You asked and I'm delivering more robotics videos. Today we've got the VEX
IQ Super Kit from VEX Robotics. VEXIQ was introduced about 2 years ago and
it's chiefly targeted at elementary to middle school students. For those of you
who don't know what this is all about, robotics kits like the ones from Tetris,
Makeblock, Mindstorms, and Vex are basically educational toys sort of. I
mean, they're not exactly toys, but I don't know what else to call them. you
won't really be able to build a practical, useful robot that will dress
you in the morning or vacuum your floor or cook you dinner. That's not really
the point. The purpose of these robotics kits, as far as I can tell, is the
enormous amount of educational value that they provide while still being a
ton of fun. When you build with this stuff, you're learning a huge amount
about mechanical engineering and programming. And there is so much to
learn. So, let's dig in and see what the VEX IQ system has to offer. And hit that
like button if you want to see more robotics videos in the future.
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setup. Click now to learn more. So, if you want to get started with a
VEX IQ robot, you've basically got three choices. There's the starter kit with a
radio remote control and two touch sensors. There's the starter kit with no
remote control, but it has seven sensors. Then there's the super kit,
which has the remote control and the seven sensors, but is $50 more, which I
think is well worth it. That's the kit I'll be reviewing today. It comes with
850 parts, which you can use to build and program pretty much any kind of
robot you can imagine, and there are instructions for several models to get
you started. The learning ceiling is surprisingly high while still being easy
enough for beginners to get started with, but we'll talk more about that later. So, opening up the box, we see,
hey, what's this? It comes with its own storage bin and a compartmentalized
tray, 50 points to Gryffindor. That's great. There's plenty of extra room to
allow your collection of VEX parts to grow. You can even fit a second tray
above the first one. Looks like you won't be needing to take any trips down
to the Container Store, which is actually a cooler place than it sounds.
Anyway, the VEX IQ kit comes with a getting started guide, two instructional
booklets, and a poster with all of the pieces at 1:1 scale for reference
purposes. Next, we get to the included sensors. Oh yes, these are awesome.
There are seven in total, and they're all small and easy to mount anywhere
onto your robot. We've got two bumper switches. These will let your robot know
when it's run into something. There is an ultrasonic distance sensor. These use
echolocation to measure distances to objects. That's always fun. And there's
a light and color sensor, useful for line following, detecting colors, and
measuring ambient brightness. And then my favorite, the gyro sensor, which
measures turn rates and angles, very useful for orientation. There are also
two touch LEDs, which I don't really think of as sensors. They can't really
be used as extra bumper switches. They're more like extra buttons. Each
one also has fully programmable RGB LEDs, which I've always found to be very
useful for debugging and knowing where you are in a program. Then we get to the
smart motors, and guess what? There are four of them. And they're all pretty
powerful, too. Not only that, but they're easy to mount, not too bulky or
oddly shaped, and they all have encoders and microprocessors inside to measure
all sorts of cool stuff. You can even install them without having to worry
about damage. Next up, we've got the radio controller, which is great, but it
could be better. It feels kind of cheap and the buttons are a bit soggy,
especially the shoulder buttons, which rotate as they press inward rather than
going in straight. Also, my left joystick has a bit of a problem. It
doesn't go all the way to the left. I've been told that this is a known issue
which has been fixed in the most recent batch. I recalibrated mine for full
functionality, but VEX says they're glad to do RMAs if customers aren't happy.
Despite this, the controller is functionally excellent, and it
definitely is still worth getting. The two joysticks give you proportional
control in every direction, and on top of that, you've got eight buttons, and
it's all fully programmable and customizable in software. It also comes
with a 50hour rechargeable battery. And did I mention it's radiocontrolled?
That's a big deal. Unlike infrared, with radio, you don't need line of sight to
your robot, so you won't get easily disconnected. Compare this to the
Mindstorm's EV3 infrared beacon with five buttons, but no joysticks, and the
Tetricx gamepad with two joysticks, but no buttons. And now we get to the
centerpiece of the VEX IQ system, the fully programmable robot brain. This is
where you connect all of your sensors and motors using the included RJ12
cables. This thing has 12 serial ports that can be used as input or output. So
yeah, if you wanted to, you could hook up 12 motors. The brain also comes with
its own rechargeable battery, so there's no need to periodically sacrifice
several at a time to the robot gods. There's also a spot for the radio module
that easily links to the controller, and it even has a backlit screen. At this
point, I think they're just showing off. As for the rest of the parts, there's a
wide variety of beams, pins, wheels, gears, axles, corner connectors, rubber
bands, and even double and quadruple wide beams, and metal axles, which are
overkill in most cases. All the parts are strong and good quality, but the
axles can be pretty annoying because they grip either too much or not enough.
You can use rubber shaft collars for extra grip, but that can waste a lot of
space. The LEGO Group solved this problem with expansion caps on all axle
holes, a feature that VEX IQ does not currently have. To recap, the Super Kit
comes with four motors, seven sensors, 12 in ports on the fully programmable
brain, a radio controller, a rechargeable battery, and 850 pieces.
This is all really impressive when you compare the VEX IQ system to its primary
competition, LEGO Mindstorms, of which the newest iteration is EV3. The EV3 kit
comes with three motors, three sensors, and the Brain Brick has four input ports
for sensors and four output ports for motors, but they can't be swapped, so
you couldn't hook up eight motors if you wanted to. And it requires double A and
AAA batteries, which are not included. While the LEGO Mindtorms EV3 has 550
pieces and costs $350, the VEX IQ Super
Kit has 850 pieces and only costs $300.
Wow, that is some good value. So, that's the hardware. Let's get on to the
software. There are two programming options for VEX IQ, ModKit and Robot C.
There are also several third-party alternatives, but those are not
officially supported. The desktop version of Modkit is 50 bucks, but the
online version is fully featured and free, so let's check that out first.
Modkit is a purely graphical programming interface based on Scratch from MIT. You
do have to install something called Modkit Link on your computer first, but
at least that's pretty easy. You program in Modkit by connecting these various
code blocks together. It's pretty straightforward. And if you're new to
all this, there are a few getting started tutorials to help you along. But
that's all that there is, just getting started. Once you've gotten started, the
tutorials run out. There are no more. Where are the intermediate and advanced
tutorials? I looked all over the place, but couldn't find any. Now, I can see
that despite its simplicity, Modkit does have a lot more to offer than the
tutorials tell you about. But without any further guidance, I ended up
learning Modkit through rigorous trial and error. This always works, but it's
slow and frustrating, and you're more likely to end up with gaps in your
knowledge. I did program a pretty cool pinball game, though. Check out that
video on Channel Super Fun right over here. I also encountered a couple of
bugs and missing features, the worst of which is the lack of copy paste, but it
was nothing gamebreaking, unlike my experience with Makeb block video here.
Let's move on to the more advanced programming option, Robot C, which has a
10-day free trial and after that costs 79 bucks for a single seat. One
important note, the VEX firmware updater tool that works well for Modkit is very
unreliable for robot C. Here it looks like my firmware is updated, doesn't it?
But it's not. I had to close the dedicated firmware updator tool and
download firmware through robot C instead and keep that updater tool
closed because it interferes with your serial port. Seriously, what is it with
serial ports and connection problems? It's frustrating. Anyway, first up,
we've got the robot C graphical mode. There are some great tutorials for this,
which seem to be pretty comprehensive. It's kind of similar to Modkit, but it
actually has less functionality. There are no functions and no variables. And
like Modkit, there isn't a working copy paste or undo. But you can turn your
graphical code straight into textbased code with the click of a button, which
certainly helps to smooth out the programming learning curve. So, let's
move on to Robot C's textbased mode. It's worth noting at this point that
VEXIQ comes with a free online curriculum for students and teachers. It
explains all sorts of robot stuff in detail, but once you get to the actual
programming, it just says become familiar with the programming software
and doesn't bother to tell you how. Now, there are tutorials linked from the
software page, which I've been following, but there's nothing for textbased robot C for VEX IQ. So, how is
someone supposed to learn how to use robot C? Well, I made some phone calls
and I got an interview with local VEX IQ team leader Sharissa. She tells me her
students teach themselves. There's even curriculum in BC for learning C. That's
where I have a problem because I'm not a programming teacher. when it comes to C,
it's my my club that really gets involved in this and they take it kind
of on their own time to learn the language and I really don't have a lot
of a part of that. Well, then it looks like I'll have to piece everything
together using the online documentation, the included example programs and the
forums and wiki. That's okay, but without a dedicated tutorial to give you
a solid foundation of knowledge in robot C, your progress will be slower and
you're more likely to end up with gaps in your knowledge. At least that's been my experience. One suggestion I've heard
is that you can just learn C itself. There are plenty of tutorials and books
to help you with that and then robot C will be easy. However you do it, once
you learn robot C, you will have full control over your robot creations, even
though robot C is apparently not as fullfeatured as C itself. I was able to
program some cool stuff like a PID line follower, a self-parking robot, and a
robot that only hoards red cubes. Robot C works pretty well, but it's got some
problems, too. the Windows can get messed up, especially when you enter
debugging mode and the Windows freak out for a couple of seconds and you can't do
anything. I also encountered a bug where robot C crashed when the debugger was
launched, something I had to fix by deleting registry files and
reinstalling. Also, I really wish that Robot C had something like the function
screen tips in Microsoft Excel. That kind of guidance is really useful when
you're still learning to code. However, it looks to me like not many students
will even learn to program in robot C for their VEX IQ robots. Instead,
they'll learn it when they move on to the bigger batter VEX edr robots, which
are aimed at older students in middle to high school. At this point, I've really
come to understand that VEX IQ is not really intended for individuals like
myself. It's been designed for teams and classrooms, and it's a lot easier to
learn all this stuff if you have other people around you to help you. In fact,
there are yearly VEX competitions with hundreds of participating teams.
Something which provides an excellent environment that encourages students to
learn programming, engineering, collaboration, teamwork, and so on. You
know, it's basically a sport like basketball, but for your brain.
Brainball. Anyway, considering that VEX IQ is so
classroom oriented, Sherissa's perspective as an educator is
particularly important for this review. So, I'll let her provide some concluding
remarks. the school board has a restriction as to like what software you
can install on your computers. So to have a robot programming platform that
is free and web- based is a call from the heaven. So then you would recommend
the VEX IQ system for teaching kids. Yeah. And um I kind of like an advocate
for this stuff. I have these very eager students. They had a hard time grasping
programming and I feel like VEX IQ kind
of fills in that gap. For between $250 and $299 Canadian, you can purchase a
box that has all the pieces in it and everything necessary to build one robot
with the construction affordability. I think it's totally there. So, there you
have it. I recommend it. Sharesa recommends it. What more do you want?
That all being said, I do have quite the laundry list of suggestions for
improvements to the system, ranging from nice to have to why don't you have this?
VEX Robotics has already proven that they listen to user feedback, so don't
be surprised if you see some of these implemented in the future. As for the
price, I feel like $79 is a lot to ask
for Robot C. But compared to the alternatives, it's actually still
competitive. The VEX IQ hardware though is a steal at its current price of $300
for the super kit, considering how much is included. If you buy one of these,
just make sure that it gets used and appreciated. This is not the kind of
thing to be assembled and played with once and then left to collect dust on a
shelf. Properly utilized, this kit can and does provide years of fun and
education. And that is valuable.
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Thanks for watching, guys, and let me know your thoughts on the VEX IQ system
in the comments below. And tell me, were you ever on a robotics team or have I
inspired you to join one? Also, how do you feel about the inevitable automation
of your job and the upcoming robot apocalypse? Let us know with a like or
dislike. I dislike the robot apocalypse.
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you're looking for something else to watch, I suggest you check out the aforementioned bug eating pinball
challenge. See you next time.