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 Embot, 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 Embot can live up to its promise of one robot per child.
First things first, $49 is just the Kickstarter price. If you want an Embot
today, 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 MCore microchip, which is the brain of the robot,
ultrasonic and light sensors, a Bluetooth module if you got the Bluetooth version, two gears that will
be used as wheels, two motors to power the wheels, a little ball wheel, a
battery pack, a single piece aluminum chassis, an 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 10
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 MCore
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 MBLOC software. But
first, you have to manually install Adobe Air if you don't have it already.
Then you can install the MBLOC 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 MBOT board. Then select the MBOT extension. Then you have to
select COM 28 as the serial port. I
looked everywhere for COM28 until realizing that it's referring to a USB
port and COM 4 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 MBOT. 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 Embot is supposed to be a
starter robot for children. Kids and Linus Media Group employees need very
clear, comprehensive instructions with as few steps and as little frustration
as possible. Anyway, I finally got to programming with the MBLOCK 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 5. The Scratch
programming automatically converts itself into Arduino code which is ready
to be uploaded onto the embot. I think that's pretty cool since it makes it
easy to see exactly what the graphical scratch programming looks like in real
textbased code. Anyway, I went through all the videos and programmed the embot
as instructed and I tried a bunch of my own programming. Programming the embot
is mostly straightforward, but only when it works. More on that later. The video
tutorials give you a few ideas of what the embot 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, are follow a line,
crudely, avoid obstacles, and remote control the ambot 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, 1, 2, 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 embot 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 Embot, but you need
additional hardware to do some of the cool things they show off. The stock
Embot 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 Embot, you'll have to buy those. This is par
for the course when it comes to robotics, but because of the Embot's
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 MBOT
for. The hardware is fine. It's the MB block software that has issues. It was
frustrating to install and even more frustrating to use. Sometimes the MBOT
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
MBOT, 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 MBOT could be a worthwhile purchase. Overall, I spent
more time trying to get the MBOT to work than I did actually programming and
using it. Now, there's a graphic on the Kickstarter page favorably comparing the
MBOT to three other competing robotic systems. At first glance, it looks like
the MBOT is clearly superior. Then, you look a little closer and realize, wait a
minute, an RGB LED isn't a sensor. Neither is a buzzer. And these other
robots are poorly represented. For example, the Lego Mindstorm's
educational base set has a ton of stuff not listed in this graphic. There's a
touch sensor, lots of gears, wheels, and beams, an 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 8
years ago. The Parallax Arduino Shield seems like a much more fair comparison,
and it certainly looks like the Embot 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
Tetricx. 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 MBOT
really was $50 total, and if all the
problems with the software were resolved, would the MBOT 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 Embot because of
its limited hardware and singular method of construction. That makes a product
like the Embot 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 Embot 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 Embot. There are plenty of more wellestablished brands
for you to choose from like VEX Robotics, Tetris, 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
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ifixit.com/Linus, and save on some awesome tools today. So, what do you
guys think? Was I too hard on the embot? 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, Taran, as a host? Hello, by the way,
if you haven't seen me before. Let us know in the comments. Anyway, time for
Linus' new outro. If this video sucked, you know what to do. But if it was
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Fun. I'll see you around.