A couple of weeks ago in this forum Vex Labs said there would be an announcement last week about accessories for the new Vex Explorer. Did anyone see anything announced? I was hoping that some of these accessories would be useful on the old Vex product.
The company always seems to be promising accessories, but nothing seems to happen. It’s really disappointing the company is doing so little development on what is a fine product. No wonder First gave up on the Vex. At the current rate, the Vex seems doomed for oblivion. The number of kits for sale on e-Bay is steadily increasing. I guess I am not the only frustrated user.
There has been a steady flow of accessories released for Vex, since it’s release in the summer of 2005. We at IFI continue to strive to expand the Vex product line. There are several new accessories coming down the line. These accessories take time and effort to develop and release. Sometimes they take longer than originally anticipated.
In reality, Vex is expanding rapidly. We are seeing record sales, and are excited for the future.
As you probably know, we already have a large number of Vex accessories available. I am surprised that “lack of expandability” would be a complaint. Personally, I am still left with “way more things to build” than “time to build them”.
I’m sorry that you are frusterated. What accessories would you like to see added to the Vex product line?
Yes they did, make a pre-announcement, and it would be nice if they gave us an update on the status of the new products, but they might be busy. That is what happens where I work… Many, many things going on… It is really hard to give every area, 100% of your attention, 100% of the time…
First off, I DON’T work for Innovations First or Vex Robotics/Labs, so what I am relating, comes from working at a small electronics company in Oregon.
You must have the mistaken impression that Innovations First or Vex Robotics/Labs have hundreds of people and Dozens of Engineers working for them, and that they are just “sitting around doing nothing”!! If Innovations First or Vex Robotics/Labs is anything like where I work, we have very few people, doing maybe a Dozen jobs each. When there is a problem in one area, another area is not “covered”. It might take two or three people to work on a problem, causing an even bigger gap in coverage of the other areas… Having people do more than one or two jobs has its ups and downs…
One of the up sides is that when the Engineer that designed a given product, also does Tech Support, for that product, the End Customer (that would be you) gets the most knowledgeable person about that product, explaining how it works and the Thought Processes on how it was envisioned to work… Contrast that with a Tech-Support (i.e. Help Desk) person that has a Written Script (if he/she is lucky!) on what Trouble Shooting steps are needed to determine if the issues are the products fault or the operators fault.
One of the Down Sides is that when lots and lots of End Customers are having difficulty, the Engineer that is providing the Tech-Support is kept from working getting the “new” products developed and TESTED and to the End Customers… Just ask me… I sometimes just want to “throw my desk phone in my trash can”!!!
I am sorry you feel that Innovations First or Vex Robotics/Labs is doing so little… Maybe if they Tripled the Price, they could hire additional staff to speed up the process… As someone that works with embedded computer systems every day (the Vex Controller is an embedded computer system), I have never seen such a fantastic kit for such a reasonable price…
Putting together a development system, and pre-packaging the harder parts (that would be the Master Code in the Vex Controller) and documenting it all takes work… When was the last time you built an Embedded System from scratch?? I work with an Electrical Engineer who has designed 10 different Embedded Systems boards, using 2 different 8 bit microprocessors. Another Co-Worker wrote the Low Level Firmware for all of those 10 different Embedded Systems, and I am working on the High Level Firmware for one of them… Plus the Electrical Engineer and I both do Phone Support… We both look forward to a Quiet Day (AKA NO PHONE CALLS).
If you are comparing this the the Lego systems and the Lego micro-controller, remember that Lego Systems make most of their money from the Basic Lego Kits, they can Subsidize the Cost of the 8 bit or 32 bit controller if they want to… I highly doubt that Innovations First or Vex Robotics/Labs as a much smaller company can do that.
I also have a computer systems background. My experience is that small groups can often move much faster that large organizations. Compare the vex to three other products: Lego NXT, Parallax Basic Stamp, and the iRobot Create.
Yes, Lego is a much bigger organization. Their robotics line is self-sustaining and profitable. The growth in the acceptance of the NXT has been staggering. They have achieved this by opening up their architecture, creating formal APIs, putting the source code into the public domain, producing SDKs, and encouraging third-party hardware and software development. Parallax and iRobot are much smaller companies, but they are taking the same approach as Lego.
What I find frustrating about Vex is that they are not only slow in producing improvements, but have non-existent documentation and keep everything proprietary. Every time anyone asks about the architecture the answer is this is proprietary. If they don’t have the resources to do their own development then they should encourage third-party development. The other three companies I mention have found that this approach works to their benefit in market acceptance and product growth.
Following on from the question of what I would like to see for the Vex line. It would be great if the arm and camera from the VEXplorer were made available as separate items that could be used with the original VEX. In addition I would like to see detailed documentation on the existing VEX processor.