I'm consdiering a VEX for an educational project

VEX V5 General Discussion Technical Discussion
1

Hello All;
I’m considering a VEX for a educational project. I am writing a proposal to engage middle school students in a lunar rover mission and I have a few questions about VEX to help determine if it will fit my requirements.

  1. I know that VEX can be operated using the included wireless remote control. Is it possible to introduce a 2.7 second delay in the execution of commands that produced using the hand-held controller ?

  2. Is it possible to add a Robot Arm/grabber to a VEX Robot? If sao, who manufactureers one ?

  3. Is it possible to add a wireless video camera to a VEX system ? If so, who manufactures one ?

Tim

2

  1. You could program this delay into the on-board controller. So, yes.

  2. You could build your own arm out of VEX components. Hundreds of competition teams do this every year.

  3. I can’t help you with manufacturers, but hobbyists do this all the time. I’m sure one of them will be along soon with brand names for you.

Good luck! You might check this Website: http://www.vexrobotics.com/educational_reps.shtml for the education support rep in your area. They might be able to give you some additional help.

Good luck!

3

I’ve got an EasyC program that does exactly that (which I used for a classroom demonstration). You can toggle the delay on/off using one of the back buttons on the remote. If you want the code, let me know and I’ll post it.

Cheers,

  • Dean
4

A wireless camera comes with the Vexplorer kit (compatible with a VEX EDR kit) - it might be what you are looking for.

Otherwise, you can just strap on any ordinary camera, or build an enclosure of some kind.

5

WOW, AWESOME. Thanks so much for all of your helpful responses. It looks like this system will work beautifully for my application.

If anyone else wishes to contribute any additional information, I’d love to hear.

Tim

6

Thanks, Dean. If we ultimately end up using VEX, I will probably take you up on your offer.

7

If you don’t want to build your own claw you could get the vexplorer claw: http://www.vexrobotics.com/vex-robotics-claw-kit.shtml

8

Thanks, Vexer;
Great find. I looked all over the place for that item separately and couldn’t find it. If we end up using VEX, I’ll have to determine whether we want to buy that item, or give our students the challenge of building one. I also discovered there is a cute wireless video camera available separately too which is what we’d need also.

Tim

9

I’ve used Vex for school projects before. I used it as a remote control system (no motors, metal ect…) for a custom pneumatics system. This is because I wanted it to be remote control but I lacked the knowledge back then to build a custom remote control setup so vex worked great.

Here’s the link if you want to see it!

I wish I had my teachers reaction when I brought this in on video. He said “Well someone went overkill!” then when he saw it working he was astonished that an 8th grader could build something like it. I also made a poster with it and now 2 years later I found out that the poster is dead center in his room and that he uses it as an example of A+ material!

Vex should work great for your application, if you could program in some code with some sensors I think it would be even better!