8 ms·

Lego Goes Linux

115 points by urlwolf 14y ago

larrydag 14y ago
I can't wait to see the LEGO hacks after this is released to the public.
speeder 14y ago
I had a course on using Lego DACTA (lego mindstorms without the mindstorms brick) when I was in fifth grade. Pure awesome. Too bad mindstorms are ridicously expensive here in Brazil, I am yet to put my hands in one.
- meaty 14y ago
  We had Dacta in the UK. It was paired with a BBC Micro and we wrote our own software in BASIC. Was awesome.
- diego_moita 14y ago
  > Too bad mindstorms are ridicously expensive here in Brazil, I am yet to put my hands in one. This is a lot worse than it seems. Protectionism in Brazil goes further than Mindstorms and protectionism in the world goes further than Brazil. What stupid (and heavy lobbied and bribed) politicians will never get is that protectionism is also cultural isolationism. By keeping good and inspiring technology off the gates they are actually limiting engineering creativity and imagination. They're actually stifling innovation and progress, not stimulating it. Brazilian culture grew so much when it imported other people's culture and modified it to their own. Jazz was imported and became bossa-nova. Soccer was brought in by British workers in the railways and became "jogo bonito". Corbousier's modernist architecture was assimilated by Oscar Niemeyer and changed into Brazilian architecture. If culture was walled by protectionism, these developments would never happen. Similarly, technological development will be repressed by protectionism.
  - jevinskie 14y ago
    Aren't legit copies of video games especially difficult to find in Brazil? And when you do find them they are > $120 USD? That is just what I've heard, I wonder if it is due to this protectionism that you mention?
    - diego_moita 14y ago
      Protectionism might be a factor but in this case is not the only one. Heavy taxation and costs of distribution and marketing are more relevant here. Pirates evade all of them.
    - speeder 14y ago
      For games it is mostly taxes ( including protectionist taxes ) A congressman here calculated that a videogame may get taxed 273% on its original import price without shipping costs.
      - jevinskie 14y ago
        That number is staggering! Thank you for your input. =)
  - Apocryphon 14y ago
    Protectionism was integral to the rise of the East Asian Tigers, as well as the recovery of post-WWII Europe. There is a time and place for such policies.
ansible 14y ago
I got to see a demo of this at CES. Very neat. I asked about downloading custom firmware to the brick, and they said it would be supported. Since is runs some version of the Linux kernel now, that should really expand the range of software which can be run. It has a USB port, so WiFi networking is now also a possibility. Since it supports Bluetooth (presumably serial port profile), that makes communication to smartphones easy. I'm hoping 3rd parties will make more sensors and motors for this platform. I can envision uses for small solenoids, and maybe stepper motors too.
perlgeek 14y ago
I wonder how many of their customers are kids, and how many are full-grown geeks like me :-) When my daughter becomes old enough, that will be the perfect excuse to buy such devices :-)
- meaty 14y ago
  I tried that one - didn't wash with the wife.
- jmj42 14y ago
  I did! My youngest daughter (12) has an interest in robotics, so the excuse was perfect. I've played with the NXT kit as much as she has, and we're already talking about getting an EV3 kit for her birthday. (I'm excited).
  - bjcy 14y ago
    That's awesome about your daughter's interest in robotics! I'm a mentor for a robotics program that competes in FIRST competition. You should check it out and see if her schools have anything like this or if you can maybe start something yourself so other kids can learn about robotics with you and your kids. http://www.usfirst.org/ http://www.usfirst.org/
    - jmj42 14y ago
      Yup, familiar with the program. I actually spoke with the STEM outreach director for our middle school about a year ago. She was interested, but school policies would have made it difficult to get an FLL team up and running (she had looked into it in the past). I may take another stab at an FRC or FTC team next year as I now know (personally) the chairman of the school board. He's an engineering prof/researcher at UIUC so I expect it to be a fairly easy sell, and as a school board member, may be able to "grease the wheels" a little.
- eliben 14y ago
  +1 to that. My little clone is 2 years old now and I'm already starting to ponder whether she's old enough :-)
mariusbutuc 14y ago
No, LEGO Mindstorms is not a replacement for an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, but...
minimax 14y ago
Wow this is pretty cool. I have written some C (NXC, really [1]) programs for Mindstorms and it was super fun. I built a little rover-like car and wrote a program that would make the car play with my cat in the living room. It didn't work very well, but the idea of writing programs where the output was moving an object in the physical world was novel and very pleasing. I encourage everyone here to give it a shot. In order to test out a new program, I had to hook the brick up to my computer via USB, then copy the program over, then run it by pressing a series of buttons on the brick. Also there wasn't a good way to get debug logs in real-time (it's hard to read the screen when it's driving around the living room). Hopefully with Linux that process will get easier. The idea of SSHing into a Mindstorms brick, running a program, and watching the debugs logs on stdout is very exciting. 1. http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/ http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/
- drbawb 14y ago
  I haven't heard of NXC! It looks like NXC is basically NQC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Quite_C http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Quite_C) for the current-gen Mindstorms products? (I only got a chance to play with the new Mindstorms kit briefly in college to setup a small demo, they got about 25 educational kits as part of some grant. I just used the included software.) I got to do FIRST Lego League in grade school with the RCX 1.5 and later the RCX 2.0 AFAIK the rules prohibited us from using NQC at the time. I believe we were limited to RoboLab [a separate product sold by LabView] and the stock Mindstorms software. (*Which I should point out is _nothing_ like the current software. It was geared towards very young users, very "flashy", and quite buggy. -- It did, however, include lots of media and examples for the robots in the instruction manual.) That regulation was probably for the best, as my elementary self would've probably been frustrated by C-style syntax. I knew it existed only because our coach and assistant coach were both software engineers.
  - colanderman 14y ago
    Which I should point out is _nothing_ like the current software. It was geared towards very young users, very "flashy", and quite buggy. Actually, that's been my experience with the NXT-G language (the "current software") as well.

115 points by urlwolf 14y ago

I can't wait to see the LEGO hacks after this is released to the public.

I had a course on using Lego DACTA (lego mindstorms without the mindstorms brick) when I was in fifth grade. Pure awesome. Too bad mindstorms are ridicously expensive here in Brazil, I am yet to put my hands in one.

meaty 14y ago
We had Dacta in the UK. It was paired with a BBC Micro and we wrote our own software in BASIC. Was awesome.
diego_moita 14y ago
> Too bad mindstorms are ridicously expensive here in Brazil, I am yet to put my hands in one. This is a lot worse than it seems. Protectionism in Brazil goes further than Mindstorms and protectionism in the world goes further than Brazil. What stupid (and heavy lobbied and bribed) politicians will never get is that protectionism is also cultural isolationism. By keeping good and inspiring technology off the gates they are actually limiting engineering creativity and imagination. They're actually stifling innovation and progress, not stimulating it. Brazilian culture grew so much when it imported other people's culture and modified it to their own. Jazz was imported and became bossa-nova. Soccer was brought in by British workers in the railways and became "jogo bonito". Corbousier's modernist architecture was assimilated by Oscar Niemeyer and changed into Brazilian architecture. If culture was walled by protectionism, these developments would never happen. Similarly, technological development will be repressed by protectionism.
- jevinskie 14y ago
  Aren't legit copies of video games especially difficult to find in Brazil? And when you do find them they are > $120 USD? That is just what I've heard, I wonder if it is due to this protectionism that you mention?
  - diego_moita 14y ago
    Protectionism might be a factor but in this case is not the only one. Heavy taxation and costs of distribution and marketing are more relevant here. Pirates evade all of them.
  - speeder 14y ago
    For games it is mostly taxes ( including protectionist taxes ) A congressman here calculated that a videogame may get taxed 273% on its original import price without shipping costs.
    - jevinskie 14y ago
      That number is staggering! Thank you for your input. =)
- Apocryphon 14y ago
  Protectionism was integral to the rise of the East Asian Tigers, as well as the recovery of post-WWII Europe. There is a time and place for such policies.

ansible 14y ago

I got to see a demo of this at CES. Very neat. I asked about downloading custom firmware to the brick, and they said it would be supported. Since is runs some version of the Linux kernel now, that should really expand the range of software which can be run. It has a USB port, so WiFi networking is now also a possibility. Since it supports Bluetooth (presumably serial port profile), that makes communication to smartphones easy. I'm hoping 3rd parties will make more sensors and motors for this platform. I can envision uses for small solenoids, and maybe stepper motors too.

perlgeek 14y ago

I wonder how many of their customers are kids, and how many are full-grown geeks like me :-) When my daughter becomes old enough, that will be the perfect excuse to buy such devices :-)

meaty 14y ago
I tried that one - didn't wash with the wife.
jmj42 14y ago
I did! My youngest daughter (12) has an interest in robotics, so the excuse was perfect. I've played with the NXT kit as much as she has, and we're already talking about getting an EV3 kit for her birthday. (I'm excited).
- bjcy 14y ago
  That's awesome about your daughter's interest in robotics! I'm a mentor for a robotics program that competes in FIRST competition. You should check it out and see if her schools have anything like this or if you can maybe start something yourself so other kids can learn about robotics with you and your kids. http://www.usfirst.org/ http://www.usfirst.org/
  - jmj42 14y ago
    Yup, familiar with the program. I actually spoke with the STEM outreach director for our middle school about a year ago. She was interested, but school policies would have made it difficult to get an FLL team up and running (she had looked into it in the past). I may take another stab at an FRC or FTC team next year as I now know (personally) the chairman of the school board. He's an engineering prof/researcher at UIUC so I expect it to be a fairly easy sell, and as a school board member, may be able to "grease the wheels" a little.
eliben 14y ago
+1 to that. My little clone is 2 years old now and I'm already starting to ponder whether she's old enough :-)

mariusbutuc 14y ago

No, LEGO Mindstorms is not a replacement for an Arduino or a Raspberry Pi, but...

minimax 14y ago

Wow this is pretty cool. I have written some C (NXC, really [1]) programs for Mindstorms and it was super fun. I built a little rover-like car and wrote a program that would make the car play with my cat in the living room. It didn't work very well, but the idea of writing programs where the output was moving an object in the physical world was novel and very pleasing. I encourage everyone here to give it a shot. In order to test out a new program, I had to hook the brick up to my computer via USB, then copy the program over, then run it by pressing a series of buttons on the brick. Also there wasn't a good way to get debug logs in real-time (it's hard to read the screen when it's driving around the living room). Hopefully with Linux that process will get easier. The idea of SSHing into a Mindstorms brick, running a program, and watching the debugs logs on stdout is very exciting. 1. http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/ http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc/

drbawb 14y ago
I haven't heard of NXC! It looks like NXC is basically NQC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Quite_C http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Not_Quite_C) for the current-gen Mindstorms products? (I only got a chance to play with the new Mindstorms kit briefly in college to setup a small demo, they got about 25 educational kits as part of some grant. I just used the included software.) I got to do FIRST Lego League in grade school with the RCX 1.5 and later the RCX 2.0 AFAIK the rules prohibited us from using NQC at the time. I believe we were limited to RoboLab [a separate product sold by LabView] and the stock Mindstorms software. (*Which I should point out is _nothing_ like the current software. It was geared towards very young users, very "flashy", and quite buggy. -- It did, however, include lots of media and examples for the robots in the instruction manual.) That regulation was probably for the best, as my elementary self would've probably been frustrated by C-style syntax. I knew it existed only because our coach and assistant coach were both software engineers.
- colanderman 14y ago
  Which I should point out is _nothing_ like the current software. It was geared towards very young users, very "flashy", and quite buggy. Actually, that's been my experience with the NXT-G language (the "current software") as well.