It's here: LEGO’s latest incarnation of their Mindstorms constructors kit. The kit comes with an infrared remote control, three servo motors, a color sensor, a touch sensor, an infrared sensor, and 550 LEGO Technic pieces. The most significant upgrade is the EV3 programmable brick which now uses an ARM9 based processor with 16 MB of memory. The brick’s connectivity options have also been expanded: there are now eight I/O ports, a mini USB for connection to your computer, a microSD card slot for memory expansion and a full-size USB port for a WiFi dongle or cable link for up to three other EV3 bricks.

 

A Bluetooth 4.0 interface allows the robot to be controlled directly from your mobile device running the Mindstorms iOS or Android app. A monochrome LCD display is mounted on the top face of the brick which also has four direction buttons, a back button, and a confirmation button. A speaker is mounted on the right face for playing sound files.

 

Sensor values are sent to the brick at 1000 times per second, three times faster than the previous NXT 2.0 system. The color sensor can now discriminate seven colors and a Reflected Light mode can be used to remove background light.