sulu86

Its not just the lower specs. The whole experience is like a downgrade if you're interested in more than casual toylike use. What I mean is that the EV3 is being used in so many different environments. It can be used at home as well as education environments from beginner stages with graphical programming to very very advanced robotic stuff. There are custom operating systems, universities are using them for computer science. Master thesis have been written on projects that were built on Ev3. Autonomous robots that can scan rooms and make maps. You could attach a couple of them together to have more input/output options or you can interface them via python modules to more powerful pcs to offload some serious calculation work. Theres been mapping projects with useage of lidar scanners, depth sensing cameras etc, You can connect them to a single board computer like the raspberry pi via usb and basically use the ev3 as a pure i/o adapter if you want. Custom ev3dev linux gives you all the options. The newer product offers minor improvements in sensors/peripherals but is lacking all of the versatility of the old product. What I dont get is Legos strategy. On the one hand the 31313 set has been taken off the shelves here, but on the other hand the marketing guys are advertising this as a product sitting between wedo and ev3 thats acting as a sort of preparation for the ev3. Afterall it says so pretty clearly on the lego website. But if that was the case, why discontinue 31313?

The new robot inventor supports pybricks. Those are basically lego endorsed micropython bindings for the spike/prime. So you can get a flavour of python on these devices but not cypthon (normal python). Micropython is basically a reduced version of python that misses many features of cypthon but runs a lot faster and is thus more suited to less microcontrollers like the 100 MHZ controller of the spike prime / robot inventor hub. So you need to check if you require certain libraries from python like numpy or scipi or certain other functionality as you may be setup for disappointment in that case. There is only 32 mb of memory on the microcontroller. Some people on reddit have reported running out of memory for simple FLL style micropython programs. You will have tune your code a lot for efficiency with the new lesser potent hardware.

Over here the new Spike prime/robot inventor stuff is being marketed as something between wedo and ev3 with ev3 still being the most advanced product in their range. See for e.g.: Lego Marketing Material I have seen it says so on the lego homepage as well. https://www.lego.com/en-us/service/help/products/electronics-robotics/spike-prime/how-spike-prime-is-different-from-wedo-20-and-mindstorms-ev3-408100000017136 "SPIKE Prime builds on the skills developed with WeDo 2.0 and gets builders ready for the future by using LEGO bricks, Technic pieces, and a slightly more complex coding system. SPIKE Prime also prepares them for a more challenging curriculum when they’re ready to advance to MINDSTORMS EV3. " So I guess the question is not do I upgrade for FLL but do I downgrade for FLL?