Rating:  -
My son has been wanting this set for a while and we got it for him for Christmas. He absolutely loves it! I don't know if he even read the instructions that came with the set - there are so many robot programs on the internet that he has tried. He is having a blast with it. But then again, my son is a computer geek.
Rating: -
Excellent gift for my 10 year-old boy. He's actually learning programming skills. Holds his attention much longer than the typical xmas gift:). Definitely worth the money!
Rating:  -
A lot of good reviews have been written on this product, and on the strength of those reviews, I bought this kit for my 12yo son this past Christmas. Today, I want to share with your our out-of-box experience, so you know what you might encounter.
My son was certainly eager to begin building his first robot on Christmas Day. The first suggested robot is the Tribot, I think it's called. It's a three-wheeled robot with claws. We installed the software on the kids' laptop and tried to set-up Bluetooth to communicate between the laptop and the robot. That connection, however, didn't work. Nor did it work on my own laptop, either. After doing some web searches, it looks like our Dell-branded laptops have a Bluetooth implementation that doesn't work (or doesn't work well) with the Lego Mindstorm NXT robots. I don't know if that's a Dell issue, a Lego issue, both or neither. But it was our first disappointment nevertheless.
The next disappointment came after we used the USB cable to install a program in the Tribot. The program was fairly simple -- move forward, sense a ball using a touch sensor and grasp it with the claws, backup an unlimited amount of time until the sound sensor detects noise, then turn around 180 degrees and open the claws. Problem was, the sound sensor apparently kept detecting noise even though we weren't making any, and so the program kept ending prematurely after 1, 5, maybe 8 or 9 or 10 seconds after it began backing up. This quirky behavior greatly deflated my son -- how can you have fun instructing a robot that doesn't follow directions?
I contacted Amazon's Customer Service -- the best! -- and they overnighted a replacement unit. My son built the same robot from kit #2, but this robot had much worse problems than the first: the motors ran in the opposite direction from what the program instructed (and, no, we triple-checked the cabling -- this wasn't an assembly problem), one wheel failed to brake properly, and the reduced-power instruction to the wheels failed to execute properly. Oh, it also exhibited the same problem with the sound sensor, too. And yes, I was running the *exact* same program between the 1st robot and the 2nd robot -- downloaded from the same laptop on which the program was originally written. Yes, I know that we shouldn't have experienced variation in the way the program ran between the two robots. I'm just here to tell you that WE DID. And that was maddening. (I posted the my results on YouTube -- search "bocawade" for the NXT videos).
Now I searched the Internet for answers, and found an enthusiast site where I learned quite a bit [...] First off, the "sound" sensor isn't really detecting sound as much as vibrations. The nuance between "sound" and "vibrations" meant that our robot, running on bumpy living room tile, apparently sensed a vibration where none was intended. That solved our initial problem with the first robot.
Along the way, I discovered a programming language bug that's used to program these robots. Using a Loop block with a Count = 3, the last program instruction before the end of the loop -- a Touch sensor block -- needed to be touched for as many times as the program had looped. In other words, during the first loop, the touch sensor needed to be touched only once to send the loop to the beginning. On the second loop, the touch sensor had to be touched twice, and on the third loop, it had to be touched three times, and so on. This programming language bug was later confirmed by one of the members of the [...] site. To me and my son, though, this was utter nonsense and just continued our frustrations.
Did I mention Lego's technical support? I tried contacting them for answers, but they were really no help whatsoever. Again, the enthusiast site -- [...] -- said that Lego's "technical support" was good for nothing much more than replacing missing pieces from a kit.
It's now a week after Christmas. We're going to ship the 2nd robot kit back to Amazon and keep the first, now that we know what the issues were with the sound sensor. But it was hardly a good week between Dec 25 and Jan 1.
Most people don't have this kind of out-of-box experience, I think. But I'm writing this lengthy review just to forewarn you of some issues you might encounter along the way. Don't look to Lego for technical help. Don't be surprised at a robot that doesn't perform correctly (and your program isn't to blame for that). Don't think a "Sound" sensor is detecting sound like you'd think it would.
I'm still expecting my son will have a lot of fun -- and frustration -- in making robots. Software development can be very frustrating, I know (I'm a software developer by trade). But Lego could provide customers with a better out-of-box experience from the get-go (like, include a few already-written programs along with the software to write programs with, and include videos showing how those programs should affect a specific robot model).
So, the two-star rating is strictly for the out-of-box experience alone.
Rating:  -
We've only had it for a few days but the experience has been great. The Legos work like Legos do. My son is pretty good at putting them together and I'm good at the programming. I'd say the programming part could use one or two more tutorials showing how you can combine actions, but otherwise a fine toy.
Rating: -
This one has engaged my 8-year son immediately for 1 whole week and he is able to follow all the instruction step by step by himself to build different robots, also he is creating his own ! This is a great interest building tool in robot/computer/engineer world for kids.
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