Subject:
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Re: Mindstorms on Slashdot
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Thu, 1 Dec 2005 05:58:33 GMT
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Original-From:
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Mr S <szinn_the1@STOPSPAMMERSyahoo.com>
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Viewed:
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2654 times
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Just a minor thing, Mr S is me, not Steve H.
Also, I have given some thought to what I would really
want out of Mindstorms part 3, or Lego Advance, as it
were.
Motor kit in 1,2,and 3 motor variants, including
mounting plates
and choice of wire lengths
Special parts packs that are tailored to the general
builder, such as:
chain sets
worm gear sets
pneumatic sets
differential gear sets
ackerman steering sets
Well, the list can go on an on, but you get the idea,
buying online from TLG in much the manner that you
would buy from bricklink etc. I don't even want fancy
boxes, just parts in plastic bags with the Lego seal
of approval. It would help if there were discounts for
buying in larger quantities, such that say the 3 motor
kit was cheaper than 3 single motor kits etc.
I think that it would have to be in kits that are
worth a certain amount of money minimum so that it
makes money-sense to spend money to package it, so
that they can be equitably shipped. I think they could
even turn this over to a smaller company that is
willing to buy in bulk from TLG, and repackage for
distribution.
There was a single motor kit that came with some parts
that I really didn't care for, or had too many of
already, and I'd like to avoid that with the Lego
Advance products/kits, at least to the point that you
don't have to spend $14 to get the one $5 part you
wanted. If priced right, people would still order in
larger denominations in order to save on shipping. The
end goal is to ship as much product as possible, while
not having to develop kits or marketing stuff.
Along the lines of ad-hoc sets, anything that FLL
wants as a kit could be offered quickly. If there are
any other groups that want a kit put together, I'd
hope that the Lego Advance group would be able to
offer that set to them as well as the rest of the
public, AFOL or not. This would go something like: If
you have RIS 2.0, and you buy kit #xxxxx, you have all
you need for this years contest for XYZ competition.
In this way, Lego users would be able to contribute to
that part of the business process in deciding what to
package, and TLG really doesn't have to do anything to
sell it, just bag it and ship... that might represent
a distortion of their manufacturing process, but would
give them the ability to do this for *ANY* special
event/group/competition.
That is worth more than it might seem. There is *NO*
place where you can go and get a certified group of
parts. Education people end up doing this on their
own, or buying multiple sets and dividing it among
their student teams... its *MUCH* easier to get budget
when you tell your sponsors that you only need to
purchase one kit #xxxxx from TLG for each student, and
it will satisfy their experiments for the learning
period. It makes the process of using Lego Advance
parts seem much more professional, and gives
Mindstorms a bit of the "and you can upgrade it" alure
that some small car toys and others have found useful,
without the 'box of toy parts' feel that Mindstorms
often has now. These are not kits that would be
shipped to stores, so marketing and production issues
are mitigated to some extent (correct me if I have no
clue what I'm talking about on that) and by seeing a
kit that has all the parts you need and 7 that you
don't, you'll just order that kit because of the
convenience of it.
Let me push that idea a bit more. Say you have a small
science club that wants to do a robot thing of some
kind, you're the teacher, what do you do? You go to
the Lego Advance website, and look at the kits and
what they are for, and you and the science club (for
example) decide that the Seattle Robotics All-Lego
Sumo kit is the thing, then buy two kits (with or
without RCX, where the RCX is more expensive sold
separately), and start planning for the science club
annual robot contest! That is something that you just
wouldn't do with RIS 2.0, even though you could. Next
year, you can get the 2004 FLL official kit of parts,
add to last years, and have another annual science
club robot contest, but never need to actually pay for
competing in the FLL that year, or just do the
contests that interest your group rather than what
this years official FLL contest is.
The idea that you could go to the Lego Advance
website, and actually get the parts that were used in
XYZ contest means that you can replicate that contest
with your students etc. Not only that, but people that
don't live near a robot club can also do that.
Many robot clubs have tried or did offer a beginners
robot kit, the BOEbot being an example. There is no
reason that Lego Advance cannot do the same thing, on
many levels. By offering Lego Advance parts kits that
are sponsored through contests or robot clubs, TLG has
access to the groups that would feed them ideas.
Spybotics was kind of cool, and if I were 8 years old,
it would have been really cool... I'm a little older
than 8 now though. But to find an audience with buying
power and inclination, TLG would go farther if they
are able to quickly make up parts kits that match such
demands as a robotics club contest. Looking at the RIS
kit, you just can't be sure that you can make a
sumobot out of it, but if you bought the Lego Advance
<name your robot club here> All Lego sumobot kit, then
you know it would work, and qualify for the
competition.
Well, that is the basic idea anyway... makes me think
I need to start building so I can tell you what might
need to be in the official Lego Advance Mr.S.umobot
kit :)
--- Andrew Meyer <agmlego@gmail.com> wrote:
> In lugnet.robotics, Calum Tsang wrote:
> > In lugnet.robotics, Steve Hassenplug wrote:
> > > I recognize the author's logic trail from the • cartoon network. IE: "That guy
> > > smokes, and those people were killed in a fire, • so that guy killed those
> > > people..."
> > The analysis was thin and poorly written, I agree.
>
> I wish people like the guy who wrote the article
> would actually do some research
> on the topic before publishing something like this,
> especially now that /. has
> picked it up. Now, of course, it is as good as
> gospel truth to millions of
> people. If he had just looked around LUGNET once or
> twice, he'd have found many
> posts about the various parts of MINDSTORMS, what
> their capabilities actually
> are, and the true quality of them. The motors, for
> instance, are not the 10cent
> (US, whatever, it is still cheap) hobby motors that
> you find everywhere. These
> are high-efficiency, high-quality, high-performance,
> high-endurance motors. But,
> what can one say, after the fact?
>
> As a sidebar to this, whatever happened to the
> Cybermaster? Was it too expensive
> a "toy", and TLG took it off the market cuz people
> weren't buying? Or did it not
> live up to what it could have been? From what I have
> pieced together, the brick
> was astounding: RF comm, three sensor ports, three
> motor ports, two onboard
> motors with opto-encoders for positioning/speed
> control, and more memory/faster
> processor than the RCX. Please tell me if these
> stats are correct; I'd hate to
> mislead someone, esp. after my little rant above :-)
> From these stats, I would be willing to pay
> US$200-250 just for the brick, based
> on the average RCX selling for around US$100 or so
> where I've seen it (eBay,
> Bricklink, etc.,)
>
> Also, just a minor (no pun) thing: not all people
> who use MINDSTORMS as the
> LUGNET.robotics people do are ADULT friends of Lego
> (AFOL's). Myself, included.
> Though I do agree that Lego should target older
> people, 20-40 is older than I. I
> would still buy stuff from that category, of course.
> Steve Hassenplug's ideas
> for a Lego Advance sound dead-on to me.
>
> My two cents,
>
> Andrew Meyer
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Mindstorms on Slashdot
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| (...) In a limited form this already exists - LEGO educational division indeed sells just a motor, or a bulk pack of clutch gears, worm gears, 1x16 beams, etc. They don't sell them on a part-by-part basis, but in small bulk packs. (...) Again, they (...) (18 years ago, 1-Dec-05, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Mindstorms on Slashdot
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| (...) I wish people like the guy who wrote the article would actually do some research on the topic before publishing something like this, especially now that /. has picked it up. Now, of course, it is as good as gospel truth to millions of people. (...) (18 years ago, 1-Dec-05, to lugnet.robotics, lugnet.mediawatch)
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