81–90 of 199 posts
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Bittersweet‽ What's the sweet part of Lego discontinuing Mindstorms?
They're likely shifting focus to a different programmable block product line, namely SPIKE Prime. So it's more of a changing of the guard than the end of robotic educational LEGO.
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…
http://www.technicopedia.com/8479.html
Still remember how instane it felt.
I remember that when constructing the truck I forgot to add in some gears so the claws didn't rise properly and I had to dissasemble the entire cabin again: my dad almost had to force me to do it because I was constructing it for so long that I was totaly tired and just wanted to be done with the damn thing.
That's somewhat bittersweet. The company I now work for and lead was inspired by mindstorms. Our founder had written a DOS based software for alarm receiving centers. Even back then he and his prime customer were unsatisfied with the restricting logic of managing alarms by only having a few choices how to react to an alarm. Usually show some text, and have a person call someone and then write up a protocol. So he bui…
Bittersweet‽ What's the sweet part of Lego discontinuing Mindstorms?
I have to admit, though, I never used Mindstorms and as far as I know he never bought mindstorms for his children either. ;)
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…
What would you recommend to kinds these days?
I got the original Lego Mindstorms 1.0 kit for my 8th birthday - there was no programming interface, just a way to select one of 256 possible sequences of high-level actions the robot would perform in a loop. I paid for my first car by working at summer camps that taught kids how to use the Mindstorms 2.0 and NXT, and built my first 3D printer with Lejos ( https://lejos.sourceforge.io/ ), Lego Technic parts and a tin…
Since you mentioned the raspberry pi, you can use one of those with the latest lego spike system as well via a pi HAT: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/build-hat/
To me as a kid and well as someone a bit older who often pulls out legos to mock up mechanical systems before I dig into solidworks the programming of the robot was a bit secondary to getting the mechanics worked out, and legos are a super fast way to prototype a lot of things (though they do have their limitations for sure). While I'm not one for shielding young people from serious tools, a school or a summer camp might for insurance reasons, lego might still be the way to go.
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> 3D print these suckers? Famously, LEGO has an extremely tight manufacturing tolerance that's around 10um [1]. Your 3d printer is much better than mine. :) 1. Page 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego#cite_ref-Companyprofile_3...
I have made compatible parts with my at home FDM printer.
RIP My Robotics professor developed ROBOLAB with Lego + LabView. In return, Lego funded part of the robotics department. We had the most amazing Lego lab. Bins of every shape piece you could ask for. It was really a childhood dream come to life.
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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…
Given that, and the sophistication of many of the teams, and the way the competitions are designed. The best teams are usually just doing some form of preprogrammed dead reckoning sequence and getting a bit lucky and rigorously placing the bot at the beginning.
AKA, while the NXT/EV3/etc devices are capable of sensor feedback, few teams made use of it. Its likely all the FLL teams need for most of the competition is three motor forward/reverse.
PS: Maybe I sorta failed to respond to the main point, which is that the spike kits aren't there to be "cool" sitting on the shelf and excite kids who get them under the tree. They are mostly purchased by educational/FLL teams where the build instructions and/or goals are provided by a 3rd party.