Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

Sad to see this as someone who enjoyed these as a kid and entering robotics competitions based off of them; hopefully the new products will keep the spirit alive.

There was even some decent FOSS tooling that developed on top of Mindstorms: I used NXC (Not eXactly C, https://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/welcome.html) which was a C-like language for programming Lego Mindstorms. It looks like the last release of NXC was in 2011.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#5

Post by jnwatson » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 8:25 PM UTC

I wonder what programs like FIRST Lego League will do. That was an amazing experience for my kid.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#6

Post by belkinpower » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 8:26 PM UTC

This is really sad. NXT-G was my first programming language. Not sure if I’d be the same person I am today without that experience.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#7

Post by dybber » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 8:26 PM UTC

jnwatson wrote: post #5

I wonder what programs like FIRST Lego League will do. That was an amazing experience for my kid.

LEGO Spike Prime

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#8

Post by fny » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 8:28 PM UTC

Can they at least open source all the CAD so we can 3D print these suckers?

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#9

Post by WalterBright » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 8:28 PM UTC

I always preferred the Gilbert erector sets.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#10

Post by dybber » Wed, Oct 26, 2022, 8:28 PM UTC

tomcam wrote: post #2

Is limited app support a problem anymore? I assume there are complete replacements for the firmware these days?

Yes, you can run a debian based distro on them, so they can be programmed in Python or whatever. I guess the question is if they will stop being supported by platforms such as Scratch, which is a very popular way to program them these days