What do you think about the CyberBricks retail prices?

MakerWorld CyberBrick
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I’ve done some playing around with ESP32, arduino board, WLED lights and I’m pretty OK with soldering but still went ahead with one of these kits for the reasons you oulined. These look like something I can do with my 6yo son that are a more plug and play than a “from scratch” sort of build.

I would anticipate that 3D Models are going to be designed to hold the standard components with concessions for wiring etc will should make everything easier for him to put together.

As far as price goes, I’ve found that it’s very easy to spent $$ buying the wrong bits for projects or be frustrated when the bits don’t work together. For me personally, paying a bit more for an ecosystem of bits that are designed to work together (along with the forthcoming 3d models) is worth it.

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Wow…all I am reading is hate hate and more hate from folks who do not want to understand, or make any effort to understand, lets see.

If you want something that finish just buy it? Sure, let me pay 10 times as much, or more for something when I have a 3d printer, nothing wrong with that at all…come on.

Deceptive marketing? seriously, all the information is there, just because you do not want to spend 10 seconds understanding it, sure it could be clearer, but there is no deception or hiding, you are spending $x on pack A-E and the contents are clearly listed…but sure, you keep ranting about how its wrong and you hate it because your special.

Ponzi scheme…yeah, bro you need to get out more

The answer is simple, if its not for you, fine that’s ok, there is this thing called free will where you are not being forced to buy it, move on and find something that is for you, no need to sit here ranting about it in some borderline unhinged way.

For me, I have software development experience, terrible soldering skills, I have several Arduino’s, ESP32’s and at least 1 Raspberry Pi being used for various things (or nothing in some cases) and I still brought 5 of these kits for 1 reason, its simple and easy, you connect to wifi, you use a browser to set it up, you disconnect from the wifi and never think about it again, unless you want to change the setup and I get to have fun with some of the amazing models that have already been created by the community, or will be created by the community.

If you want to take something like the RC Crane model and modify it to support your own hardware, and do the programming and setup on your own, good for you, have fun and I wish you a good time. But the reality is that not everybody can do that, or wants to do that, and simply sitting there bashing it for the fun of it is not helpful to anybody.

So for me as I have already said, I hope the pricing of the individual modules is good when it hits Maker’s Supply Store, and I hope it has a long and happy life with a lot of creators getting behind it, many of whom have already indicated they want to and am excited to see what the creative folks can do with a nice simple non complicated RC system that is customizable.

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Yet you admittedly know nothing about it.

Kind of like how McDonalds sells french fries. It is kind of a basic principle of business - offer people a good product or service at a reasonable price and they will become loyal customers. Apparently your hatred for Bambu blinds you to the opportunities that CyberBricks provides for designers and users alike - a simple, easy to use system that is consistent across various models.

Is it really? In order for Bambu to incorporate 3rd party devices into the eco-system would require an agreement and long term commitment between Bambu and the 3rd party provider. Perhaps it is something no one wants to tie themselves to. Plus, if you had been paying attention instead of constant complaining perhaps you would have noticed that the CyberBricks are an extension of the electronic devices that are already being sold on MakerWorld, the motors, wires, switches. and the like.

It is kind of the point, that one does not have to be computer-savvy. Over the past forty years, many individuals from many different companies have made great strides so that others don’t have to understand the nitty gritty of a technology to be able to use it. You’re not still chuggin along on a DOS machine are you?

Welcome to modernity. When touch screens became available design engineers began designing them into the products they were designing. At some point they discovered that smartphones could be used as general purpose control devices. My label maker requires the use of a smartphone app. I tune my guitar to a smartphone app. There are drones that are flown with a smartphone. With the proper hardware one can control their lights, the temperature, locks, and cameras. You can scream in the wind all you want, phone apps are here to stay.

Blah, balh blah. Don’t you ever get tired of peddling this garbage? No one is forcing you to use Bambu printers or participate in the ecosystem that they have been developing. There are other things in this world to get hung up on.

Have you not read the Patriot Act? Are you not aware that China is not the country that is currently being run by an unhinged criminal and a gaggle of nutter butter miscreants?

While I am no expert, I have disassembled enough code to know that mnemonics are not preserved in compiled code. Just saying.

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@3dEd thank you for writing that down. I was already drafting something similar in my head, but you did a better job :smiley:

My other hobby is flight sim and I’ve seen some toxicity there as well, but this thread is something else entirely :joy: Like jeez, nobody is forcing you to buy this, why even spread all of the negativity in the first place? I’m all for constructive feedback, but this isn’t it.

My take on it as someone who only entered the 3D printing space since last November is that I’m all for projects like these. I’m interested in the tech and things you can create but I don’t want to spend hours fiddling with the printer (it has to work out-of-the-box) or learn how to code and solder. In many ways I see Bambu like Apple (or DJI since the founders are all former DJI engineers and because they also made something niche (multicopters/drones) accessible to the masses). Fairly closed ecosystem and a higher than average pricing but things just work. No need to go through hundreds of forum threads or Reddit posts (though those do help whenever you do have an issue).

Circling back to CyberBrick, many years ago I was really into the RC hobby and I’m excited to revisit it. Can’t wait to have my whole miniature construction site ready to go (in fact, you can really construct something now, just have to print the new parts).

I’m also looking at this from a business perspective and only see opportunities. You can offer various kits and accessories (for example the construction site). And if the design allows it, you can easily swap the modules between models.

Anyway, just wanted this off my chest. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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I purchased a 3d printable model of a crawler crane. It’s R/C controlled. It’s an interesting model and was done nicely enough. The designer behind it didn’t put any effort into the R/C side of it though. There are motor mounts, but that’s it.

It’s kind of a frustrating aspect of it though. I have enough experience with Arduinos and all that realm of things, that it’s not like it’s outside of my wheel house. I just don’t enjoy the prospect of it all. Mainly because I don’t have time to take on more hobbies. I can solder and have soldered lots, but don’t really enjoy doing it. I don’t have the time to program and troubleshoot, create little circuit boards with the components I need for the given setup, and just the whole production. It’s not my main hobby, so it’s not something where I can just whip something together with my eyes closed.

I think people seem to fail to understand this or just turn a blind eye to it. Like of course I can purchase an Arduino and all the needed components for less, but the time it’ll take to work all of that out will far outweigh if I just bought a kit like the Cyberbrick kit. The thing is too, I don’t particularly want to have to mess with a bunch of electronic side stuff. I like having the option of something that can be drop in and go, more or less.

Furthermore, the people that download my designs, they aren’t all going to want to have to jump through tons of hopes to get things going. I can’t and don’t blame them either. I create stuff for myself, but I also believe in a lot of ideals of what 3d printing is, and part of that is making things easy and accessible, in sharing. I want to share my work with others, and I want to make it accessible.

I think there’s a lot of potential within the Cyberbrick system. It’s easy to just look at it as some rinky-dink R/C system, but I think there’s a lot more there than people realize, or want to give credit to. It’s a robust and flexible system while still being very accessible.

I’ve looked a bit into Sparkfun’s Qwiic system. Which I like a lot. It’s the system I want to use for a little more advanced project that I’ve had in mind for a while. I think it’s one of those systems that helps to make things easier and more accessible. I’ve even suggested to Bambu that they should carry the Qwiic line of products!

It’s not exactly cheaper than Cyberbrick though. Neither is it as easy, and accessibility is still an issue too. Finding all the modules I would have needed for the project I had in mind, wasn’t entirely straightforward. The cost of things can add up quickly, and just the base controller boards can run 20ish a pop, so already up to 40 even without all the other needed components.

I don’t think the kickstarter is all that confusing. No more than any other kickstarter I’ve come across. I think it’s just someone wanting to have a huff and trying to find any excuse they can.

I’m going to boil this down to the most important part. The Cyberbrick kit will likely cost around 50 USD at retail. (Based on the pricing and the % off given on the kickstarter marketing).

I think this price is reasonable and within the realm of reality. Like I mentioned above, boards from the qwiic system can quickly out pace that. I can get cheaper if I go raw, but that’ll require a time investment on my part to make it work, that the lost time could easily outweigh the savings in cost by going that route.

At the end of the day too, I think it’ll win out on accessibility. It’ll be sold on the Maker’s Supply store, which will help people around the world more easily acquire it. By the nature of what it is too, the ease of use and setup will further help with accessibility.

Oh, I would say too. In this modern world, the smart phone is more readily available than the computer. It’s no wonder that so many companies shift to using phone apps to deal with things. I’ve gotten frustrated by this before, but I also know how to build a bridge and get over it. Sometimes the world changes from what you know, and you’ve got to adapt to that changing world.

I have to download tools to my computer to program things like the Arduino, so I don’t see why it’s so scandalous to use my phone to program the cyberbrick. I’m swapping one computer for another, and one app for another. It’s the same thing, just one of them fits into my pocket.

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Ya 3dEd, Chiz_m, lxen, and simton, Good response. At 80+ years, to keep my brain exercised, I have been dabbling with raspberry pi and teaching myself python/micro-python programing for the last couple of years, then getting into 3D printing this winter and glad I bought a printer that works great right out of the box, without having to know all there is to learn about 3D printing, Now, I am excited to combine the two hobbies. I feel CyberBricks will do that, giving me a platform to start from. I know everyone is welcome to their own opinions, I just wish they would keep the negativity one them to themselves. It disappoints me, how much negativity there is in this world.

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I think this boils down to a generation & current economic situation.

In our youths we had ultra expensive under patent lego/technic/mindstorms that literally broke the families back to obtain. In todays prices some of those sets are well over 8 grand put put in perspective. A very good used or two three junker cars type thing prices - for a lego set!

Fast forward today we have similar things just much much more advantages such as raspberry pi’s and arduino’s powering all kinds of neat DIY RC stuff that the world could only dream of in the mindstorm days.

RC motors sucked so bad back then - most were gas! yes really! so when electric got better phew…15min battery you kidding? I can just unplug and plug a new one? yes please!

but now the issue is I need a dedicated lab to program the Pi’s and a decent enough IP68 laptop (impossible) to bring it out and about in the real world doing testing. I can’t rent a helicopter to transport a portable 40ft container lab out in the wilds while testing machines and stuff.

Enter something like the cyberbrick stuff. A modern take of sorts (if they can pull it off) of all the above rolled into one.

Think you made a ROV.
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A sweet ROV. Then lost your laptop into the ocean because you needed to change 1 line of code out in the field. Err now my cell phone can do that. I don’t need to lose a laptop due to Jerry knocking it off the boat “by accident” sneezing you know?

Whip out the IP67 phone and edit the bugs you find in the field without the cost of coming home and going back out again. You need to factor in all the outer forces not just the sit at home with the CC buying for your kids.

THAT is you entering the lego 90’s mindstorm world - just today. If you have the cash sure! If you are tight then this will feel like a pinch.

On the notes of making it a closed system - this is basically impossible as the DIY group in the rasberri pi groups will utterly shred you apart keeping everything you make open sourced. They are zealous, trust me, there are ahem “basement nerds” that are so so deep down that coding rabbit hole that they just need to look at your module and know what it does having spare code laying around already ready for it. (your bricks have already popped on their forums fyi ha) None of this will ever be closed source now that it’s running python - Not even a worry in my mind.

What is a bit of a worry is how unclear the things were on the kickstarter - by the time i read and tried to figure out what I needed for what It all was greyed out and I need to wait now bah. I was trying to find out say for Josh’s I need what - then for the strad table what? it wasn’t exactly clear if we were not making the RC cars what was what.

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Oh man. I couldn’t afford R/C stuff so much back in those days. I remember the R/C Helicopters especially. Those gas engines, haha. I wasn’t too keen on them. I got a fly by wire plane with a gas engine, and that thing gave me so much troubles.

When I got into helicopters, gas engines were on their way out, thankfully. :stuck_out_tongue: We were getting small indoor r/c helicopters by then too.

That’s fair. I think Kickstarter campaign’s can be a bit confusing in general, with just the tidal wave of graphics and information that gets dumped on us. With how that was, with rushing to get the best deal, it made it more difficult to try and get the desired information quickly.

Did you get a pledge in? You should still be able to.

Well. The A C and B kits are still available from what I can see. I think for most people, I would frankly recommend the C kit.

A - Time lapse kit
B - 1 vehicle/player/set
C - 2 vehicles/players/sets

Any given model should be just fine with the B kit. The standard kit should include all the hardware needed to build the official models (The work truck, the fork lift, or the soccer ball playing car). The third party designs like mine will likely all require some additional hardware, but that hardware should all be available on the maker’s supply store.

I recommend the C kit because it’s a decent deal with more hardware to play with!

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I think the prices are OK but passed on picking up any of the kits when I saw they wouldn’t arrive until May. For me that’s just too many unknowns about the hardware and general availability to invest a significant chunk of time to a project (especially when you consider the volume of creators to casual users who purchased the kit). I hope the program is a success but I worry it may be similar to Maker’s Supply where there’s a significant drop in user engagement once they see additional hardware and parts are required.

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Can you elaborate some more? How are they storing the app on device? There is no where near the memory on these modules to do so, outside of storing code to connect to the mobile app and process the commands sent to it.

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There’s plenty of embedded devices with wifi and TCP/IP stack that can serve up simple webpages and graphics, I’d assume that’s what they’re doing with the ESP32.

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I haven’t checked the memory capacity and perhaps later BL will release the full tech specs.

However, I can assure you that the BL engineers did a great job embedding a functional webserver-based app in the board with quite set of features to configure the boards. Lukis3D has a video that has some details of the app.

https://youtu.be/fYKi8DYnPao?si=NvW-UrJhwml5GY7j&t=140

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Remember my LEGO attic I mentioned yesterday, well guess what’s also there :smiley: Had some fun times with it. (Dutch version, box says 2006 but I believe I got this one around 2010)

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See kids! @simtom has a 8 grand mindstorms model right there. Just the box itself is worth more than buying one of everything in the kickstarter campagne :sweat_smile:

Where do you live again and what are you hours cough cough Jeez…

@Josh-3D I didn’t actually sad panda :expressionless:

I just can’t figure out why they meddled everything into the parts bin and say X of this or that.

It’s only helpful to the 12 people that got pre-kits and SAW what modules do what? you know?

If I want to make the walking table, how, where, what kit? which modules? As a visual helper maybe they could have put beside the kit the images it makes? RC is obvious but the rest?

Or is it that the entire kit makes the entire 12 things you pre-testers did for launch? It’s just not clear if we don’t want the soccer cars right away haha.

EDIT:

See this is what I mean

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So…just RC? so I wasted time looking around for the kit to make the walking table - but there is none. Then the earlybird were totally sold out by the time I just decided to buy something. So what modules do I need for the table, I still don’t know. Confusing in this regard when we saw the 12 demo’s and wanted to maybe pick this and that one.

if they consider the table a “vehicle” which it isn’t really then it should be clear - that kind of odd information that causes confusion. My kids were here beside me looking and they were just as confused yelling NOT the soccer dad! yeah i’m trying not to click that haha

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I wish! It’s apparently very cheap when buying used.

As for the KS, yeah it’s a bit confusing. For some of the 3rd party designs you might need additional parts, but I’m sure we’ll get those details closer to release. I also missed out on the Early Bird even though I was there when it launched but the difference was only €6 so no big deal. I did pledge for 5 additional kits though, I’m sure I’ll be able to use them haha (either selling, giving away or to have multiple models).

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Bueno en primer lugar felicitar a los de bambulab por que han hecho algo original que ninguna otra empresa de impresión 3d ha hecho, me parece interesante aunque es un precio algo elevado para crearte un juguetito, por que de momento esto solo te da para hacer juguetes… es divertido pero que te cueste una media de 50euros mas gasto de filamento, electricidad, lo veo tremendamente caro para lo que me ofrece a nivel de usuario y lo que veo en el anuncio. Estaré expectante a ver como evoluciona esto y se veo que se ponen cosas mas interesantes lo comprare, pero no sera en esta camapaña de kickstarter.

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on topic of prices, it’s not bad overall honestly.

I was just taking a look for a project to price out a list and the basic kit you’ll need to get the newest pico 2 W up and running costs a pretty penny once you add in the little bits and bobs you end up needing. pico is only 9 bucks you know?

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So these cyberbricks are actually priced per module on par about with a pico when you divide up the price per module/controller etc It will be basically buying into this ecosystem that as they were mentioning can be expanded into alt project worlds.

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If it makes you feel any better, I missed the earlybird pricing too, and I was right on it!

The kit includes all the main components needed to make a R/C vehicle. The transmitter/receiver, basic electronics. The hardware included should cover the building of the the official R/C vehicles, the work truck, the fork lift, and the soccer cars.

Those kits will give you the basic components you need for assembling any of the given examples of community created models, however, some if not all of them will require some additional hardware. The hardware should all be readily available on The Maker’s Supply store. When the Cyberbrick kits start shipping, our models will likely go live soon afterwards and will have the appropriate BOMs. We’re working on finalizing our models too, so not all of the BOMs are fully finalized.

The gist of it though, is each kit includes all the basic electronic components you’ll need. They aren’t specific to any given model really, and can be used pretty universally. It’s just that individual designs like mine, that go beyond the basic, will require some extra screws, plus other hardware as needed. The extra hardware needed wont be anything crazy though and as long as you get a kit, you’ll be on your way to all sorts of fun.

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I designed a prototype wired mouse using RP2040 and had twenty of these PCB’s assembled (excluding large switches and optical sensor) and shipped to my door for a total of $147.25. That’s incredibly cheap and you can bet it’s even cheaper when dealing with large order volumes and companies with local industry connections and logistics.

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Sure they don’t include any wireless components but including them isn’t going to break the bank especially when designing a new platform where you can pick the chipsets and aren’t locked into a specific device or pinout. I think the Kickstarter prices look reasonable but it’s still not clear what the retail prices will be and how end users will be able to order individual components.

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Be aware that the cost of wireless certification is greater than some people might expect especially if you have to run though it with a couple board revisions.