Every summer I do a "camp" with my grandchildren where the theme is electronics and robots. This year was a bit more complicated due to the pandemic with me moving in the middle of it and not having my electronics lab for several months. I had originally planned to design an educational robot but events put an end to that. So I ended up buying the Lego WeDo 2.0 educational kit which is widely used in schools. My two oldest grandchildren came over and stayed for 3 days and their little sister came over on the last day and we built robots!
Lego WeDo 2.0 Core Kit
The WeDo 2.0 Core Kit was rather expensive at ~ $200 USD but given the documentation and ease of use it is good value for the intended purpose. While I could have created something with similar technical capability for less money it would have taken a lot of "free" time (way more than $200 worth if I was getting paid), would probably been less engaging for the kids, would have lacked the documentation, Lego construction options and so on. The kit has everything an instructor needs to teach the basics of robots without a 3D printer, electronic or programming skills. Lego states the kit is suitable for grades 3-5. My two oldest grandchildren have just completed grades 1 and 3 so they are on the young side but as will be seen had no problem with the projects we attempted.
WeDo 2.0 Kit Contents: Image from Lego Education site and used here as permitted by fair use
The kit consists of the following:
- Storage Case
- 280 Lego Bricks
- Smart Hub
- Medium Motor
- Motion Sensor (range sensor)
- Tilt Sensor (multiple direction and shake)
Among the many parts are gears of many types, pulleys, chains, wheels, axles, and skids. Of course there are also eyes, antennas, LEDs, and sound - what fun would a robot be without those?
Resources
The kit parts are sufficient to create many projects on their own but a large part of the value is in the teaching resources and project documents that are available online and with the App which also contains the development environment. Suffice to say the projects are many and varied. Although I used it as a teaching tool for three days it could easily be used for a full school year as there are over 30 project areas in the App and others to be found online or developed by the students.
Among the getting started projects are:
- Glowing Snail
- Cooling Fan
- Moving Satellite
- Spy Robot
- Milo the Science Rover
- Milo's Motion Sensor
- Milo's Tilt Sensor
Science areas to explore include:
- Mechanics
- Structures
- Biology
- Environmental
- Etc.
There are also computational modules that cover such things as sending messages and city safety (traffic lights).
Setting Up
Not much to say here. We used a Windows 10 machine and the installation of the App went without a problem. The software is also available for Mac, iPad, Chromebook, and Android tablets. The computer or tablet must be capable of communicating with the Smart Hub over Bluetooth. The Lego bricks are removed from their plastic bags and put into the designated compartments. The kids somewhat to my surprise were good about placing the parts back in the proper place when we finished a robot.
Building a Robot
The 7 year old selected the first robot - the snail. This is the "hello world" of WeDo 2.0 and consists of a simple build around the Smart Hub and code to blink the LED. This went faster than I expected and we had the first robot in about 15 minutes - great for kids since seeing something NOW when getting started is more likely to get them wanting more.
Here is the snail.
And here is the code:
The programming is block based and development is done with a graphical interface by dragging the desired block into place. The code here does the following when the start button is pushed:
- Light up LED using color 1 (red)
- Wait 1 second
- Light up LED using color 2 (purple)
- Wait 1 second
- Loop back to beginning
I personally am not a fan of block based programming (it's just me) but there are several advantages here in that it is native language independent and students need not remember any arcane key words and syntax. In fact, my four year old granddaughter was able to understand the gist of the code even though she cannot read when I worked with her a bit and she was able to follow the instructions for building one of the simpler robots.
Building More Robots
We ended up building 5 more robots between going to the park, watching cartoons, and playing video games. These included two versions of Milo, a satellite station, the cooling fan, and a frankenbot named the Penguin. The 7 year old was able to build and program Milo.
The directions for building the robots are in the familiar Lego format but online and interactive.
The penguin was the creation of my 9 year old grandson and is a roving robot that senses objects and backs up and turns when it is about to collide. Since there is only one motor it is not steerable but moved in a curved path and then backs up in a curved path before proceeding again. It worked subject to the limitations of the hardware - e.g. the sensor couldn't detect small surface area objects or object below the sensor. It would sometimes back into objects. The penguin held the attention of the cat only briefly.
Conclusion
The kids had fun with the kit, especially the 9 year old who picked up the concepts very quickly. The 7 year old had fun but she isn't really into robots as much as her brother. To my surprise their 4 year old sister took to it enthusiastically although it was advanced for her. Since I also have a 2 year old coming along I expect to get much more use from it. Schools here will be on a modified schedule this year with part of the classes being online and no extracurricular activities. Accordingly my daughter wants me to do some things with them during the school year and I plan to use some of the other online materials on biology, environment, etc. which may be of more interest to my 7 year old granddaughter. I've also done projects with the kids in the past using a Raspberry Pi where we programmed with Scratch and created art so we will give that a try as well.
This is the third year I have had a summer robot camp for the kids. The first year only my grandson attended and we programmed a robot I had built using "turtle" like commands and also using a joystick. The second year was more electronics oriented and the older granddaughter attended. This was the most successful year in my opinion and I can highly recommend the Lego WeDo 2.0 if it is in your budget. The high quality of the parts, instructions, and curriculum allow it to be more than a one time toy.
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