Lego Is Discontinuing Mindstorms

Post by hombre_fatal » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:18 AM UTC

colechristensen wrote: post #69

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…

As I grown man who has built actual robots with all the skills to do embedded programming and mechanical engineering to make robots... I'm still envious of Mindstorms and yet never purchased any despite having the funds to do so. I think this is the same part of my brain that still thinks getting a PDA is a good idea despite having had a smartphone for I don't know how many years now. Is there a word for holding on t…

Post by nl » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:26 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #134

lupire wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that today's LEGO bricks are compatible with bricks manufactured in 1975? There is no "migrating" here. LEGO correctly noted that Mindstorms was not very popular with the consumer market, and too complicated for the education market, so Prime is a vastly simpler product that's more accessible from education.

They are, but unlike in 1975, LEGO now makes it very difficult for people to actually buy just bricks. They won't sell plain packs of bricks to shops unless they buy large numbers of the themed sets.

Post by mcphage » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:34 AM UTC

hajile wrote: post #132

pavon wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The latest Mindstorms is literally just Spike Prime with slightly different firmware.

Post by relaxing » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 2:56 AM UTC

sleepybrett wrote: post #79

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…

FYI if you want to get beefy on the compute side, they make a raspberry pi HAT for integration with the lego spike stuff: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/build-hat/

Post by PhasmaFelis » Thu, Oct 27, 2022, 3:05 AM UTC

nicoburns wrote: post #134

lupire wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you know that today's LEGO bricks are compatible with bricks manufactured in 1975? There is no "migrating" here. LEGO correctly noted that Mindstorms was not very popular with the consumer market, and too complicated for the education market, so Prime is a vastly simpler product that's more accessible from education.

They are, but unlike in 1975, LEGO now makes it very difficult for people to actually buy just bricks. They won't sell plain packs of bricks to shops unless they buy large numbers of the themed sets.