Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Quick Look: Moonbot helps you learn AI and computer vision”.
Welcome to make workshop, where we check out tools, toys and tech built for makers today, we’re going to be playing with the moonbot a successful kickstarter project from last year. That is an educational, robot kit. This is the moonbot. It’S a kit from morpex robotics uh. Just came in the mail recently, this was a kickstarter that they had um last year, maybe towards the end of 2017 early 2018. That was successful, so they produced their kit. Now, this kit is interesting in a number of ways.
You actually get the parts to make several different styles of robot. You can see here. We’Ve got the the one with the face, one with a big claw and one that’s just a rover that drives around, and their big selling point is that it actually uses machine vision for um. You know for playing with it and controlling it. We’Ll get more into that later, i thought it was pretty cool, let’s open it up and see what’s inside. So as you can see, this thing has tons of stuff inside you’ve got some brains.
You’Ve got some sensors. You’Ve got all these different body parts. Nice metal construction in total there are 280 pieces in this kit included in the box, are instructions to make the self-driving moon rover for anything else. You need to go to their website and download the instructions for the other constructions. Let’S go ahead and build the moon. Rover here and see how it turns out: [ Applause, ], [ Applause, ], [ Applause ]. So here is the rover. This is the basic one that the instructions that come with it allow you to build now. You’Ve got all the parts to build the other ones, but you have to go to their website and download the instructions. I believe they’re free, but i don’t really have time right now to build all the other ones, even though they look cool, maybe i’ll get into that later. One thing i do like is that it’s a solid uh. You know construction here, the parts all screw together.
Nice and firm metal and the machine vision is pretty neat. As you can see in the video you put down these cards in front of it, it sees them, it identifies what they mean and it follows the instructions. Of course. You can also program it like an arduino or you can use their built-in system.
That’S kind of a block programming system. There’S lots of options here. You know, frankly, growing up as a kid with like capsella and things like that. This would have blown my mind.
I believe this kit is 199 dollars for the entire kit and that allows you to build all three and the instructions for the other ones are free on their website. You don’t have to pay for the instructions all together. I’D say it’s an incredible uh value for the money. You know 200 bucks, you get the three different kits with machine vision and the different programming abilities. So this kit is largely meant to be an educational platform. You start by building the first, which is the moon. Rover and then you subscribe to their service, which is going to send you lessons. There are 24 lessons in total that take you from the most basic functions of the moon.
Rover up through more complicated function, functions then on to the next build, which is one with a big gripper that can, you know, throw a ball and then on to the next build, which is the one with the cute little face. That is more programmable. I think it’s really cool that they’ve done that the the whole lesson plan structure. I think that’s going to work out very nicely for clubs and maker spaces to be able to have some kind of a structured way of learning these things. That’S where i see it could fit in the best. I see this as a pretty easy competitor to like lego mindstorms, where you’re looking at um like this, this costs 200 roughly the lego mindstorm, is going to be like 350. Don’T quote me on the lego price? There’S a lot of variations in there, but if you’re, not in a school program where you have to be, you know, matching everybody else’s, it’s nice to have some options of other stuff that you could do so. This is a good educational, um alternative that you could put in your in your makerspace. If you want to learn more about this system, go to morphex.com, that’s m-o-r-p-x dot com and you can see all of their robotics. I didn’t find this for sale on their site.
Yet it may not actually even be for sale yet, however, if i googled it, i did find it on another site, but i’m not going to include that site because i’m not sure exactly what’s going on there, so um just go to morepex.com and check out their Systems and uh, i think, that’s a pretty cool little kit, real, quick before i finish up this video i’d like to bring up a point that comes up in the comments. Often people point out that these must be sponsored and that they’re pretty much just ads. Now i totally get that sentiment so far. None of these have been sponsored.
Nobody has paid for these videos. They have sent us free equipment, much of which actually gets sent back whenever we’re done, but nobody has actually paid for any videos, but i totally get the sentiment. All these videos have been is look at this cool thing.
You could get and that’s kind of what i wanted kind of like the the channels out there that show off the latest laptops and cell phones and stuff like that, but for makers, where else can you find out about all the cool stuff coming out for makers? We promised that we will be sure to make it very clear and very evident if anybody is actually sponsoring one of these videos. I’D love it. If you’d give me comments down below or come join us at make community that’s make dot.
Co join us there to talk about. You know what you’d like to see me check out any ideas you have for the video series, how to make it better how to make it more enjoyable. I’D love to hear it as always be sure to give us a big thumbs up on this video and subscribe so that you can get notified whenever we put out more videos, we’ll see you on the next one, you .