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Lego boost

How to keep a child in quarantine?

There was one time - my child (4.5 years old) went to a robotics club based on Lego WeDo and Lego Mindstorms. The circle has recently closed (no, the coronavirus has nothing to do with it). It was a little disappointing, but one way or another the following shortcomings were identified.

  1. During one lesson, the child collects a rather simple robot. Sometimes it was possible to agree that one robot was more difficult to stretch for two classes (this is if two days in a row).
  2. At the end of the lesson, there is almost no time left to devote to the basics of programming. A basic script is made according to the instructions, and there is no time left to understand what is happening there.
  3. Cost. It costs EMNIP in the region of 800 rubles per lesson.

But here in quarantine they took the Lego Boost set (17101), indicated in the topic, for 7 thousand rubles. The designer is a motorized platform, a light sensor (obstacle detector) and a set of parts, from which 5 or 6 robots seem to be assembled. The instruction is an application for a tablet, which at the same time is hooked to the motors via Bluetooth and allows you to make programs from blocks.

The constructor has a rating of 7-12. However, my great pleasure has been collecting a second robot for several days. Makes 1-2 approaches per day. For the approach, he turns out to perform an average of 60 steps of the instruction (the robot is really big) - after that, the concentration falls, gets tired. The intermediate steps even before the end of the complete assembly allow you to play with a robot.

Advantages:

1) You can collect large and truly interesting models. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t keep within 1-2 classes.

2) You can devote more time to learning programming.

2a) You can focus the child’s attention on mechanics more - the types of gears, the name of all the parts (shafts, gears, crowns, etc.)

3) Do this with the child yourself, and don’t wait until the lesson ends, while someone else is engaged in your child.

4) Price. Yes, 7 thousand nefig is not cheap, but taking into account transportation costs, this is somewhere around 7-8 classes in a circle. Moreover, here he will have enough classes for 20 work.

5) The set is clearly on growth. The main thing is not to lose the details, so you need to take it immediately with the organizer. I bought two large at once in Leroy Merlin. Details barely fit.

6) Different dudes discovered the motor control protocol and wrote a Python for what they had a look at and liked the most: BrickNil and pylgbst - naturally they are more flexible than the commands built into the application. Growing up - and now it's a cool thing. This is not a bug on the screen to drive the Logo. A real crawler robot.

In general, for me it’s such a profitable investment and an interesting way to keep a child in isolation.

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