there is another plug type, that might still be sold with some old sets somewhere, and is still supported by a bunch of third party hubs (that for a long time were more advanced in many ways than Lego's own system ...) Lego's stewardship of all this was a mess, and I'm super glad they open the system to officially blessed third parties.
There's also all the various rail/train systems, some of which are compatible with some variants ...
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#48Does anyone know if these work with the sensors and motor in LEGO Boost and WeDo 2.0? They're not included in the compatability list, but do have the LPF2 connector. I'm guessing they'll work, bu tnot sure.
The color/distance sensor 88007 is in the compatibility list, so it'll work. However, the move hub 88006 is not in the list, which is unsurprising since I think it's bluetooth-only. There are already several libraries which you can use here, like https://github.com/undera/pylgbst or https://github.com/virantha/bricknil.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#49Sadly, LEGO keeps discontinuing great and simple systems like this and replacing them with "smart" versions that you have to use a phone with, since they don't want to ship remotes anymore. Giving an 8 year old a phone to play with their LEGO sets kinda defeats the point(they'll want to play Minecraft instead, from personal experience). There's not even any features like Mindstorms that offer customization/programmin…
The Raspberry Pu side stearing the project gives me hope it will come out better than the past initiatives.
The real ugly part with the smartphone requirements is it targets pretty recent OS versions (too old hand me downs are out of the picture), and outside of the top end education hubs ($200+) there is no obvious way export/import/backup the programs.
Having a kid invest time to make anything a bit complex on them is a recipe for disaster.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Give him normal LEGO now if you haven't already.
He loves LEGO.
Legos are great. My son was lego fanatic and he did learn some programming on mindstorm (rcx) and did some c like programming on it as well (not quite c it was called). He also learned basic from books and old tandy computers. I taught (volunteer) arduino, rpi and occasionally scratch classes at my local library pre-covid and I would say lots of kids can program at 8, and quite a few a bit younger but even with scratch being able to use a keyboard and mouse as opposed to touch screen is really important. An of course being able to read/write. I think just having fun computer things around the house that are not video games is good. Scratch is actually pretty awesome I think for learning programming, and then stuff that actually moves is really cool. I was also lucky in that my father in law actually had a robot company (ibm pc, basic programming, lots of cables) and he sent us one to play with when he as maybe 8 or 9? But there are so many choices today. Good Luck!