[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?
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Ask HN: Best way to learn robotics with a 10 year old?
Hey all, after discovering the greatness of NHRL[1] my son and i
would love to try building a small battle bot, but i know nothing
of electrical engineering or robotics. I prefer to learn how
everything works and build something custom instead of just buying
a premade kit and following instructions. I was wondering if there
are any resources or books that we could go through together that
would teach us the basics of electrical engineering and/or
robotics. Thanks! [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GzzckUcnfE
Author : hersko
Score : 75 points
Date : 2024-07-25 16:44 UTC (6 hours ago)
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I was going to recommend
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms
|
| but is is discontinued. In terms of easy of build and programming
| these were great. This kit is still available
|
| https://education.lego.com/en-us/products/lego-education-spi...
| germinalphrase wrote:
| There are rumors that Lego is working on a future Mindstorm
| system. Haven't heard any hard news about it though.
| manishsharan wrote:
| Are you referring to Lego Spike Prime ?
| autokad wrote:
| I agree, I think those Lego sets are a great way to go
| bena wrote:
| Spike Prime and Mindstorms use the same Hub just different
| colors.
|
| Spike Prime has a large motor, 2 small motors, a distance
| sensor, color sensor, and force sensor.
|
| The Mindstorms set had 4 small motors, a distance sensor, and
| color sensor.
|
| Mindstorms retailed for about $400 as does Spike Prime
| currently.
|
| Spike Prime _is_ Mindstorms for all intents and purposes. You
| can even get either the Spike Prime or Mindstorms app and use
| it with either Hub.
| floor2 wrote:
| You might consider something like the Lego Mindstorms robotics
| kit.
|
| It gives you an accessible starting point, but is a fully
| featured programming language and has a variety of sensors,
| motors, etc which can be made into increasingly complex and
| diverse robots.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| I've been looking for robots recently that work with Scratch.
|
| I found one called VinciBot that looks kind of interesting -
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BftyB954_r4 I like the fact it
| can draw (it doesn't look like it can pick up the pen by default
| though, but it appears to have a motor inside that you can attach
| Lego components to).
|
| I installed their android app to have a little look at it.
| fach wrote:
| Checkout out Edison: https://meetedison.com/
| carterschonwald wrote:
| Don't forget to also cover safety :)
| JoblessWonder wrote:
| I know that you said you don't want a premade kit and following
| instructions and this is *close* to that... but I think it might
| still be a great fit.
|
| Mark Rober has a new product where they ship a new robot every 2
| months. They give you the basic instructions on how to
| build/program it but the idea is that you take that knowledge and
| then expand on it yourself by adding features. My daughter is
| still a little too young for it so I haven't used it personally.
| The biggest issue is that it is a subscription and not a one time
| purchase.
|
| Here is the link: https://www.crunchlabs.com/products/hack-pack-
| subscription
|
| And here is a brief video explaining how it expands beyond the
| normal "premade robot kit."
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtdOdUi9b_s
| tadbit wrote:
| > NOTE: The IDE works only on Mac or Windows (if you want to
| code)
|
| Boo! _hiss_
| danielheath wrote:
| Proprietary tooling that doesn't work the way you want is
| unfortunately a great introduction to hardware work :/
| tda wrote:
| The Lego Boost set is quite a nice set. It comes with three
| servo's and a color/distance sensor. The scratch like programming
| tools are nice and accessible and not that limited. However you
| can also flash micropython on the controller with PyBricks. Then
| you can pair it with other Lego hubs and a remote over bluetooth.
|
| This setup gives you pretty much all the possibilities of
| Mindstorms at a small fraction of the investment
| glasss wrote:
| FIRST (https://www.firstinspires.org/) is a more structured
| program intended to be organized through schools or similar
| communities (homeschooling groups, 4H, etc.). I have more
| experience with the bigger robots intended for high schoolers,
| but they have programs all the way down to kindergarten.
|
| Doing something similar at home is very possible, and if you are
| nearby an existing team or program they are usually more than
| happy to have a conversation with parents about how to get their
| kids started even if it doesn't mean joining the team.
| RyanOD wrote:
| +1 for FIRST. This is your path as it is structured and can
| also help your child build friendships with other kids
| interested in robotics.
|
| Additionally, participants who stick with the program through
| high school learn every aspect of robotics - problem solving,
| design, fabrication, testing, coding, presentation, teamwork,
| etc.
| glasss wrote:
| That is a great point, the things I value most from my time
| in FIRST are the friendships, connections, and soft skills I
| built. The engineering is fun, but I definitely use my
| teamwork, leadership, research, and presentation experience
| more on a regular basis.
|
| Additionally to the OP, if you want this to be something that
| you and your kid do together, you can volunteer as a mentor
| for the team if your schedules align. You can have a very
| large impact beyond just your kid by doing so.
| trzy wrote:
| Modern robotics with deep learning/imitation learning is
| surprisingly accessible. The low-cost robot arm I used in this
| project is very easy to 3D print and assemble:
| https://github.com/trzy/robot-arm
|
| An iPhone app is used to teleoperate the arm and gather examples
| of an action. You then train the model and deploy it and the arm
| performs the actions based on current camera input and joint
| angle state.
| anfractuosity wrote:
| A robot arm is fun, I assembled a 6 DoF one with metal parts
| and hobby servos that cost around PS70 if I recall correctly.
|
| I find it kind of interesting how because hobby servos are
| used, which don't have encoders on, when you turn it on and set
| the servo positions it jerks into life.
|
| The problem I find with mine, is that all servos are the same,
| I think ideally the bottom servo needs more power. I need to
| try slightly higher voltage though too - I think I can use up
| to ~6V.
|
| I controlled mine with a Python + a PCA9685 I2C PWM driver
| module - https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B014KTSMLA/
| 05 wrote:
| Battle bots are not exactly robotics, they're RC cars with extra
| servo channels. Personally I find them boring compared to FPV,
| but the entry is pretty much the same - watch YouTube tutorials.
| You could find a book but anything you'd find there would be
| outdated, unless you need the absolute basics like Kirchhoff's
| circuit laws - which are as useful for building stuff as set
| theory is useful for writing wrappers for REST APIs.. just don't
| connect negative to positive and you should be fine:)
|
| You might learn Fusion if you want to 3D model the chassis -
| again, everything is on Youtube.
|
| Good luck!
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Find a FIRST Lego League (RLL) team for the kid.
|
| Maybe buy Lego Mindstorms and Lego Technics for home and when the
| kid runs out of ideas, give them challenges like a line-following
| robot or a FLL course.
|
| Then move to a FreeNove Ultimate Sarter Kit. I prefer the Arduino
| Uno based kits, but the ESP32 kits have their place as well.
| tombert wrote:
| Depending on what you want to do, Bowler Studio is something you
| might want to play with.
|
| It's a FOSS robotics software toolkit; you can model the entire
| robot and simulate nearly every aspect (including physics and
| servos and whatnot). Using it you can design, test, print, and
| assemble in a relatively nice fashion.
|
| I mostly use BowlerStudio for 3D printing CAD stuff, but it does
| a _lot_ , and since it's free I think it's worth playing with.
| qqqwerty wrote:
| > but i know nothing of electrical engineering or robotics.
|
| A few words of advice from someone who has been dabbling for a
| decade or so, but never really managed more than some half baked
| prototypes and a few kit builds. You need to consider these three
| trade offs: time, skill, and money.
|
| Time: If you have a lot of time, you can learn what you need to
| learn to build a robot. Learn 3d modeling/printing to make a
| chassis (my local library has a 3d printer if you don't want to
| buy one). Learn how to piece together microcontrollers, motor
| controllers, BMS, and sensors, etc... And learn how to program
| everything to work together.
|
| Skill: If you already are pretty good building things,
| programming, etc... you can leverage those skills. For a robot
| chassis, it can be done with things around your house, but you
| need to have the skills and a bit of creativity to make a good
| one. If you know the arduino ecosystem pretty well, you can
| pretty easily put together a prototype board, etc...
|
| Money: You can buy a prebuilt chassis, or a board that has
| integrated motor controllers and BMS, etc... This will save you
| time and you will probably end up with a nicer end product than
| what you could build yourself. Of course the more you lean into
| this, the closer you are getting to a kit build robot. And FWIW,
| a kit robot is probably going to be cheaper than mixing and
| matching prebuilt components + some DIY.
|
| Also, it kinda depends on what you want to do. Do you just want a
| little robot that drives around the house (cheap and easy). Or
| maybe does some line following (also easy). Or do you want a
| self-balancing robot, or a robot arm (a bit harder and more
| money). Or something really fancy like a self landing model
| rocket or a self driving lawn mower (expensive and difficult).
| You will probably want to start with the easy stuff first, just
| so you can get a feel for it. And then move up the difficulty
| ladder from there. But from my experience the time/skill/money
| trade off goes up fairly exponentially. Getting a half baked
| prototype for a simple rover is a weekend long project. But doing
| something really sophisticated or polished is months/years of
| effort (unless you want to drop some coin to speed things up). It
| is a fun hobby, but it does require a bit of investment before
| you start getting impressive results. If you think you and your
| kid are up for it, then dive right in. But if you think this
| might be more of a short term curiosity, then a kit or something
| similar is probably your best bet.
| jcims wrote:
| Robotics is sexy and there's no reason not to dive in, but I'd
| suggest also learning some of the fundamentals. Learning how
| control algorithms work is incredibly important and I'm thinking
| you could probably find some examples of building a simple
| application for a PID controller where your kid can directly
| manipulate the values and see how it responds. You don't need to
| go really deep into the math necessarily, just objective of each
| parameter and how they influence the behavior of the system.
| hersko wrote:
| I found this[1] from Team Witchdoctor which seems to be exactly
| what i want but it's very expensive at $300.
|
| [1] https://shop.teamwitchdoctor.com/products/camp-witch-doctor
| potatomaster2 wrote:
| Many of these comments are about robotics as it's taught now,
| focusing on code and cameras and algorithms and motion planning.
|
| As someone who's built both BattleBots and Professional Robotics
| for work, BattleBots is a great way to get out of equations and
| hands on fabrication, manufacturing, testing, and scrappiness
| that is so hard to reach in mechanical and electrical
| engineering. And unlike FIRST or Lego robots, it's much more open
| ended and "guardrails off" engineering, which I found really
| freeing from the tyranny of academic-style competition robotics.
| You can still incorporate all the sensors and algorithm-stuff
| (many folks build their own motor controllers like "brushless-
| rage" or have sensors like Chomp), but if you just love seeing
| things move and love mechanical design, it's a great thing.
|
| For BattleBots in particular, the easiest way to get into it is
| to find some guides online for a simple bot[1] with DC motors and
| a 3D printed body, and just enter it into a local combat robot
| competition! You'll learn the basics of a motor, speed
| controller, selecting wheels and other interfaces, as well as
| designing a chassis and fabricating it. At a competition you get
| the thrill of the fight, and afterwards you can sweep your robot
| scraps into a dustpan, make friends with other bot builders and
| go from there.
|
| [1] A quick search on instructs Les and I found this, though
| there are many more great robot tutorials:
| https://www.instructables.com/Naked-Singularity-Beetleweight... .
| Here is one that overviews all the basic steps in a BattleBots
| https://www.instructables.com/How-to-design-and-build-a-comb...
| Dnguyen wrote:
| This was how I started with my son, who was also 10. Have him
| learned Scratch from MIT, learn how logic is constructed in a
| program Then I got him a couple of Snap Circuit kit. I know you
| said no kit, but this is just to learn basic circuit and
| electricity flow. Then we used a Raspberry Pi to learn Python.
| Once he's comfortable with Python a bit, I set up an environment
| to program micro controller, specifically the ESP32. I flash
| Micro Python on there and we started to program some LED string
| lights. Then control motors with H-Bridges. After that, it's onto
| robotics and anything we can get our hands on. I repurpose a
| baseball pitching machine to launch pickleball, with bluetooth
| connectivity to boot! All with an ESP 32, I can control the speed
| and rotation of the ball, which the original machine only had one
| speed and no rotation. It took my son about 2 years to get from
| zero to building robots. Good luck!
| hersko wrote:
| Found this which seems pretty cool and uses very inexpensive
| components: https://www.instructables.com/How-to-Build-a-
| Battebot-With-C...
| pryelluw wrote:
| Since you are a starting out from zero a sumo robot would be a
| good choice. It is a well known quantity at this point with lots
| of parts, simple rules, and very focused on the battle aspect.
| You can build two at once and program them against each other.
|
| I'd do a web search for "sumobot arduino" and go from there.
| atum47 wrote:
| There's a bunch of cheap kits on sites like AliExpress. I'd
| personally would love to just sit down and assemble a bunch of
| mini robots while learning eletronics and micro controllers
| awahab92 wrote:
| get a - roomba create 3 for 400 - arm built of dynamixel servos
| for 200 - camera for 100-500 (stereoscopic will set you back but
| its worth it) - nvidia jetson nano orin nx (500)
|
| for about 2k, you can make a robot that can clean your house and
| is probably smarter than a dog/cat
| anfractuosity wrote:
| Regarding the arm, are you thinking of a particular kit?
|
| Those servos look really interesting, so you can read their
| position via a UART type interface? I've only played with cheap
| PWM servos before.
| fintler wrote:
| If you don't have time to join a league, you can buy Spike Prime
| sets directly. It comes with hour-long lessons that you can walk
| through at your own pace. It's been excellent for my 7 year old,
| she has no problem with it.
|
| https://education.lego.com/en-us/products/lego-education-spi...
| oneplane wrote:
| It depends on how deep you are able and willing to go. Getting
| 'something' to work is not that difficult, especially when all
| you end up with is essentially a remote controlled car.
|
| But as soon as you actually want to build the thing you need to
| work out what your end goal is, how it is physically put together
| (lets call that the chassis), how it is going to mechanically
| move, how you are going to drive that movement and how you are
| going to control that driving method, and then how abstract it
| needs to do (are you telling it what to do, or telling it what
| end goal to pursue?).
|
| Starting with Lego, or perhaps meccano will let you build the
| physical thing, maybe even have it move with a remote control.
| You'd get the plastic (Lego) or metal (Meccano) parts as-is and
| you build whatever you want. Add a two motors and you can drive
| wheels and steering. Add a receiver and a remote and you have
| your remote controlled vehicle.
|
| Edit: fischertechnik is another brand that makes parts you can
| assemble in whatever way you want (some random YouTube Hit:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVzK3VaYxS8 ), it apparently has
| something that also lets you go to PLC levels of robots
| controllers: https://www.rapidonline.com/fischertechnik-robo-tx-
| controlle... . This is of course not what you'd pick if you also
| wanted to build the entire controller.
|
| But when you don't want that plastic or metal ready made, and you
| don't want modules that deal with motors or controllers for you,
| you now also need to learn some metal working, electronics
| (microcontrollers, RF transceivers, power management), and
| software (those microcontrollers won't program themselves).
|
| Maybe starting with a kit isn't such a bad idea, and then going
| up a level at a time (i.e. tackle some of the software, or maybe
| mechanics) and getting to see the results of your work is a good
| thing, rather than trying to learn everything at once.
| chasd00 wrote:
| If NHRL is what you want to do then checking out an r/c airplane
| club and asking questions may be a way to get started. That's
| going to give you an idea on how transmitters, receivers with
| multiple channels and servos/speed controllers work.
|
| Once you understand how transmitters/receivers work and what
| servos and speed controllers do then you can construct a chassis.
| The speed controllers would drive the motors moving the robot
| around and then a servo could open the valve on a flame thrower
| or something...
|
| They key is understanding the radio control tech first.
| brudgers wrote:
| Together is the best way.
|
| _I prefer to learn how everything works and build something
| custom instead of just buying a premade kit and following
| instructions._
|
| Together is probably your child's preference. A premade kit goes
| straight to the building phase. And kits are something they can
| undertake theirself as they pursue independence in two or three
| years.
|
| You are launching a person. Good luck.
| eric-s-landry wrote:
| Happy with https://education.makeblock.com/mbot2/
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