Customer Reviews

10 Cool LEGO Mindstorms: Dark Side Robots, Transports, and Creatures: Amazing Projects You Can Build in Under an Hour

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The description should state this! My 8 year old son, who is a Mindstorms genius, has wanted this for so long! How disappointed he was Christmas morning. "This doesn't use my pieces, or even my RCX" he said--very disapppointing, and I think it should clearly say this is not for the CURRENT version of mindstorms. This book is completely useless to us, he cannot build ANYTHING in the book with his Mindstorms RIS 2.0 set.
We have another book from this line, and it is for RIS 2.0, and my son loves it.
Update: We learned this book is for the Lego Mindstorms "Dark Side Developer" kit (Star Wars). It is no longer made, but we found a set on ebay. Son loves it--and now this book, too!

The robots described in detail in this book are really cool, and once you look at them, your patience will be tried until you get to the assembly stage. Constructing the robots is easy, each one is split into a series of small steps where the parts to be added are listed in a caption and the placement of the parts on the robot are highlighted on a second figure. We have all faced situations where we had to follow directions to put something together and struggled to make sense of the diagrams. In this case, that should not be a problem, these are some of the most understandable diagrams that I have ever seen.
The robots are all from the Star Wars series of movies and associated novels, which makes them even better. Most people with an interest in robots have seen the Star Wars movies, so it is wondrous to watch the robot gradually grow into something you have seen in action.
Lego Mindstorms is a robot kit that can be effectively used in class work from elementary school up though graduate school. In this book you will learn how to build some of the best robots, which will appeal to students throughout this spectrum.

This is a wonderful inspirational book! There are lots of mechanisms here that are good to play around with and modify. Every robot has some interesting functions - since it's using the Microscout only, everything (often two functions) is done with only one motor! It's also inspiring seeing what can be done with limited pieces. Every model in the book is built ONLY using DSDK parts!

The pictures (or rather, CAD renderings) are crystal-clear, thanks to Kevin's LPub. The downside is that they're black-and-white, but it's fairly easy to tell the difference between a white part and a red part.

There's not much commentary in this book - it's mostly instructions. That makes it easier to follow, but it doesn't help much if you have a question about modifying the robot.

Overall I rate it three and a half stars for good robots and good instructions but bad commentary. Still a good book, though!

I run a LEGO League Robotics team and we were thrilled with the idea of "Dark Side" robots. Unfortunately, since a key part is no longer available, we are trolling e-Bay for parts. This title is a great concept, but it's very unpleasant that it's still being marketed when mission-critical components are not reliably available.

The assembly diagrams are hard to follow, occasionally calling for parts not included in the set and the robots are flimsy and generally don't work. The book is no longer supported by the publisher even though the cover gives a web address for a free additional robot plan. The only thing to learn from this book is what not to do.

This is a wonderful inspirational book! There are lots of mechanisms here that are good to play around with and modify. Every robot has some interesting functions - since it's using the Microscout only, everything (often two functions) is done with only one motor! It's also inspiring seeing what can be done with limited pieces. Every model in the book is built ONLY using DSDK parts!

The pictures (or rather, CAD renderings) are crystal-clear, thanks to Kevin's LPub. The downside is that they're black-and-white, but it's fairly easy to tell the difference between a white part and a red part.

There's not much commentary in this book - it's mostly instructions. That makes it easier to follow, but it doesn't help much if you have a question about modifying the robot.

Overall I rate it three and a half stars for good robots and good instructions but bad commentary. Still a good book, though!

I wish Lego would put out more books like this themselves. Just like a souped up Contructopedia. The descriptions of the robots are cool too.

Ive been waiting for a book like this for a while. These 10 robots (11 if you count the free bonus one you get off the web) are all awesome! The book is set up a lot like the constructopedias that come with the Mindstorm kits so they are really simple to make. I think there are some sequels to this for other kits which I am going to get.

Any Star Wars/Lego Mindstorms fan should pick this up. I've been fooling around with the Dark Side Developer for a couple of months and the 10 robots presented here are almost all unique. one or two of them seem to be very similar to the robots that come in the kit, but even these are pretty darn cool in there own rite.
They are a good mix of familair Star Wars robots, droids, creatures with some really cool new stuff.
My only problem is that I would have liked to see more explanation of the robots themselves, but all in all this book is a good addition to any lego library. get the bonus chapter--you can finally build a tie-fighter!

I used to use my Darks Side kit as a glorified source of extra parts for my Mindstorms robots. Not any more. I was amazed by the robots that these guys put together with only these parts. Would have been nice if it was all in colour. I'm in the process of modifying these to work with an RCX brick. Check it out, its worth it.