Help Me Identify an Old Robotics Building Kit - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2017, 04:18:20 am
content: Back in my old middle school in the late naughties, we had an attempt at a robotics club/summer camp, which unfortunately rather failed due to the professor being less then organized. We used the remains of robotics kits that were haphazardly thrown into boxes and missing the programming equipment like software and cables. So we had to build nonfunctioning models that just twitched their motors if we were lucky to have a live controller. We must have been using the bins of discarded kits that were missing stuff.We did still have to come up with a design and thesis for a proposed robot. (Mine was an automatic oil drilling rig with a small tunneling robot for exploration)The funny thing is that when the camp was over, we found a whole closet full of brand new unopened kits. They each had the software on a disc, all the hardware, and even a huge thick ordering catalog of all of the parts and building kits available from the company.Unfortunately I don't remember what they were, but they were the coolest thing to me as a kid next to the early lego robotics system. I don't remember to much, but here's what I do remember.-each kit came in a plastic tote/tub-software on an included cd-microcontroller had the battery pack strapped to the bottom and was programmed through a serial port adapter thing-connections were indevidual thin wires with screwed on tiny banana jacks, no protection either, you could easily fry and short stuff, especially since the wires often broke or frayed then shorted, accidents often happed, although without the program it didn't matter anyway-mechanical construction based on colorful plastic parts that used tiny dovetail points and triangular slots-shafts, gears, and wheels used connectors similar to lego, but I don't remember how they were keyed (not sure what shape they were)-the company sold alot of different building kits, mainly to schools I think, and I think their logo was red, yellow, and blue

author: Ian.M
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2017, 04:49:01 am
content: Sounds likehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischertechnik

author: Cyberdragon
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 16, 2017, 05:23:50 am
content: Quote from: Ian.M on July 16, 2017, 04:49:01 amYep, that's them alright! With their pure evil little wires! I don't remember exactly which kits they were but they were either the advanced or competition sets. Back as a kid they were fiddly and annoying but nowadays they would be pretty interesting to play around with. I wish I could have taken some of them home, knowing that school they probably all got tossed!This was the same school where they fired a teacher for writing violent novels, and I can confirm that while the building looks nice, it's pretty ghetto.

author: CJay
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: July 17, 2017, 10:44:34 am
content: FischerTechnik is still available but it's not cheap, even by Lego standards.It tends to be more industry training oriented but you can make some amazing stuff with it.