[ericd]

Thanks for the pointer, these look awesome (not cheap, but well designed to not be too frustrating for kids).

Trying to figure out if it can handle proper full res camera input, looks like the optical sensor is a bit limited. Maybe these ports don't have enough bandwidth, tho. EDIT: Looks like the Exp level has the "AI Vision Sensor"

[AstroJetson]

You would be surprised what you can do without the camera. The EXP/V5 camera is a closed garden, for example it can't do April tags yet.

Two schools of thought are 1)Software is the key to robotics - so the more powerful brain / camera is the selling point 2) Mechanical interfaces to the physical world is the key - the VIQ ecosystem makes this practical at a pretty low cost. If you root around on ebay for HEXBUG VEX ROBOTICS you can see lots of the plastic kits for sale that can give you parts that make something that you can later frankenmash into other things.

Good luck with your adventures!

[ericd]

lol awesome. Yeah, I’m kind of considering looking around for something more generic/open, but if it makes it too hard to do the basics, that might kill the enthusiasm well before we get anywhere near needing a camera. And I really like what I see of the mechanical aspects of this system. Thank you so much for letting me know about all this stuff. This is really cool.