Subject:
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Re: Scout Questions
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.robotics
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Date:
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Wed, 10 Nov 1999 23:57:06 GMT
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Viewed:
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602 times
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In lugnet.robotics, lego-robotics@crynwr.com (James C. Jones) writes:
> [...] I am confused. I thought that the Scout wasn't worth the
> time of day, since the RCX has much more to offer. Yet, I see
> a lot of discussion on the Scout, [...] So, What gives? [...]
Simple -- the Scout wasn't interesting until the knowledge and tools to make it
do something useful became available.
At first, it appeared that there was no way to hook the Scout up to anything
else, and therefore it was an isolated "island" -- you were stuck with what it
offered when used all by itself, and compared to an RCX that's not very much.
People started getting interested when it was discovered that you could control
a Scout from an RCX with IR messages, to turn on and off the two motors on the
Scout. All motor 9 A/B forward/off/back combinations are possible. At that
point the Scout was viewed as a good two-motor expansion add-on for the RCX.
Not bad, but a second RCX was still more cost effective because it's a
three-motor plus three-sensor expansion.
A little later the discovery was made that the Scout can control the Code Pilot
(and if people had more time to explore on their own, they would have
discovered the identical capability with the Micro Scout). So that's a little
more of the same thing.
The floodgates of interest in the Scout really started opening when LEGO said
that they were about to give us a way to connect the Scout to your computer,
and actually download programs into it! When that happens, the Scout will be a
bonafide programmable brick, right on par with the RCX except for having
different sensor hardware. In fact, some things about it are better than the
RCX, it actually seems to be a refinement and improvement of the RCX ideas.
There is also a sort of general appreciation of LEGO(r) when people realized
that LEGO(r) was actually making a major conscious effort to make all these
products work together well, and (even more important) acknowledging and
supporting the adult hobbyists who like to do things like develop their own
replacement programming languages and push the limits of the brick's built-in
abilities.
- Robert Munafo www.mrob.com
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | DDK or RDS????
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| Hi, Forgive me if this has been covered before, but has anyone out there put together any kind of a comparison of the capabilities and limitations of RCX, Scout, and Micro Scout? I already have a Mindstorms kit and this coming Christmas I want to (...) (25 years ago, 11-Nov-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Scout Questions
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| I sent this message earlier, but since I received no responses, I am not sure I am getting out. Please respond to my neophyte questions! thanks Ok. I am still a newbie, but I am slowly getting addicted to Legos, Mindstroms, etc. (Now if I can only (...) (25 years ago, 10-Nov-99, to lugnet.robotics)
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