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New VEXplorer RC Robotic Construction System, for $79.99 + $5 shipping
Product: 1x Revell VEXplorer Robotic Construction System with Wireless Camera

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VEXplorer RC Robotic Construction System
$79.99 + $5 Shipping
Condition: New

Product List:
- 1 Revell VEXplorer Robotic Construction System with Wireless Camera

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VEXplorer RC Robotic Construction System
$79.99 + $5 shipping
Condition: New
Product: 1 Revell VEXplorer Robotic Construction System with Wireless Camera

Here is the discussion from when this was offered on 12/15/08

are a pack of zip-ties really part of the kit?

Froogled

Reviews

Got this a few months ago in a Woot-off and thought I'd share some thoughts.

Personally, I think this is awesome. My 10 year old nephew however, did not. It took us about 3 hours to put two of them together and about and hour and a half in, my nephew was getting really bored and frustrated.

Also, they are all on the same frequency, which means that you can use two at the same time.

They are cool, but very time consuming and confusing to put together.

And yes, the zip ties are considered in the part count!

So tempting. I'd prefer the VEX robotics kit.

Bought it last time it was offered. Below is our experience.

Takes about 3 hours to assemble because of super tight finger room to work allen screws, washers and nuts, about two dozen of them.

Then when you're finally done you get about 10 foot range from the remote instead of the claimed 150 feet

I got this last time. It includes the zip ties, which are very useful for other things as well, since you obviously don't need them all for the robot. It takes about 45 minutes to assemble, but is a lot of fun to drive around, so long as you don't have a concrete walled house. On the downside it eats batteries for breakfast.

I've had it for a month, and if I had a chance to do it over, I'd still want it. It's worth the 85 bucks for me.

Edit: People are mentioning range issues, I am able to get picture throughout the ground floor of my house. Again, your mileage may vary.

ned4spd8874 wrote:Got this a few months ago in a Woot-off and thought I'd share some thoughts.

Personally, I think this is awesome. My 10 year old nephew however, did not. It took us about 3 hours to put two of them together and about and hour and a half in, my nephew was getting really bored and frustrated.

Weird. The VEXplorer kit was designed to introduce kids to robotics. I'd think this kit is less intimidating than Lego NXT. Apparently not since "everyone" grew up with Legos and feel more comfortable messing with them than an erector set (how backwards!).

Now all I need is a small LCD monitor mounted on the remote and a wireless camera on the robot and this thing could get me a beer...

Necessity might be the mother of invention, but I think laziness is the father...

How is this supposed to be a robotics teaching tool if you can't programme it?

All this is, is a glorified remote control claw. Its worth the $80 for the wireless camera alone but its not a real teaching tool since the modules are preassembled and are not interchangeable.

Have to think about this one...

pugzlie9451 wrote:Now all I need is a small LCD monitor mounted on the remote and a wireless camera on the robot and this thing could get me a beer...

Umm... it comes with a spy-cam that can broadcast to a television and a claw to grab the beer. You just gotta pilot it to the fridge and grab it... too bad it cannot open and close fridges.

I still prefer these since I can then program my robot to autonomously get beer for me.

My electronic minions are almost complete! With this as my frontal assault and my Tux Droid as a general my office mates won't stand a chance. ;)

I bought one of these last time around and it was worth the money. I'm able to control it the full range of my house no problem. It did take a bit longer to assemble than 1 hour and some parts were a little more challenging to reach than they should have been. Software was also outside free trial period, but otherwise worth every penny. Only wish I had gotten 2 then for more spare parts!

I got one last time. It's still in the box. I'm waiting for it to come out.

But seriously... yes they call it a robot. No, Isaac Asimov would not call it a robot...

You can call it a glorified r/c car or whatever.

But, if you are interested in getting into robotics, this unit will provide a decent base, r/c, camera, drive train, etc.

You can take some initiative and...

- rewire it to use a bigger rechargeable battery pack.
- change the crystals so you can have 2 of them working together.
- add a pic microcontroller to it to make it more intelligent. (make it autonomous).
- make a better robo-vac.
- etc. etc. etc.

Once I find the time to get mine assembled, I plan on figuring out how to drive it around my yard while I watch the video camera on my laptop from inside the house.
If range is an issue I will figure out how to increase the Tx/Rx range...

I love these I own one, and at $85 this is a steal. Maybe I need another...

Got it last time. Mounted a 5 LED headlight and wireless sound transmitter, so now navigable in morning light and can tell the kids it's time to get up, etc. from the kitchen - with sufficient volume to get results. Also moved the camera forward just behind claw for better viewing. Want the elbow and tank tread now, to enable greater mobility and added options to rouse kids, e.g., pour water on them, put snake in sheets. Now if I can just figure out how to mount one of those air horns and some way to control it from the kitchen table, sipping coffee, munching biscotti. Oh, be still my beating heart...

All in all, I likey. Different frequencies on different units would be huge plus however. Then they could fight and play capture the flag, etc. If we had about six of these things on different frequencies, we could rule the world, or at least the living room and family room.

Yes, we have all boys.

Get lots of rechargeable batteries, a fast charger, a snake, and perhaps a bag of cherry bombs. I'm thinkin' ahead.

R70Runner wrote:No Monkey....No deal!

I've got the monkey's from past woot offs, the NO LASER part was the breaking point for me. I mean, You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks/robots with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?

Ugh. When I was a kid, I got an Erector set for Christmas. I'm mechanically savvy and can fix things, but an Erector set is cruddy. At 11 years old, I just wanted to play with toys that were already put together.

This toy reminds me of the one crappy Christmas I had...the one where I got the Erector set. I'd rather have gotten a box of rocks or lump of coal in my stocking. I could have shot the rocks out of my slingshot or set the lump of coal on fire and not sit around, frustrated, trying to build some half-assed car with the crappy squared nut hardwared that the erector set came with.

If I had an erector set today, I'd build a ship out of it and then throw it in the lake to make a habitat for fish. That's what I think of these dumb "toys". If you want to be creative, paint, or write or do something artsy. Don't get these idiotic, half-thought-out wastes of resources.

DaZoneRanger wrote:For between 1 and 3 days, they'll have one item after another. After one sells out, then they bring on the next. So, instead of 1 Woot per day, there will be many, like 20 or 30.

More like 70-80.
IIRC, not counting 2 of the 3 times they sold woot-off lights, there were over 210 (216, I think. I might be wrong) items in the last 3 day wootoff.

they should make that picture of flying monkeys
on a robotic catapult into a shirt Woot that looks awesome!

Given the current unemployment figures, I can't believe Woot is offering an $80 toy. C'mon Woot, help us common working folk out...offer us some cheaper useable stuff.

I've been wanting VEX stuff for years now, but I can't justify 80 dollars at the moment. Even if this is half off, I really wish I hadn't checked today.

A friend gifted one of these to my kid. VERY cool toy, nice remote-control-claw-on-wheels with wireless video. No range issues to report, though our house is tiny.

Assembly wasn't fun, mainly because of the tight corner access ( think metal frame w/ rounded 'guard' where you're supposed to put tiny bolts on tiny screws ). Some parts were OK to bolt on, but those corners above the wheels resulted in some cut knuckles. The result is definitely cool enough, though... very worth the effort, but not something I'd expect a young kid to do. Now that I'm Googling the price, I'm a tiny bit horrified at the thought that my pal may have paid $139-200+ for this thing... one website says it's been discontinued by the manufacturer, but is definitely worth $79 for the price, if the wireless camera/receiver combo and/or the remote control toy is your bag.

The zip-ties are just to keep cabling on the arm out of the way; you'll end up with a mess of extra zip-ties. You really needed maybe 4 of those.

If I had a spare $79 burning a hole through my pocket, and didn't already have one? Yea, I'd buy it for sure. Even though we have one, I'm tempted just because of the extra parts and camera... could we bolt them together to make a MEGA VEXplorer? The mind boggles.

Spacemonkey6401 wrote:I've got the monkey's from past woot offs, the NO LASER part was the breaking point for me. I mean, You know, I have one simple request. And that is to have sharks/robots with frickin' laser beams attached to their heads! Now evidently my cycloptic colleague informs me that that cannot be done. Ah, would you remind me what I pay you people for, honestly? Throw me a bone here! What do we have?

Get a laser pointer and tape it on. Sheesh!

Next question.

I bought this on a wootoff.
The Allen bolts and nuts are very small, therefore you need small hands to put it together, so leave that part of the assembly to your kids.
It "eats" the batteries in a few minutes, especially if you have the camera on.
The signal is weak. Don't expect to get a clear image on your TV if the robot is far (more than 10 feet away) or behind a wall.
Besides that, it's a very nice toy. Sturdy and well built!
I would recommend it.
Keep the tools handy, you will need them to constantly tighten the bolts and nuts on the motor assemblies.

Are the size/spacing of the holes for bolting things together the same as ye olde erector sets?

I got a box of ancient stuff, some that was new and mine circa mid 80's and some even older handed down from my dad... someplace. Might actually be in my mom's attic.

I also got this in the woot-off for a Christmas present for my son and he LOVES it! And he is only 6 (this toy is supposed to be for kids of an older age, and he is really not a typical 6 year old)

For all that are talking about the range for the camera...It is very important that you don't have 2.4ghz phones in order for the camera to work well. I have one, and the camera wasn't so great, and it lost range pretty quickly...it also never had a clear picture. But once I turned off the phone, it was so much better. In fact in another house we took it to, we had the robot upstairs on the second story and we were in the sunken living room on the first story watching it on the TV as we navigated the entire top floor. This thing is great and if you have a kid with an engineering type mind, this is an awesome toy. Yes, it isn't a robot technically, but put that outside your head and just think of the fun of operating a remote controlled car with a robotic arm from another room while seeing the world through perspective of a cat with color vision. This is strong enough to pick up fairly heavy objects, and I was even easily able to pick up a CD off a hardwood floor using only the camera, so it has good precision too. Very fun...and we even had a part break on it, and called VEX and they replaced it.

brillobo wrote:Get a laser pointer and tape it on. Sheesh!

Next question.

You obviously didn't get the joke from Austin Powers.

No monkeys no deal, you can get a laser to add on anywhere

Neat toy. Just seems a little pricey right now.

WHY?

jetsetter72 wrote:WHY?

because you were adopted

arribasn wrote:are a pack of zip-ties really part of the kit?

Yep, sure are! The only one in our house that doesn't like this thing is the dog. It totally confuses him. Good deal if you're into this stuff.

Anyone want to buy mine? very new, already built. 50 bucks. message me.

UG!

Another day I got up to see what was wooting for me.

Being the Last Ape Man has it's Downside. If I had a Nieghbor that had one I'd have to get one to keep up.

Sadley there is No one left in The Jones cave and therfore I will pass yet again.

Man, How bought some fishing stuff? Or some cool camping gear? Fishing stuff would be better.

Do They ever woot fishing gear? a Kick ass reel maybe. assortment of Lures? Rad Fly Rod? AARG. :O)

If this thing can't disarm bombs remotely, I have no need for it.

watcho1 wrote:Given the current unemployment figures, I can't believe Woot is offering an $80 toy. C'mon Woot, help us common working folk out...offer us some cheaper useable stuff.

I can't believe 22% have bought 3 (but it's early on)