I had one of these as a kid. It was awesome!! I believe it was my first exposure to programing. I even have a picture of me with it. Plaid shirts and programming. Not much has changed in ~40 years.
My dad got me one of these, may have a picture of it somewhere. Great memories of exploring the house with it. <3 <3
One thing not mentioned. If memory serves it took something like 8 D batteries and ate them for breakfast! My little pinball machine ate them even faster, haha.
For anyone looking for something similar for a younger age group: https://www.learningresources.com/product/learning+essential.... My 6yo daughter enjoys it even more than I'd hoped she would. I believe I found it on the Purdue Engineering gift guide shared on HN before Christmas.
Man, that was a good time. I remember writing out paths on paper that were lines of arrows. Had to adjust turn values based on the surface friction; linoleum needed less turn, and carpet needed more. Talk about learning to debug...
I always wanted one of these, so when I saw a new-gen one I snapped it up ("for the kids", of course. :) Disappointingly the software seems to be buggy, though - on a fair percentage of turn instructions it just buzzes for a second or so and then turns backs up before turning less than it should have done. I guess I just need to pull it apart and upgrade it...
There was even an add-on “dump cart” which could be towed and (IIRC) dumped programmatically via the 1/8” mini-plug that served as part of its hitch. Fun times!
Any D batteries in the house got snatched up fast. Any flashlights with good batteries usually got swapped for dead ones.
Anyone else remember their bigtrak being a matte grey, instead of white like in the article? I remember skipping the decal installation too -- didn't care for the stripes.
Now even more upset for my 7 year old self that I didn't get one reading the comments here about how awesome it was! The marketing was certainly very successful - I can still just about remember the TV adverts 35 ish (eek) years later.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 68.7 ms ] threadhttps://blog.buildbotics.com/content/images/2018/12/1-oeEOUx...
One thing not mentioned. If memory serves it took something like 8 D batteries and ate them for breakfast! My little pinball machine ate them even faster, haha.
It was 1979? Wow. Given I was a '78 baby, I'm guessing they were either late to the UK, or on the market for a number of years.
Relaunched you say? Huh...
I’m glad at least one commentor remembers it the same.
Anyone else remember their bigtrak being a matte grey, instead of white like in the article? I remember skipping the decal installation too -- didn't care for the stripes.
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/O68AAOSwg1JcQlyT/s-l640.jpg