This would be great, if you could buy a Pi.
Why can't you buy a Pi?
Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
51–60 of 63 posts
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#52First time I've seen the STEAM acronym (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math). Described as: "While these initiatives are a wonderful start into the exploration of these four areas of study, the critical process of creativity and innovation is missing. Students in STEM programs may have more experiential learning opportunities, but they are limited to only science, technology, engineering and math. Our eco…
I don't mind STEAM, but I am biased as a designer who knows how to code and I think it leans into things a lot of kids are interested in making like videogames that have an art element to them.
There is also "STEAMS" STEAM + Sport, which makes no sense to me.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#53When I was young I always enjoyed playing with Mindstorms. It was my first experience programming. For me it was amusing that I could build some robot with Lego and make it retrieve a ball from our living room. Sadly jumping from the block oriented programming to "real" programming of the Hitachi H8 microcontroller was not very straight forward, so I kind of hit a wall in that regard. Maybe this collaboration will ac…
I started programming in normal languages before I did a mindstorms based project for a robotics lab at university. Going in the other direction is just as jarring because of how limited the block based system felt. It's also just a clunky IDE compared to a text editor...
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think that's the thing? Block programming languages come from folks who write "CS education" literature as opposed to the "new programming languages" literature. They're turing complete, because curriculums require teaching the use of if statements and for loops, but that's about it. If I actually wanted to use a block language at my day job I'd want affordances for larger, more complex programs. Compiler or JIT, c…
Whilst it was never completed, as funding for the program was diverted elsewhere, I worked on a team at a university using Blockly [0] compiling it to Lua, and parsing from Lua back into our specific runtime set of Blockly functions. It could do absolutely everything that Lua could do. We also added a kind of multifile support, using tabbed views to reimplement libraries on the browser side of things (compiling into…
Sounds like a wonderful tool for fundamental CS courses and projects. I remember assignments like creating a Cesar Cipher using Java, being distracted by tangential stuff like what the static keyword means and importing libraries. That language was a lot to take in, just tuning-out the noise from what I needed to learn. Something like half the class did not take the second course. Most of the thrash had little to do with the assignments themselves. Being able to toggle between a visual representation of the program and the code helps students' comprehension of the core concepts immensely. That much is obvious when you work with kids on Lego robotics projects. I could imagine a tool set like that, with the flexibility to build something like a console blackjack game. It would quickly become a standard for teaching secondary school programming courses. Hopefully someone else will take up that torch before my own kids are looking at learning how to program.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#55Sadly, 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…
[deleted]
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It can't be long, until Lego start to change the brick size.
That's already happened, twice even. There is 'duplo' and there is 'Modulex': https://www.newelementary.com/2017/11/old-bricks-what-are-mo...
There was also Lego "Quatro", double the size of Duplo, for very young toddlers.
Only sold from 2004–2006, but still in high demand on the used market. Interlocks with Duplo and regular Lego.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#57When I was young I always enjoyed playing with Mindstorms. It was my first experience programming. For me it was amusing that I could build some robot with Lego and make it retrieve a ball from our living room. Sadly jumping from the block oriented programming to "real" programming of the Hitachi H8 microcontroller was not very straight forward, so I kind of hit a wall in that regard. Maybe this collaboration will ac…
I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, block-based "programming" does allow children/newbies to construct something that works. On the other hand, almost nothing usable is being programmed this way. So I'd say it's more or less fine as a kind of introduction to general rules of programming, but the sooner you get to the actual code, the better. That said, microcontroller programming is something…
This is true to a certain extent. Certainly, large problems get awkward pretty quickly using the Scratch model. However, I found this Code.org version of Minecraft[0] interesting. You primarily use the Scratch like interface, but then you can click a button, and see how your legos translated into Javascript.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#58When I was young I always enjoyed playing with Mindstorms. It was my first experience programming. For me it was amusing that I could build some robot with Lego and make it retrieve a ball from our living room. Sadly jumping from the block oriented programming to "real" programming of the Hitachi H8 microcontroller was not very straight forward, so I kind of hit a wall in that regard. Maybe this collaboration will ac…
The leJOS alternate firmware for the RCX was my first introduction to Java. It was amazing how complete the support was given the small footprint. It even implemented Java's threads system.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's already happened, twice even. There is 'duplo' and there is 'Modulex': https://www.newelementary.com/2017/11/old-bricks-what-are-mo...
There was also Lego "Quatro", double the size of Duplo, for very young toddlers. Only sold from 2004–2006, but still in high demand on the used market. Interlocks with Duplo and regular Lego.
Oh cool, never knew about that one. I do have one more to add but it's mostly technics warmed over, which is 'Znap', clearly aimed at the same market as 'Knex', which Lego at some point saw as a competitor. Since then they've come their senses, the Znap line was ugly and highly impopular, leading to being discontinued after only a year.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#60First time I've seen the STEAM acronym (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math). Described as: "While these initiatives are a wonderful start into the exploration of these four areas of study, the critical process of creativity and innovation is missing. Students in STEM programs may have more experiential learning opportunities, but they are limited to only science, technology, engineering and math. Our eco…
I don't mind STEAM, but I am biased as a designer who knows how to code and I think it leans into things a lot of kids are interested in making like videogames that have an art element to them. There is also "STEAMS" STEAM + Sport, which makes no sense to me.
IMO, it's an attempt for people to not feel like they're being left out. It happens any time a group of people self-select and self-promote. Other people who aren't in that group change the group and claim they were ostracized and they're essential.
Eventually, it includes literally everyone and means nothing at all.