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Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

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Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#111

Post by meinersbur »

jabiko wrote: post #32
freetime2 wrote: post #12

Any alternatives that anyone could suggest for young children looking to get an introduction to robotics?

As a child I had a total blast building and programming things with Fischertechnik: https://www.fischertechnik.de/en/playing/robot-toys You have microswitches, photoelectric and magnetic sensors, motors and pneumatic actuators to name a few. It all came with a software to program it all in a flowchart like fashion. I fondly remember unpacking a set at christmas and playing with it. Honestly, I think Fischertechnik ha…

Started with Fischertechnik as well. The "Computing" set came out before LEGO Mindstorms. The flowchart programming tool was called "Lucky Logic", but it could also be programmed in C.

Here is how it looked like: https://fischertechnik-blog.de/2022/09/26/welche-kindheitstr...

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#112

Post by Teknoman117 »

I fondly remember the Mindstorms RIS 2.0 set my parents got me for Christmas in 2001. It was the starting point of my fascination with and eventual love of computers. I'm sad to see it go (although it does live on sort of as Spike).

-- Remainder of comment is a personal story --

Using this thing my dad gave me access to called "the World Wide Web", I eventually learned that people were making custom sensors for the RCX like distance sensors and proximity sensors.

The first website I found is still up 20+ years later and the design is delightfully unchanged (https://www.philohome.com/sensors.htm, https://www.philohome.com/mindstorms.htm)

Trying to follow these projects eventually led me to become frustrated with the block environment and I arrived at something called NQC (Not-Quite-C). It's a C-like language/environment for the RCX stock firmware.

Wait, stock, there are other firmwares??

Then I learned about something called "lejos" (a Java VM for Mindstorms) through a MacWorld magazine my dad left laying around, which is how I ended up starting to learn Java.

Next thing I picked up was the BASIC Stamp through the Parallax Boebot kit.

I eventually started going to a local robotics club (Chibots), which exposed me to even more stuff. One member was trying to start a business making AVR eval boards for hobbyists and gave me a few samples, which is how I picked up AVRs (Arduino was still a few years away). His website went offline a few years ago. Hope he's doing alright.

He and most of the club were using an environment for AVR called BASCOM AVR, which feels a lot like VB6, but for AVR. I couldn't afford the $80 it cost as a kid, so I ended up learning C because avr-gcc was free and open source software, which eventually let me to Linux and more.

Being a kid was fun, but I always had trouble relating to the other kids :)

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#113

Post by cush »

Hopefully this is simply a rebranding to allow code and robotics into any line of Lego set. The market for simple Lego robots can only grow over time as they continue to drop in cost.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#114

Post by lupire »

Nullabillity wrote: post #99
harikb wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

School & independent teams have spent $$$ buying lego parts and it is still sad to see things deprecated when they could have easily upgraded the "cpu" and kept things compatible.

Spike Prime and 51515 (the final Mindstorms generation) seem to be basically the same thing (which isn't new, back in the NXT times you had NXT and NXT Education Edition). I'd be very surprised if they weren't compatible with each other.

They aren't compatible.

https://www.lego.com/en-in/service/help/spike_prime/spike-es...

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#115

Post by LASR »

zebnyc wrote: post #77
bnycum wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My kid was selected into the robotics club this year, and they are using the Spike Prime kit. Seems like a decent set all things considered for younger kids. My child is in 5th grade and first year robotics. Probably wouldn't invest into it if your child is middle-school or older, but from what I've seen of it a very good kit.

At what age is it appropriate? My kid is going to be 5 soon and loves playing with Legos. Thanks

5 is more than old enough. Basically any time after they stop putting things into their mouths.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#116

Post by lupire »

mort96 wrote: post #62
stinkytaco wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spike Prime is their new education branding. This article is kind of misleading since they've been sort of phasing out the Mindstorms branding in favor of a broader education initiative for a while. Spike Prime might not be for very young children, but I'd say a precocious 2nd or 3rd grader could definitely program it.

I'm looking at their Spike Prime stuff now, and nothing I'm finding seems that... interesting? I got my start in programming with the Mindstorms NXT set (this thing: http://www.robotreviews.com/reviews/lego-mindstorms-nxt-8527... ), where you got all the parts and instructions needed to build a walking, programmable lego robot. The Spike Prime set looks like... some motors, some sensors, the controller brick, and som…

Yes, Spike is brick, not Technic. It's for robotic cars, not machinery.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#117

Post by lupire »

dragonwriter wrote: post #65
FullyFunctional wrote: post #24

It’s a shame but I can see how it’s a harder sell than the nth iteration of a scene from say Harry Potter. IMhO, they could do well by combining programmable elements with thematic sets, say add programmable motion to a haunted house. They have already tip-toed down this path, eg. the roller coaster has an optional motor function. However the pure approach of Mindstorm clearly has too narrow a market.

They aren’t discontinuing it because its hard to sell in that space. They are retiring it in favor of their newer offering in the space (LEGO Education Spike Prime). They also have, for programmable robotics, the younger-kid focussed LEGO Boost. Plus they have at least one DUPLO set aimed at what I think of as the “tactile coding toy” space (where instructions are represented as physical configurations of objects), D…

They are dropping the non-Edu line, as parent was talking about.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#119

Post by nkellenicki »

pavon wrote: post #66
TaylorAlexander wrote: post #36

As others have noted, they still have an education focused robotics set, it’s just not called Mindstorms: https://www.lego.com/en-us/product/lego-education-spike-prim... As a now-successful robotics engineer, I was the target age when the first Lego mindstorms set came out. Due to the cost it had to be a combined birthday and Christmas present (still obviously very privileged). The simple scratch-like programming sys…

The Spike system seems like an odd side-step to me. There are some minor improvements, but not really enough to justify breaking compatibility and making people repurchase everything from scratch. In contrast, Mindstorms replaced the old LEGO/Logo system (which I was fortunate to use in high school), and was a big step forward in a number of ways most noticeably that you didn't have to be tethered to the computer.

Just to clarify, Mindstorms has had many iterations. I believe what you're referring to is Mindstorms 1.0 (RCX). It's had three successors in the past 20 years or so - NXT, EV3, and most recently, RIS.

The most recent iteration is based on SPIKE Prime. It's the same hub, but with slightly different firmware. The motors are and sensors are the same but in different colors.

All Mindstorms iterations (including the most recent) are untethered. As is SPIKE Prime.

Essentially this announcement is that they are discontinuing the consumer-facing branding, but continuing with the education product, SPIKE Prime. Both products are actually identical, minus a few firmware differences. The number of motors and sensors included in the box also differed.

Re: Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

#120

Post by DalekBaldwin »

WalterBright wrote: post #68
kragen wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still buy them secondhand.

I don't know about Mecano, but the Erector sets online are in pretty sad condition, unsurprising since they're >50 years old now. Sometimes I'll get from ebay one of the battered metal boxes they came in. They make nice nostalgic decorations.

The most easily available Meccano-compatible system still in production is the Swiss brand Stokys: https://www.stokys.ch/de-ch/home/

The web site and order system is in German, but I've been able to talk to their friendly customer service in English. Then there's the matter of shipping outside of Europe... but it's still much easier than scraping parts together from vintage Meccano vendors with circa-1995-style web sites.

I remember having some Erector sets as a kid in the '90s (they had merged with Meccano long before, and the choice of which brand to appear on which set seems to have been random since then), but these days the official Meccano/Erector selection is almost non-existent -- there are maybe a dozen small self-contained model vehicle kits, and you can't order generic kits or parts in bulk. It is rather sad -- these brands were once used for serious engineering prototyping and scientific work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Differential_analyser#Use_of_M...

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