Vex & Boe-Bot/Parallax & Lego Mindstorm are all good products! I have all 3 and they all have strengths and weaknesses over each other. I glad to see the different choices in robotics and hope more companies will become involved! I am currently combining parallax and vex parts on a project I am working on.
Buck Rogers said... Hello!
A word about the RS stores in the Astoria/Queens, and some NYC areas. And the ones in Forest Hills.
It happens all of the ones I visit routinely are fully stocked and reasonably well maintained on stock. However their website is crummy. Now they may want to be getting out of the Basic Stamp or BOE Robot business because of the percieved Vex kit successes, but this is something that will catch up with them later. By fully stocked, I mean all of their parts drawers are stuffed, some have overflow in a closet area. Now those near you all who are like how you all described may be having problems, that did happen in Forest Hills, there is now a new one there, that is very busy.
Gone through this, looking for parts for the VEX.. It's turned into a bit of a scavenger hunt, whilst facing the human
equivilent of a blood-thirsty wood tick, at each store.. (over-the-top zealous sales people.)
The website shows some stock at some stores, until you get there, and.. if you can manage to get away from the salesman,
find it doesn't exist out on the floor, or, worse, you now have to deal with the salesman, to have them check for it
in back (they may be shipping back to the local clearing house, as was the case with the chain/sprocket kit... ONLY closest
store, the manager was all over me, trying to get me to buy another starter kit, buy the battery set, buy the gear
set, etc... He finally hit a nerve, telling me I could buy all of it on credit (I bought a TRS-80 Model 100, that was.. Never received
the card, and suddenly, had a whapping $500 bill on the charge, that I never made. (Someone else got the card.)
to which, I said, "Look, I said I knew what I was looking for, I don't approve of high-pressure sales, and You're going
too far.. I'm sorry, but you just lost a sale from a customer!", and walked out, and ended-up going to the nesxt major city,
to get the part, but couldn't get another part, both of which were at the same 1st store, but with the "Tick" latching on,
I ended-up going even further to get the right part.
Which, now gives me a reason to vent my major frustration with VEX..
Instead of "Think, Create, Build, Amaze. VEX", the slogon should be...
Pay too much (even at 55% OFF.), find little (too little of the parts you need), waste more (try to figure
what you'll do with the extra parts you DON'T need.), shoddy workmanship, VEX!"
On the shoddy workmanship, this took the cake.. One of my bumper switches, didn't work. the squarebot
just kept ramming into a wall, and ignoring the switch.. So, out came the #0 phillips.
Inside, one of the copper traces, of the 'Wafer" (3/4" square pC board) was torn, less than 1/16" from
the wire, and the wire, sticking through the hole, with the solder point sitting in mid air.
(the copper tore off, and broke. BEFORE it was even installed.)
Surprisingly, the Servo's & motor modules, will work with the BS2, but they draw an awful high current, making them
poor replacement for the servos that come with the BOE-Bot.
Undaunted, the Geo-Crawler is still being built, and tested.
And....... Sloppy & cheap, as I see the materials, The Geo-Crawler, is now MOBILE!
I ended-up scrapping most of the wheels, in favor of the tank-tracks.. Using the RC control, it's
semi-functional. (need to flip the tracks from (\===/) to (/===\) style, to stabilize the top-heavy
'Tank' style.. (tries flipping, climbing small inclines, until the center of gravity makes it past the edge
of the object.)
And, I'm STILL looking to replace the VEX controller, with a Homework board. Easy-C is awful!
I'm still, thinking of seeing if the VEX RC could still be connected, and monitored by the
BS2.. Only 4 wires to deal with.. and, found out, from the USFIRST website, off a VEXLABS link,
if you short 2 connections in back of the transmitter, you cannot send to the receiver, (reference,
"A Competition Controller' (using a 4PST switch, to disable 4 transmitters at once.), leading me to
believe this may be the ' Data' line & GND, being shorted, and since the port on the back of the
transmitter, is intended as a 'Teather' (direct line from the joysticks/buttons, to the controller via
a RJ-12 (?) cable.) It shouldn't be hard to decipher.
It also looks like trying to connect a ETrex to the VEX controller, won't be so easy, exept through the
RS-232 Programmer port.. the I/O ports don't appear to have SERIALIN capability, without writing an entire routing.
For those interested, check-out the thread, VEX ThiS! A few VEX/BOE-Bot Hybrids are already in use, and I'm just
starting the tinkering myself..
(Looking at... OOOOHHH! Faster Servo motors! I wonder, if I can adapt 2 VEX motors, to make my BOE move faster?
Hearing about the discounted boe-bots I went around to my local radio shacks... They all looked at me with blank stares and said they have never heard of a Parallax boe-bot.. a guy said he had been working there for 7 months and has never seen it. The funny thing is I saw them a little while after x-mas in the same store (x-mas was only 5months ago).
Any way kind of a bummer you cant get it from Radio shack any more.
My radio shack just re-arranged every thing... and got rid of alot of the electrical components ( they didn't even have IR leds).
Oh well atleast I can still order stuff from Parallax [noparse]:)[/noparse]
-Mike
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Visit my website @ www.kd7lax.com- Devoted to ham radio
Kd7lax said...
Hearing about the discounted boe-bots I went around to my local radio shacks... They all looked at me with blank stares and said they have never heard of a Parallax boe-bot.. a guy said he had been working there for 7 months and has never seen it. The funny thing is I saw them a little while after x-mas in the same store (x-mas was only 5months ago).
Any way kind of a bummer you cant get it from Radio shack any more.
My radio shack just re-arranged every thing... and got rid of alot of the electrical components ( they didn't even have IR leds).
Oh well atleast I can still order stuff from Parallax [noparse]:)[/noparse]
-Mike
All the more reason, why I wanted to write an article titled:
No, I never heard of the TRS-80.. Can I sell you a Tandy-1000. and a printer, and a cell phone... and a.....
It's hard to tell, how Radioshack survived, once Tandy got their hands into the mix, and wiped all existance of
the old Allied Radio out. (they USED to be known as Allied Radioshack.)
I imagine, if you go onto their webpage, and feed it BOE-BOT in the search, it'll find the item, but then, You'll have to search for
a closest store, with the item still in stock.. I've already had to do this trying to find parts for their nearly defunct VEX.
The store employees, seem to have ZERO knowledge of how their products work, what can be used to replace a part, or
the time to look-up an item. Only how to sell, and I mean HARD-SELL!! (hence my reference to one manager being more
ravinous than a wood-tick.) When I had a TRS-80 Model 100, I bought the disk/video expansion. and wanted to add a
2nd drive.. They were more interested in setting up signs for a 'Back To School Sale', than help a loyal customer.
So, I went to another store, where I knew some of the people. They quoted me the price of the drive alone.
(a TEC single-sided 5.25" H/H floppy drive.) Imagine their shock, when I picked-up the box for a complete unit,
and the price, was 1/2 of what they wanted for the drive. (because the unit was being discontinued.)
I later ended-up re-working a full-height drive into the 2nd unit, and even further down, modified the 2-drive unit,
with a pair of double-sided XT drives. (I had to re-burn the EPROM, with code to make a double-sided disk format.)
(stolen code from an old Kaypro-10, but still in the Model 100 format.)
gelfling6 said...
I imagine, if you go onto their webpage, and feed it BOE-BOT in the search, it'll find the item, but then, You'll have to search for a closest store, with the item still in stock. I've already had to do this trying to find parts for their nearly defunct VEX.
RS has stopped carrying the BOE-Bot and VEX. The BOE-Bot is no longer in their on-line catalog. They're in the midst of a "turnaround plan" which looks like it includes discontinuing all products that are of interest to electronics hobbyists. I'm not really sure who their target audience is but, then again, I'm not so sure they are either.
I will stick up for the staff of my local small town Radio Shack though. They are always willing to help their customers.
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Comments
Gone through this, looking for parts for the VEX.. It's turned into a bit of a scavenger hunt, whilst facing the human
equivilent of a blood-thirsty wood tick, at each store.. (over-the-top zealous sales people.)
The website shows some stock at some stores, until you get there, and.. if you can manage to get away from the salesman,
find it doesn't exist out on the floor, or, worse, you now have to deal with the salesman, to have them check for it
in back (they may be shipping back to the local clearing house, as was the case with the chain/sprocket kit... ONLY closest
store, the manager was all over me, trying to get me to buy another starter kit, buy the battery set, buy the gear
set, etc... He finally hit a nerve, telling me I could buy all of it on credit (I bought a TRS-80 Model 100, that was.. Never received
the card, and suddenly, had a whapping $500 bill on the charge, that I never made. (Someone else got the card.)
to which, I said, "Look, I said I knew what I was looking for, I don't approve of high-pressure sales, and You're going
too far.. I'm sorry, but you just lost a sale from a customer!", and walked out, and ended-up going to the nesxt major city,
to get the part, but couldn't get another part, both of which were at the same 1st store, but with the "Tick" latching on,
I ended-up going even further to get the right part.
Which, now gives me a reason to vent my major frustration with VEX..
Instead of "Think, Create, Build, Amaze. VEX", the slogon should be...
Pay too much (even at 55% OFF.), find little (too little of the parts you need), waste more (try to figure
what you'll do with the extra parts you DON'T need.), shoddy workmanship, VEX!"
On the shoddy workmanship, this took the cake.. One of my bumper switches, didn't work. the squarebot
just kept ramming into a wall, and ignoring the switch.. So, out came the #0 phillips.
Inside, one of the copper traces, of the 'Wafer" (3/4" square pC board) was torn, less than 1/16" from
the wire, and the wire, sticking through the hole, with the solder point sitting in mid air.
(the copper tore off, and broke. BEFORE it was even installed.)
Surprisingly, the Servo's & motor modules, will work with the BS2, but they draw an awful high current, making them
poor replacement for the servos that come with the BOE-Bot.
Undaunted, the Geo-Crawler is still being built, and tested.
Stephen (gelfling6)
I ended-up scrapping most of the wheels, in favor of the tank-tracks.. Using the RC control, it's
semi-functional. (need to flip the tracks from (\===/) to (/===\) style, to stabilize the top-heavy
'Tank' style.. (tries flipping, climbing small inclines, until the center of gravity makes it past the edge
of the object.)
And, I'm STILL looking to replace the VEX controller, with a Homework board. Easy-C is awful!
I'm still, thinking of seeing if the VEX RC could still be connected, and monitored by the
BS2.. Only 4 wires to deal with.. and, found out, from the USFIRST website, off a VEXLABS link,
if you short 2 connections in back of the transmitter, you cannot send to the receiver, (reference,
"A Competition Controller' (using a 4PST switch, to disable 4 transmitters at once.), leading me to
believe this may be the ' Data' line & GND, being shorted, and since the port on the back of the
transmitter, is intended as a 'Teather' (direct line from the joysticks/buttons, to the controller via
a RJ-12 (?) cable.) It shouldn't be hard to decipher.
It also looks like trying to connect a ETrex to the VEX controller, won't be so easy, exept through the
RS-232 Programmer port.. the I/O ports don't appear to have SERIALIN capability, without writing an entire routing.
starting the tinkering myself..
(Looking at... OOOOHHH! Faster Servo motors! I wonder, if I can adapt 2 VEX motors, to make my BOE move faster?
Stephen
Any way kind of a bummer you cant get it from Radio shack any more.
My radio shack just re-arranged every thing... and got rid of alot of the electrical components ( they didn't even have IR leds).
Oh well atleast I can still order stuff from Parallax [noparse]:)[/noparse]
-Mike
▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔▔
Visit my website @ www.kd7lax.com- Devoted to ham radio
There's another Parallax BOE-Bot auction: cgi.ebay.com/Parallax-Boe-Bot-Robot-Kit-Serial-28132_W0QQitemZ7621186891QQcmdZViewItem
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OS-X: because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows
All the more reason, why I wanted to write an article titled:
No, I never heard of the TRS-80.. Can I sell you a Tandy-1000. and a printer, and a cell phone... and a.....
It's hard to tell, how Radioshack survived, once Tandy got their hands into the mix, and wiped all existance of
the old Allied Radio out. (they USED to be known as Allied Radioshack.)
I imagine, if you go onto their webpage, and feed it BOE-BOT in the search, it'll find the item, but then, You'll have to search for
a closest store, with the item still in stock.. I've already had to do this trying to find parts for their nearly defunct VEX.
The store employees, seem to have ZERO knowledge of how their products work, what can be used to replace a part, or
the time to look-up an item. Only how to sell, and I mean HARD-SELL!! (hence my reference to one manager being more
ravinous than a wood-tick.) When I had a TRS-80 Model 100, I bought the disk/video expansion. and wanted to add a
2nd drive.. They were more interested in setting up signs for a 'Back To School Sale', than help a loyal customer.
So, I went to another store, where I knew some of the people. They quoted me the price of the drive alone.
(a TEC single-sided 5.25" H/H floppy drive.) Imagine their shock, when I picked-up the box for a complete unit,
and the price, was 1/2 of what they wanted for the drive. (because the unit was being discontinued.)
I later ended-up re-working a full-height drive into the 2nd unit, and even further down, modified the 2-drive unit,
with a pair of double-sided XT drives. (I had to re-burn the EPROM, with code to make a double-sided disk format.)
(stolen code from an old Kaypro-10, but still in the Model 100 format.)
I will stick up for the staff of my local small town Radio Shack though. They are always willing to help their customers.
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OS-X: because making Unix user-friendly was easier than debugging Windows
www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=2760629&cat=GDT
Parallax Boe-Bot Robot Kit (Serial Version) 2760629
Regular Price: $79.00
Sale Price: $64.00