So how many people had a blast assembling their RoboNova?
I sure did.
Pete
Okay Pete,
I’ll bite, what made the kit so much fun to assemble? 
Since I don’t have one I am just curious, or are you being facitious?
I have heard people grumble about the instructions.
Tinman
Hey, don’t be hating Babbelfish-translated instruction manuals.
They’re great… really.
(<.<) (>.>)
Just kidding.
I don’t have one of those, but I did read the review in Robot.
I thought that it said that those instructions would be fixed, and that they were only a problem with the early-released ones that were for guys to review.
Are they still bad?
The RoboNova is a lot more work just to assemble than the Lynxmotion robots.
But I like things that take a while to build. I like to spend 2 years building a wooden ship. You know the old sailing ships with planks for the hull and a million knots for the rigging. I even have an old mariner knot book and use authentic knots on the rigging. It gets to be about an hour per knot with tweezers.
Anyways, there are lots of little parts. Screws to remove, and screws to reattach. I even got a blister on my thumb from working the jewelers screwdriver working with the screws.
Yup, lots of fun.
I haven’t found the manual to be difficuly to understand. But then again, I am still in the build process.
Pete
Wow, I never expected to here that. I have to admit I received a RTW, one of the early ones with the manual in Japanese. 
So I never got to experience the “fun” of building the kit… Sorry Pete, you still sound sarcastic. 
I enjoy building things also, but when it gets to be tedious, like one hour pr knot with tweezers, it makes me frustrated.
I agree with you on this one Mike_ _ _ _ ^
It is unfortunate however that the difference in price between the kit and the RTW is only approx. 200.00 (aggrevation factor should warrent less markup on kit), just my opinion. At my age seeing small miniscule parts are the main problem. 
Most novices or dabblers ( is that a word?) may get frustrated assembling this kit. And lets face it most of us are not willing to take an hour to tie a knot with tweezers. I admire your tenacity Pete!
Jim is right, the sarcastometer definately measured on this review.
Tinman
Sarcasm?? What sarcasm. I wasn’t intending to be sarcastic.
They were just comments. What I find easy or hard is different than what other people find hard or easy.
In my experience, what most people feel is hard is because of lack of patience. Some things just take longer to do than other.
The RoboNova kit is going to take longer to assemble than a Lynxmotion kit. To some people this is a drawback. To me its fun because there are a lot of little parts to work with.
Pete
Whoa, easy big guy. 
No offense intended, I agree what is fun for some folks may not constitute fun for others. Each to his own.
I myself being of a cynical nature interpided this as sarcasm. No harm , no foul.
Tinman
Yep, it came accross as sarcasm. There is nothing wrong with enjoying tedious tasks, and I wish I had this kind of patience but unfortunetly I do not.
I don’t mind taking several hours to finish a project as long as the steps of the project are not tedious.
You can read about this experience at:
robots-dreams.com/2006/02/ro … r_p_1.html
There’s a really good video too!
It took me longer than I thought to assemble it (two evenings). This 'bot has hundreds of little screws. He walks and does everything correctly on a hard surface, but falls forward on the carpet. I’m going to have to experiment on the servo zeroing. At least I got it enough to walk and cartwheel.
One thing I’m not too fond of is the IR sensor placement. It’s on the top of his head, and I think the weight is on it when he tumbles forward or backward, and sometimes comes off after such an action. With that said, I’m going to make the adjustments, program the spare remote buttons (it has three) for walking different distances, and then show it off.
Cool! It will be nice to see more footage of this little guy in action.
Tinman 8)
In addition to the robot builder profile featuring Matt’s Robonova and the martial arts video , we have also recently posted about the vision hack with a video featuring the Robonova and Robosapien -
robots-dreams.com/2006/02/robots_meet_eye.html
and earlier today we added a new post and videoclip showing the Robonova climbing stairs-