Gadgetory

ever since I and the rest of linus media group signed up for CES 2014 I've received hundreds perhaps thousands of spammy promotional emails it's mostly nonsense and garbage products and I've been clearing it out as usual when one of them finally caught my eye meet the M bot a $49 stem educational robot for children I've been interested in robotics ever since I was a kid so let's find out if the M bot can live up to its promise of one robot per child first things first $49 is just the Kickstarter price if you want an invite to day it'll cost you $79 that doesn't include shipping and on top of that I had to pay DHL $20 in import fees from Taiwan and I'm not the only one anyway let's take a look at what we get in the box there's the MCOR microchip which is the brain of the robot ultrasonic and light sensors a bluetooth module if you have the bluetooth version two gears that will be used as wheels two motors to power the wheels a little ball wheel battery pack a single piece aluminum chassis and IR remote with no included battery a testing mat a motor shaft repair kit an instructional booklet a screwdriver and some screws bolts and cables assembly is supposed to take ten easy minutes but it took me longer for a couple of reasons like why are the instructions supposed to be read clockwise also the included screwdriver is only compatible with one type of screw there's no easy way to tighten the bolts and the instructions fail to mention that there's a hex wrench on the other side of the screwdriver bit once the MCOR microchip has been screwed on detaching the velcroed on battery pack and managing cables is quite difficult since there's not much room also one of the wires on one of my motors was completely detached this was an easy fix for me but I did some research and it turns out the Quality Assurance on the motors in particular has been a problem for make block before anyway with the robot assembled it's finally time to download and install the in block software but first you have to manually install Adobe AIR if you don't have it already then you can install the end block software but according to the video instructions before I can get to programming there's still more I need to do first I need to select the unbought board then select the embody extension then you have to select comm 28 as the serial port I looked everywhere for comm 28 until realizing that it's referring to a USB port and com4 works just as well and then you have to update the firmware and after that you still have to download install and link arduino drivers until finally you can start uploading code to the in bot that's a lot of steps to go through before you've even started programming sure it all seems obvious once you know what to do but the mbot is supposed to be starter robot for children kids and lines Media Group employees he'd very clear comprehensive instructions with as few steps and as little frustration as possible anyway I finally got to programming with the unblock software now this is actually a modified version of scratch which was developed by MIT to teach kids about programming scratch is pretty cool and it reminds me of when I was a kid learning programming with game maker v the Scratch programming automatically converts itself into Arduino code which is ready to be uploaded onto the M pot I think that's pretty cool since it makes it easy to see exactly what the graphical Scratch programming looks like in real text-based code anyway I went through all the videos and programmed the ambadas instructed and I tried a bunch of my own programming programming mbot is mostly straightforward but only when it works more on that later the video tutorials give you a few ideas of what the M bot can do but I ran out of tutorials quickly and I found myself thinking is that all the most interesting things you can do in no particular order our follow a line crudely avoid obstacles and remote control the M bot with the remote or bluetooth you can also make colored LEDs flash and make noise with the buzzer but you don't really need a robot for that and you can detect the ambient brightness of the room with the included light sensor on the M core but I don't really see the point and even the Associated tutorial doesn't do anything with it except display the value on screen I feel like it would have been better to use this in place of the current two bottom mounted line following light sensors which can only detect black or white meaning that it only has four states zero one two and three this makes smooth PID line following impossible also I don't see that there's any way to do more than one thing at a time like flashing LEDs while simultaneously line following two different things which shouldn't interfere but they do it all gets lumped together this is because of the decision to base the M bot on Arduino which doesn't support multi-threading bummer I mean maybe this is all just an issue of expectation management the Kickstarter campaign really had me excited for the M bot but you need additional hardware to do some of the cool things they show the stock mbot only assembles in one way and it comes with just two motors for the two wheels though the rj25 ports can support more motors if you want extra sensors or a robotic arm for your mbot you'll have to buy those this is par for the course when it comes to robotics but because of the mbot single piece aluminum chassis it's not nearly as modular as other robotics kits this may be a good or a bad thing depending upon what you want the M bought for the hardware is fine it's the M block software that has issues it was frustrating to install and even more frustrating to use sometimes the M bot wouldn't be detected and sometimes it wouldn't accept code and here's a strange problem it seems like after you upload your first Arduino code to the M bot certain scratch script modules no longer work even though they previously did work as shown in the video tutorials also at some point I lost the ability to upload code from my work computer completely I kept getting this error also I could never get the ultrasonic sensor to work no matter what computer I used I kept getting the error undefined reference to count pulse ASM I told make block about my software problems and they quickly updated the software now the ultrasonic sensor works and I can upload code from my work computer again that's great but then all my LED programming became non-functional and I had to redo it there are still other issues with the software I sincerely hope that these remaining problems can also be resolved if they are the M BOTS could be a worthwhile purchase overall I spent more time trying to get the M bot to work than I did actually programming and using it now there's a graphic on the Kickstarter page favorably comparing the M bought to three other competing robotic systems at first glance it looks like the M bot is clearly superior then you look a little closer and realize wait a minute and RGB LED isn't a sensor neither is a buzzer and these other robots are poorly represented for example the Lego Mindstorms educational base set has a ton of stuff not listed in this graphic there's a touch sensor lots of gears wheels and beams and integrated display with buttons a speaker and enclosed PCP and three servo motors with built in tachometers for a total of nearly 500 parts with nearly unlimited ways to assemble it all of course it's a more expensive $250 and this came out a years ago the parallax Arduino shield seemed like a much more fair comparison and it certainly looks like the mbot has much better hardware for less money but I can't say for sure since I've never used the parallax Arduino shield robot kit I've also never used the vex IQ robot but hey vex parallax Lego tetrax if you guys want to send any of your robots to us for a review go right ahead I'll review it get in here so anyway here's the question if the M BOTS really was $50 total and of all the problems with the software were resolved would the M bot be a worthwhile purchase sure at that point the only issue I can see is that any kid who's really interested in robotics is going to quickly outgrow the M bot because of its limited hardware and singular method of construction that makes a product like the M bot more appropriate for educational settings where kids can learn everything they can from it and then move on to bigger and better things allowing the next group of kids to have their turn it's not necessary for every single child to own an M bot since every kid is not going to care about robotics so if you or your child or your class is interested in robotics I cannot recommend the M bot there are plenty of more well established brands for you to choose from like vex robotics tetrax Mindstorms and so on I recommend that you spend the extra money and get a robotics kit that will allow a much greater range of learning and experimentation and on the subject of fixing things and putting stuff together today's episode sponsor is iFixit you've probably used or at least read one of the thousands of in-depth tear downs or guides available on their site but what you might not know is that they also have a great line of professional electronics tools the crown jewel of their lineup is the pro Tech tool kit which I use quite a bit and Linus gets pretty annoyed when I misplace it it's got over 70 tools including a 54 bit driver kit nylon and metal sputters sputters booters an anti-static wrist strap and lots more whether you're fixing a handheld system like a 3d S or shield or trying to disassemble a gaming monitor like Linus did in this video or if you just want to improve your PC building experience with a better set of tools the pro Tech tool kit is a great choice it's available for only $64.95 from iFixit but if you our offer code Linus tech you can save $10 on any purchase of $50 or more so head on over to our link that's ifixit.com slash Linus and save on some awesome tools today so what do you guys think was I too hard on the mbot do you have one and if so what do you think about it are you guys interested in seeing more videos about robotics in the future and how do you feel about me Tarrant as a host hello by the way if you haven't seen me before let us know in the comments anyway time for Linus's new outro if this video sucked do you know what to do but if it was awesome get subscribed hit the like button or even consider supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon buying a cool t-shirt like this one or with the direct monthly contribution now that you're done doing all that you're probably wondering what to watch next so click that little I button up in the top right hand corner to check out plug life daydream which well you're just gonna have to see it on our other channel channel super fun I'll see you around