My school MAY have some money to buy supplies for a new course I am trying to offer. (UCCI Physics and Engineering). The course is currently in the approved-but-unfunded state.
I would like to buy some VEX EDR kits, or even Tetrix MAX. However… the school district has also decided to go 1-to-1 with chromebooks next year. And that is sucking up most of our money (or so they say).
So, is there a system that I can use for robotics-related instruction that can be programmed off of a chromebook? So far I have seen Arduino’s Create system, and Robot Mesh for VEX. Anyone have experience with using these? Recommendations?
My school bought our robotics program the vex edr and they have Been really helpful and fun but I don’t think you can use a chrome book to code but In our wood shop we have a few dell laptops that we use to program the vex stuff and run the CNC router and lazer
If you replace chrome os with Linux you could set up VS code and stuff. But no driverstation. Although Chromebooks may have little storage usually 32gb flash so depending on what version of Linux you get you could get it to work. Arch Linux might work or some other lightweight distro
These days, you can run Linux or Android software on modern Chromebooks. You just have to hope that whatever you’re running is ok with lower system resources and that the school’s Chromebooks don’t lock those features out.
OP says his school is doing a 1-to-1 program, meaning each student gets their own laptop instead of teachers rolling out the big cart. I wouldn’t recommend having students set up dev mode and Crouton in a classroom, given that it requires reformatting the Chromebook and probably freeing it from whatever district-specific settings the school put on them.
Right, however I believe Crostini (a separate thing from Crouton) can be enabled without putting the device in dev mode. I may be entirely wrong however.
Oh I didn’t think about the 1-to-1 thing. Yeah… Don’t put Linux on it. It’s better if you try to find funding for cheap windows laptops or ask the district directly. Good luck!
If I remember correctly the FTC control system can be set up and programmed from a Chromebook simply by connecting to the controller phone’s Wifi and using the OnBot Java system.