I was at Linux World Tuesday and Wednesday and brought the $500 robot.
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By far, the response was amazing. Almost no one walked by without a curious look. The nerds, and lets be honest, we are nerds, all stopped and said cool. Most were impressed with the performance and the price point of the robot.
One teacher from a Maine Community Collage said "Now that's what I'm talking about, that's how you build a robot!" He then went on to talk about robotic competitions at the high school level that used basic kits and instruction manuals and how kids weren't really learning robotics as much as how to follow instructions.
It brought a lot of conversation to the booth. It was fun.
It was really encouraging to see all the interest in hobby robotics. At least 20 people were *really* interested in starting projects. A lot of them looked at my robot and nodded as if to say, "wow, I could do this."