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so i have a 10 year old son who was a lego fanatic up until about a year ago.
i was wondering if anyone had any experience with the mindstorm system?

he still likes legos and i thought that this might take it to the next level and renew his enthusiasm.

hes always making big stompy robots so i thought that this might be another plus.
im wondering if the computer/programming aspect of it might be too much for him or not.

any thoughts?

I have had one of these a few years now (one of the originals, I know they've added some more stuff now, both parts and programming options) and I would recommend it if your son has any interest at all in construction, engineering, maths, programming, or just building awesome robots that can do some pretty cool stuff.

I actually found that building the robot itself to do the job you want without falling apart is harder than writing the program (and this is from someone with no background at all in IT or programming). I'll assume the software is still roughly the same, and say that it's very intuitive and easy to follow, and you get very clear instructions to help you learn. Once you've got the hang of it, you can do practically anything with it.

The only caveat I'd add is that you do have to be prepared to stick with it. It's almost a certainty that your first dozen programs and bots won't work, but you have to just learn from the mistakes and refine them. It takes time, but the learning is an experience in itself.

Again, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it, they are great fun, and as a testament to how educational they can be, my collage frequently runs clubs for the lower years based around learning programming and engineering from the Mindstorm. I'm not sure what has changed since the release of the first generation ones, but I can only imagine they are even better and more versatile.

 Paradigm wrote:

I actually found that building the robot itself to do the job you want without falling apart is harder than writing the program (and this is from someone with no background at all in IT or programming). I'll assume the software is still roughly the same, and say that it's very intuitive and easy to follow, and you get very clear instructions to help you learn. Once you've got the hang of it, you can do practically anything with it.

This is basically what I would say. My cousin has the NX2.0, and despite both of us being Lego fanatics, building the robot is significantly harder than programming one.

I have one of the really old systems (I think it must be about 10-15 years old now ) and it was OK - a bit clunky to design programs on and woefully underpowered motors and crappy battery life

But I can only imagine they have improved since then.

They are AWESOME, and if he wants to get into robotics competitions down the road it will give him a leg up. Lots of State Competitions have programming competitions using the Lego Mindstorm system as it's a good baseline for everyone to work off of.

I had one of the NXT systems and loved to build and program it!

Look into the FIRST organization's programs. Many schools have FIRST Lego League teams where kids work together to build a robot and program it to do tasks upon a lego-based table. Heck, if your kid's school doesn't have one, look into starting one, that's how I had it at my school.

I never had one myself, but did try it out the year it came out in Legoland! WOOP! WOOP!

It seems you can build ones that "walk" now. Well shuffle with treads, but that sounds like stompy robot to me.

Is this like a Christmas gift in the making? Have you showed him the concept?

If the progamming/electronic element is off-putting there's always Lego's Technic line. I'd imagine they'd complement each other as you could probably bring some of those kits to life with the Mindstorm stuff.

 Medium of Death wrote:
I'd imagine they'd complement each other as you could probably bring some of those kits to life with the Mindstorm stuff.

You can indeed

christmas idea in the making

thanks so much everyone. after all of your reviews and a lot of online reading i may have to give it a shot.

i like the idea of FIRST.
i may have to check that out some more as well.