All of them in clear plastic (the 24/48 gears in clear, the pins in gray are fine)
Across the years it’s been hard to explain how some things work and what is going on. Having some clear beams and clear gears to be able to build a transparent model would be so helpful. I understand that clear plastics are weird and would not be as strong. I want them for Demos.
Not sure how much this would be, but at a price point of 150% of the cost of the current gears, I’m in for 4 packs of everything. I think these would be a hot seller to lots of the schools as a teaching kit.
Happy to help start a Kickstarter for this to make it happen.
I don’t remember clear. Some of the Hexbug kits have a translucent gray beam in them. I think VEXIQ engineering is off for the US Presidents’ Day, we may hear from them later in the week.
This was all done before I joined VEX/Robomatter. VEX used to send me lots of free parts, these were all just included with a shipment one day, may have been prototypes for all I know.
One more request…. All STEP files in one organized place - a GEN2 full bundle CAD download, and a nice way to get individual STEP files for any IQ and that matter V5 part……
I’m not sure whether it is too late to restart this thread but my request would be wireless downloading from PC’s and laptops. Our robotics program has broken far too many usb ports on Gen 1 brains and using ipads in the school would be infeasable for us.
You may already know this but we use mini extension cables on our brains to prevent wear and tear on the USB ports. Much cheaper to replace the cable than repair the port.
That is a great idea. I know vex definitely already make coloured clear pieces. But they are specialty pieces. So they should be able to do it.
The team I mentor was using the yellow irregular clear beam at the beginning of the season just for coolest factor but abandoned because needed a more regular shape. But the piece did work and held up ok.
Second Gen allows downloading via the controller, same as V5. Not quite the solution you were after but combined with USB C connectors on 2nd Gen, it is a more robust solution still.
The problem is that we have many brains would be otherwise functioning. Because they have broken this 1 part, they are basically e-waste. Implementing this feature that is already present on Ipads would give a new lease of life to 5 of our old brains that have suffered this fate.
If you have the same problem as us DO NOT try resoldering a new mirco b port to the circuit board. It is way too difficult for a human to feasably do
I guess most of these aren’t “new” parts. I’m a big fan of iterating existing parts to make them better, and “newer.”
I wouldn’t mind actually eliminating some of the lesser used parts in the VEX IQ ecosystem. It’s one of my biggest gripes with LEGO - there are just too many weird/custom parts available. I might be in the minority, but fewer parts is better.
That said, I’d love to see these parts:
Improved shaft collars where the insert doesn’t tear out after a few uses
Magnetic USB cables and connectors so that the micro USB connectors on the brains and controllers don’t break/fail from regular connection/disconnection cycles seen in a classroom. For example see: Amazon.ca
Joysticks with sticks that snap back to the centre position more freely. Many of ours stay physically stuck in off-centre positions when released.
More robust L and R trigger button mechanisms on the joysticks. We’ve had a few joysticks where the L/R buttons no longer bounce back up when released. Most common reason for runaway robots our lab.
Smart motors that don’t decide to become bumper switches (as recognized by the brain). This is our most common failure mode for our motors, and sometimes they can be recovered by VEXOS by plugging a good motor into port 1, switching in a bad motor (aka bumper switch), and forcing a firmware update. But often not even this works
Smart radios that actually allow you to wirelessly program your robot from a laptop via Bluetooth. I know that it works with iPads, but we teach text-based programming (RobotC and now VEXCode C), and inexpensive, used off-lease, high quality enterprise laptops have always been a great platform for us.
VEXCode with a debugger that can step through code with breakpoints, and trace variables. This is my most missed feature, along with the debugger windows that showed live sensor data, even while your program wasn’t running.
Gears with shaft inserts (like VEX EDR high strengh gears) including both square and round inserts. We have a lot of rounded out gears from wear and tear. It’d be nice to just pop in a new insert and have them gear be good as new again. Additionally, we’ve saved some rounded gears because they can be useful for things like “chain-bars.”
Make the cam gears available for purchase separately from the kits.
I’d like to see this too!! I’ve been asking that some of the components in the hexbug lines also get bagged up. Problem is VEX doesn’t want another SKU with unsold parts in it. I’d sign up for a “If people order 500 of these, we’ll do a run of them” kickstarter type thing.
