Hey guys, Pat here with core electronics and I'm back again with MakeBlock. Now in front of me here I have the MBot Ranger which is the next kit along with MakeBlock educational robotics kit lineup.

Now in this video, we're going to be talking about some of the key features of the MBot Ranger. I'm going to make some comparisons between the MBot and the Ranger and I'm going to talk about when the best time is to use the Ranger over the MBot. Now let's jump into its features okay.

So the main feature of the MBot Ranger is the ME Auriga. Now, this is the brains behind the MBot Ranger and with 10 input ports, it's a massive expansion on the MCOR from MBot. Now we can see here that the ports are actually color-coded that actually corresponds with some of the different features that the ports support. So we've got the red ports here which actually designed for a 6V to 12V output at 3.5Amps continuous and they can actually support 5V at birth current. Now these ports are designed for motor drivers so you can have expansion boards with motor driver on it and you can run those motors with these ports now we've also got a great port which is port number 5 this port is designed for hardware serial communications, so this is for really fast communications between the external module and the Auriga.

Next, we have the 6 to 10 ports these ports of your general input/output ports for external sense modules such as the transceiver we have you can see is plugged into port 9 and we have port 10 plugged into the line filler which is a little bit hard to see at the front. Now, these ports like I said our general input/output so they can connect to all the other expansion modules that are available from MakeBlock.

Next, on the ME Auriga, we have the LED ring so the LED ring features 12 LEDs, in a ring. Their RGB LEDs, so they're completely individually addressable and you can choose all of the colours in the RGB spectrum.

Next, up on the board, we have the Bluetooth module now the wireless communications, you can choose either Bluetooth or 2.4 GHz, you will actually have to buy the 2.4 GHz module with the USB stick but it makes a little bit easier sometimes when you want to plug it in especially in a classroom. Having said that the Bluetooth really versatile so we can connect it to a tablet device and control the ranger from a program that you write yourself or you can also connect it to a Bluetooth PC.

Now in addition to all these features we've just seen, MakeBlock makes the Ranger really versatile in its layout. So, the layout I have here is the Land Raider. It's the most basic layout, so we can tell the robot to go forward, backward we've got the ultrasonic transceiver in front of it and the line follower robot so it's very similar in function to the original MBot.

So now, on top of the box here we have the three different configurations that make block have provided in the instruction booklet. 

We have the Land Raider, which is a very basic kit it's very similar to the MBot it has the ultrasonic transceiver on the front and the line following module. So we can follow lines or stop in front of objects. 

Next up we have the Nervous Bird, which is actually a really interesting one because it's a two-wheel balancing robot. So it actually uses the gyroscope and accelerometer on the board to balance itself on two wheels, so it actually is able to stabilize itself using the software.

Next up we have the Dashing Raptor, which is an interesting configuration in that it's a very creative way of designing the robot.

Ok now let's talk a little bit about some of the differences and similarities between the original MBot and this here and what Ranger. Now some of the differences are the obvious ones so the look and configurability. So obviously on the top here we have the different configurations for the Ranger. The MBot features and M Core on top here, whereas the Mbot Ranger as we can see here features the MBot Auriga. Now with the ten ports on top, there's a little bit more expansion as we mentioned before when we were discussing the features of the Ranger. Now some of the similarities the input ports that are included in the Rangers box. So we have the transceiver module and we have the line following module which means, that all of the different programs that you can do on the MBot we can actually implement straight on to the Ranger. Now the Ranger is also programmed in exactly the same way as the MBot so through the really easy to use and block programming IDE, it also interfaces able with a Bluetooth device so your tablet and anything else that also has Bluetooth such as a PC.

So next up the situations in which we would use a MBot Ranger over the EBot.

Okay, so some of the situations that we're going to use the MBot Ranger. Situations in which you'd like to expand your versatility of the robot kits. So the M bot is a really great starting point but if you want to expand your knowledge and learn a little bit more, while also increasing your creativity with robotics, we can actually choose the MBot Ranger which is firstly it's a really good starting point and it's a really good way of expanding your knowledge from the experience that you've gained from your M bot.

Okay, now we've seen some of the features of the MBot Ranger and some of the differences between the original MBot and the MBot Ranger.

If you have any questions on the MBot Ranger or on MakeBlock in general, take a look at our tutorials page and also don't hesitate to get in contact with us on the forums page. We'll be happy to help.

Thanks a lot for watching.