Hexbug sells these at $149.99, yours at Costco for $79.99 with free shipping (or brave the store!)
The ultimate STEM Robotics kit is here! The VEX® Build Blitz Robotics Remote Control Construction Kit has over 800 easy snap-together pieces and can be built into seven different motorized robots (one at a time) without the use of tools. Bring learning to life in a way that gets kids excited. They will get a great introduction to science and technology when they build with the smart brain, remote control system, motors and wiring. VEX® Build Blitz Robotics Remote Control Construction Kit is the perfect launchpad for young engineers! Use your smart phone to control your build with the free downloadable VEX Pilot App.
it’s a pretty amazing deal, again for parts, but the robots themselves are a great build. Please note that these motors are not the same high level of build that the VEXIQ ones are. I’ve managed to strip the gears from one. But it may not make a difference to you, since the electronics are not legal in competition.
Hi! First time contributing. Wondering if the motors and brain in this kit can be used with a separately-purchased VEX controller. I’d rather use the competition controller than a smartphone. Thanks.
No, the motors from these kits can’t be integrated with a standard IQ brain and controller. With some minor modifications, most can be changed to accommodate a VEX IQ Brain and motors so that you can use a normal IQ controller, but keep in mind that the IQ brain is a lot bigger than the Smart Brain used in these kits.
The motors in the Hexbug line are not compatible with the VEXIQ controllers.
However the pin pattern is the same and you can sub in the VEXIQ motors and controllers. I did that for the off road truck, I had problems with the steering pot and finally gave up.
The Build Blitz, etc motors are two wire devices. One of my winter break projects is to build up a brain and joystick using the Adafruit feathers so I can do some programming.
Cool but only drives two motors though.
They take 6 AA batteries so 7.2V rechargeable or 9V if primary cells but no idea what voltage the motors actually get.
I did some marginal messing with the microbit, but just didn’t see it as better than the Adafruit Circuit playground.
For my Buildblitz remote IM going to use the Adafruit Joystick $10 feed the data stream across a pair of 433 MHz tranceivers $9 each, to a feather and two of the motor wings to give me 8 motors. 50, so about a hundred with battery and modular sockets.
If I could get the Bluetooth info for what the phone sends, I’d build a joystick to use the existing brain.
With the integrated radio and accelerometers, the microbit would just make a really cost effective solution if a 4 motor driver was possible. But Arduino solution is ace.
This does sound interesting, but how many feathers and how many wings would be needed? I don’t know much about feathers, but wouldn’t it take one to control the joystick, and then another to control the motors? How would the joystick talk to the motors? Is this Bluetooth or wifi? How would you power everything? Where do you find the connectors the motors use?
I can get the RJ jacks lots of places (they are about 10 cents each) You are looking for RJ9 / RJ10 connectors, their formal name is a four position four conductor (4P4C). They are the same thing as a handset cable for wired phones.
There is most likely a cheaper / easier way to do this. I chose these things since they are off the shelf and if someone else wanted to build one