Here are the projects we have launched to support the release of the new hardware.
https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/pathways/lego-intro
Feedback would be very gratefully received.
Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
11–20 of 63 posts
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#12I've been playing around with the Lego and Raspberry pi combination on and off through the years [1], with the goal of building a standalone tracked vehicle (pi on board) that can move around my apartment. There were various ways to do this already, mainly by using off the shelf motor controller boards and later the third party Bluetooth motor bricks. This was all for the old "power functions" system though, Lego has…
Lego has the bad habit of not extending their 'systems' thinking to their electrical and electronic components. New connectors are introduced rather willy-nilly and supply voltages and communications protocols change with potentially every model year.
This allows them to quickly follow trends but it is totally contrary to the mechanical interface which is backwards compatible for over 60 years.
The same goes for the train sets, the track width is more or less the same for ever but the track interconnects and the way the trains are powered have changed often.
Fortunately for the trains there is a solution (subset of track, only use the old 12V system for the track it will also support battery powered trains giving a reasonably broad coverage), but for the electronics and the various motors the situation is quite a bit more complex. Note how the article essentially limits compatibility to a single one of the 10 or so systems that Lego has over the years used to connect electrical components.
Anybody remember the very old style electrical interconnect plates?
Someone ought to cook up a compatibility kit that allows you to connect older and newer stuff at will.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#13Here are the projects we have launched to support the release of the new hardware. https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/pathways/lego-intro Feedback would be very gratefully received.
Does it work with PoweredUp hubs and motors ? (https://www.lego.com/en-fr/product/technic-hub-88012)
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#14The Build HAT is not compatible with LEGO Mindstorms (EV3) because the plug system is different. The Build HAT/SPIKE™ Prime system uses LPF2 plugs whereas the Mindstorms system uses RJ12 plugs.
It can't be long, until Lego start to change the brick size.
That's already happened, twice even.
There is 'duplo' and there is 'Modulex':
https://www.newelementary.com/2017/11/old-bricks-what-are-mo...
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#15When I was young I always enjoyed playing with Mindstorms. It was my first experience programming. For me it was amusing that I could build some robot with Lego and make it retrieve a ball from our living room. Sadly jumping from the block oriented programming to "real" programming of the Hitachi H8 microcontroller was not very straight forward, so I kind of hit a wall in that regard. Maybe this collaboration will ac…
I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, block-based "programming" does allow children/newbies to construct something that works. On the other hand, almost nothing usable is being programmed this way. So I'd say it's more or less fine as a kind of introduction to general rules of programming, but the sooner you get to the actual code, the better. That said, microcontroller programming is something…
Depends what you mean by “usable.” Are you going to ship it in military hardware? No. But I built a block based program connected to a motor that gave kids a candy if they guessed the number that the computer was thinking of in less than 6 guesses. A 4 year old invented binary search within 10 minutes.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#16First time I've seen the STEAM acronym (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math). Described as:
"While these initiatives are a wonderful start into the exploration of these four areas of study, the critical process of creativity and innovation is missing. Students in STEM programs may have more experiential learning opportunities, but they are limited to only science, technology, engineering and math. Our economy requires so much more than an understanding of these areas – it requires application, creation and ingenuity. STEM alone does not foster these essential nutrients."[1]
It reads weirdly for me, because the people I know in STEM are some of the most creative people I know. Very much my own biased opinion, but adding Arts into STEM seems to ironically exclude art from the other subjects, and gives a space for all those art-focused people (I sometimes avoid at hack-a-thons because they don't like coding things) to feel included rather than encouraging them to learn STEM?
1. https://artsintegration.com/what-is-steam-education-in-k-12-...
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#17When I was young I always enjoyed playing with Mindstorms. It was my first experience programming. For me it was amusing that I could build some robot with Lego and make it retrieve a ball from our living room. Sadly jumping from the block oriented programming to "real" programming of the Hitachi H8 microcontroller was not very straight forward, so I kind of hit a wall in that regard. Maybe this collaboration will ac…
Luckily now we have Arduino that hides all the nasty stuff from users. There are 2 basic blocks: unit and loop. Adding repeating code blocks into loop block isn’t that hard. Jumping from Mindstorms to Arduino shouldn’t be a big difference.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#18Here are the projects we have launched to support the release of the new hardware. https://projects.raspberrypi.org/en/pathways/lego-intro Feedback would be very gratefully received.
Does it work with PoweredUp hubs and motors ? ( https://www.lego.com/en-fr/product/technic-hub-88012 )
You should already be able to drive poweredup hubs from the r.pi via bluetooth. There's a few libraries out there and incomplete but official documentation on the protocol[1]
I assume this will work with the poweredup motors. The poweredup motors and sensors all use the same pinout, cable and serial protocol.
[1] https://lego.github.io/lego-ble-wireless-protocol-docs/index...
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#19The Build HAT is not compatible with LEGO Mindstorms (EV3) because the plug system is different. The Build HAT/SPIKE™ Prime system uses LPF2 plugs whereas the Mindstorms system uses RJ12 plugs.
It can't be long, until Lego start to change the brick size.
What if I told you there is another plug type, that might still be sold with some old sets somewhere, and is still supported by a bunch of third party hubs (that for a long time were more advanced in many ways than Lego's own system ...)
Lego's stewardship of all this was a mess, and I'm super glad they open the system to officially blessed third parties.
Re: Raspberry Pi Build HAT – Controls Lego Technic motors and sensors
#20When I was young I always enjoyed playing with Mindstorms. It was my first experience programming. For me it was amusing that I could build some robot with Lego and make it retrieve a ball from our living room. Sadly jumping from the block oriented programming to "real" programming of the Hitachi H8 microcontroller was not very straight forward, so I kind of hit a wall in that regard. Maybe this collaboration will ac…
I have somewhat mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, block-based "programming" does allow children/newbies to construct something that works. On the other hand, almost nothing usable is being programmed this way. So I'd say it's more or less fine as a kind of introduction to general rules of programming, but the sooner you get to the actual code, the better. That said, microcontroller programming is something…
If memory serves, a decade ago LabView was fairly involved in the robotics-education space, as a "real" block-based language that industry actually used and that kids could theoretically graduate from teaching languages into. Only kids I saw using it were those whose parents used LabView at the day job from an industrial background though.