Having received mBot I was a little bit suprised that it contained many new parts I was not aware of. I think one benefit of Makeblock is reusability of parts, similar to LEGO. The latter uses numbers to identify parts, for instance the famous 2x1 brick with number 3001 for its shape and additional (longer) identifier for different colors and variants. These unique numbers help to communicate and to share instructions a lot! There are some databases of LEGO parts and sets (I’ll link to brick 3001 as an example):
- http://brickset.com/parts/design-3001
- http://www.peeron.com/inv/parts/3001
- http://rebrickable.com/parts/3001
- http://rebrickable.com/parts/3001
It would help to also have such identifiers for Makeblock parts and sets. Some products in the shop correspond to one part and others, especially the kits, consist of multiple parts. For instance the LED Matrix 8x16 seems to be one part but it includes four different parts (matrix, cable, plastic cover, plastic rivets). It is difficult to find names for each parts when talking about them, and to see which kit contains which parts unless all parts are available in a database with their part identifier.