This was what I wanted to do with my son a few years ago when he was into Hot Wheels. One of the problems I found was that you couldn't just buy a whole lot of plain track and connectors, you had to buy all the different sets that had a bunch of stuff we didn't want. Mattel should keep it simple.
Robert -
As a current FIRST Lego Coach and user of RoboLab (the existing LabView based programming environment that comes with the Educational version of Mindstorms - http://www.ceeo.tufts.edu/robolabatceeo/), I'm curious - is there anyway to get to a text based version of a Labview program, or is it all binary data?
I want to teach the kids on my team better version control practices (Lord knows we need it!) and I find that easier with text programs rather than binary files as the kids can better understand the value of revision comments when they can use some visual diff tool to examine the old file versus the new one they are about to check in.
Or, is there any good way with RoboLab (and the NXT compiler) to diff the files?
Also, how does the NXT compiler compare to RoboLab?
This was going to be my suggestion too. The one disadvantage here is price - at $250 it is a bit of a barrier to entry, but as you mentioned you get all of the benefits of learning programming plus you get to write programs that actually interacxt with the real world usign light sensors, touch sensors, rotation sensors, etc.
Don't know if you are aware of it, but the FIRST Lego League is an international program designed to introduce kids ages 9-14 to programming and engineering using Mindstorms. very cool organization and a terrific educational opportunity.
Slashdot Mirror
This was what I wanted to do with my son a few years ago when he was into Hot Wheels. One of the problems I found was that you couldn't just buy a whole lot of plain track and connectors, you had to buy all the different sets that had a bunch of stuff we didn't want. Mattel should keep it simple.
Dave
I want to teach the kids on my team better version control practices (Lord knows we need it!) and I find that easier with text programs rather than binary files as the kids can better understand the value of revision comments when they can use some visual diff tool to examine the old file versus the new one they are about to check in.
Or, is there any good way with RoboLab (and the NXT compiler) to diff the files?
Also, how does the NXT compiler compare to RoboLab?
Thanks!
Dave
This was going to be my suggestion too. The one disadvantage here is price - at $250 it is a bit of a barrier to entry, but as you mentioned you get all of the benefits of learning programming plus you get to write programs that actually interacxt with the real world usign light sensors, touch sensors, rotation sensors, etc. Don't know if you are aware of it, but the FIRST Lego League is an international program designed to introduce kids ages 9-14 to programming and engineering using Mindstorms. very cool organization and a terrific educational opportunity.