RIP Lego Mindstorms 1998-2022* (2024)
October 31, 2022 5:19 AM   Subscribe

Lego Mindstorms will be discontinued at the end of 2022. RIP.

Software support will be discontinued at the end of 2024
posted by Nanukthedog (35 comments total) 19 users marked this as a favorite
 
I found this while googling pre-Mindstorms computer interfaces:

A History of LEGO Education
Part 1: Strong Foundations
Part 2: Path to Mindstorms
Part 3: Mindstorms over Matter

I remember seeing some kits around 1995/96 being demonstrated at some sort of technology fair my father took me to (maybe it was 1994? It's personally notable because that's the last time I ever remember seeing luggable computers in the wild) and being told that this was purely for the educational market and LEGO wasn't selling anything directly to consumers. Although we probably wouldn't have been able to afford it if they had.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 5:49 AM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


It looks like Lego has a similar product to carry that banner, SPIKE Prime.
posted by adamrice at 5:59 AM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


And as I understand it Spike Prime is compatible with the latest Mindstorms ("Robot Inventor")--it's more or less the same thing, just marketed to teachers. So Mindstorms shouldn't be completely orphaned, right?
posted by bfields at 6:34 AM on October 31, 2022


aww I loved my little '98 mindstorm kit as a kid. I'm not sure I built anything coherent with it, I was very much a "mash the blocks together" guy instead of someone who followed instructions or understood even rudimentary mechanical engineering or programming, but it was such a cool addition of potential to the delight of LEGO.

glad it looks like they have some kind of alternative in mind; it would seem hard by now not to have some sort of programmable motorized block.
posted by Kybard at 6:36 AM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


That's a huge bummer. I haven't used them in 15 years, but mid-2000s Mindstorms were a blast. You could program them with Lego's custom "language", which was more of a UI for kids to grasp concepts and string them together, and then when you reached the limits of what you could do with the tools they provided, there was a Java VM running underneath it that was easy to hook into your IDE. The robot pieces themselves were surprisingly high-quality for the time (consumer-grade optical sensors were kind of an adventure, for example), and the motors and servos performed with high enough tolerances that you could actually get your robots to behave the way you wanted them to, as long as you were willing to do the math.

I'm sad to see them go. Not least because every programmer I know played with Legos as a kid. Not Lego robots, necessarily, but definitely Legos. It's like an unspoken gateway drug into coding.
posted by Mayor West at 6:41 AM on October 31, 2022 [5 favorites]


Mindstorms shares academic history with Scratch, the wildly successful coding environment for kids. Both came out of Mitch Resnick's research group at the MIT Media Lab. The Media Lab has a checkered history with its odd industry / academic connections but Brainstorms has been one of its big successes. And Scratch is even more influential, albeit less commercial.
posted by Nelson at 6:53 AM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]


Glad to see it's more of an evolution to a new thing than the true end. Robotics teams across the country (and around the world?) are based on Mindstorms robotics.

My kids and I used some Lego Education kits for homeschool. Their materials were extremely well-done, as you'd expect from Lego. We had a simple machines set I especially liked. Browsing the Lego Education site, it looks like they're more into vertical integration with the new Spike technology, which is kind of a bummer, but I suppose they know their market best.
posted by Well I never at 7:07 AM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


Mindstorms is(was) so cool, but I was almost 40 when they first came out. Nonetheless I did buy the O'Reilly book "Lego Mindstorms Programming in Java" just in case...

Meccano is still my favourite, though I don't think they have a Mindstorms block equivalent.
posted by Artful Codger at 7:11 AM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


Growing up in the 90s, Lego Mindstorms were maybe THE toy that seeing in another kid's house would make me instantly jealous. They were always the coolest.
posted by Rinku at 7:18 AM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


I bought the first set and thanks to some work by Kekoa Proudfoot at Stanford, I wrote up a C++ class library for the Mac to drive the brick. In the first version, the IR hook was a clever/cheap way to get code to the brick, but it was slow and unreliable at times.

(edit)
Looks like I still have the old code kicking around.
posted by plinth at 7:36 AM on October 31, 2022 [5 favorites]


Spike Prime is a schools-focussed set and so the prices will be pretty high as it's only available direct. You can't e.g. go to a toy shop sale and get them cheap like you could with retail Mindstorms sets. There won't be people selling them cheaply second hand (because schools will hang on to them and use them until they die).

My other half runs a Lego robot at a school and has already noticed that second hand EV3 sets (the previous generation Mindstorms) have shot up in price as the remaining functional computer bricks die off and the supply dwindles.
posted by EndsOfInvention at 7:36 AM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


This makes me sad - I bought 2 Mindstorms original kits within a year of their first release and was hopeful that I could get my kids into robotics/programming.

Unfortunately, it didn't take - 'that way' - they did become techy-nerds, but through Minecraft and Roblox. They just preferred virtual worlds, to LEGO bricks.

At one point, I worked with a local tech bookstore (remember those?) and we did a 1-day workshop, with myself facilitating - publishers gave us a gaggle of physical books to give away at the end of the day, and we did! It was fun fun fun.

Back in 2016, I donated the kits to a local high-school for their robotics club. Heh - I kind of regret donating all of the building elements (not the RCX bricks though) - as I have started collecting LEGO again and they would have been nice to have.
posted by rozcakj at 7:38 AM on October 31, 2022


Mindstorms was exciting in the year 2000 - today, kind of embarrassingly dated. I wouldn't do this to my kid today.
posted by Sunflowers Beneath the Snow at 7:48 AM on October 31, 2022


I've got a Mindstorms set and it's Vex competitor - and Vex is clearly where the action is currently at for the school robotics. Even pre-Covid both were a hassle to get my hands on. But I think the delta between what you can do with a microcontroller and a box of actual components, which is about 50$ all in, and the mindstorms, which was about 300$ is just too great to keep it in the general market. The ed market is going to get more and more removed from what we can do at home - which also sucks.

The robot clubs here are hyper competitive, which actually sucks a whole lot, and they are all in on a very specific model of state level competition.
posted by zenon at 7:53 AM on October 31, 2022 [6 favorites]


While Spike Prime is sharp-intake-of-breath expensive, it's much more open than previous versions. LEGO have officially sanctioned running MicroPython on it. There's also the (LEGO authorized) Raspberry Pi Build HAT; it might be near impossible to buy a Raspberry Pi right now, but at least you can interface bricks to it.

All new LEGO uses the LPF2 connector, so of course your old telephone-jack style Mindstorms peripherals won't fit. I'm sure that the folks at Lectrify and Brown Dog Gadgets are already on the case with adapters.

Seconding the ultra-competitiveness of robot clubs: let's say that some of them suffer from a wealthy tech dad problem. I was super pleased to hear of FRC 5719 - Pink Titans, a local First Robotics team who are mostly girls from very diverse backgrounds who built a kick-ass robot with giant googly eyes.
posted by scruss at 8:01 AM on October 31, 2022 [7 favorites]


Oof that sounds grumpy. These sets have such promise- especially the lego as you can leverage all your bricks to make elaborate creations. Like others my kids have not fully embraced the robots, but I remain optimistic.

The competition part is aggravating - for example there is a bunch of different robotic approaches. There is DARPA style challenges, last I heard underwater robots are big, and so much FAIL, I mean learning. Then there is the other end of things - the ball runs where you build a machine that moves a ball and then you chain them altogether. Which is way more collaborative and everybody loves building a large Rube Goldberg machine. Of course there is robot battles - but that doesn't really work for the youngsters. or the budget.

The school vex challenges in comparison are the F1 of rules lawyering and a lot of time is just spent waiting.
posted by zenon at 8:02 AM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


I walked into Toys'R'Us and dropped $500+ on two Mindstorm kits as soon as they had them. They were everything they were cracked up to be and I had an enormous amount of fun with them. Up to and including being the first time I ever built a cross-compiler for a microcontroller in order to do more than the factory installed firmware was capable of.

Mindstorms was my Arduino before the world was ready for Arduino. And in a very real way it put me in a position to be designing PCBs, programming firmware and building things with a pick and place machine 20 years later, even though I have no formal training!

We have Arduino now, and the enormous ecosystem of spinoffs and competitors, so the world will not lack for age appropriate creative electronics toys. And Mindstorms was a crucial stepping stone to bridging the gap between those extremely shit "200 in 1" project toys from Radio Shack and the present.
posted by Horkus at 8:04 AM on October 31, 2022 [6 favorites]


The thing about programming with mindstorms was that you could make functional factory lines, complete with visual sorters and automate vehicle movement as well - and everything fit. You didn't have a ton of inputs, but you could *start* to get a better understanding of motor control with sensor design and string the things together into more complex machines...

And yes, the Spike Prime, while interesting, doesn't seem to have the same flexibility that mindstorms had - in how it isn't based on the technics blocks. The projects look more like kit-specific lessons and less about motor controller, beams, gears, sensors now go! -style freedom of mindstorms. Maybe this means that Lego will go bigger with Spike Prime - and maybe this will be the impetus to do so, but... how many technics kits were bought just because eventually we knew we could hook them up to Mindstorms... and how does that change the calculus of deep engineering formulating in Lego...
posted by Nanukthedog at 8:07 AM on October 31, 2022


I was looking up robotics kits for kids the other day and the best kit seems to be Lego Boost (https://www.lego.com/en-ca/themes/boost). I was kind of assuming this is the new Mindstorms, or is Boost being discontinued?
posted by elizabot at 8:12 AM on October 31, 2022


Spike Prime ... in how it isn't based on the technics blocks

Not sure how you are seeing that - the connectors are all technics type and seem to have even more connection-points than my original Mindstorms motors, sensors and actuators had. Combined with Raspberry Pi 'hat' (really? wowza!), I am thinking it is more powerful, open and flexible than Mindstorms ever were. (I tried alternate firmware/compilers for my original RCX bricks and they worked 'ok')

The kits and specific 'lesson plans' are firmly aimed at educators, who need bite-sized-chunks, goals and success metrics - so, IMO - not a bad thing - but the parts and components are as open as anything LEGO makes. (I was never a believer that BURPS was a problem, the parts are almost all interoperable - but, I am also not a 'model maker' (someone who follows a set of instructions, builds it once and puts it on a shelf for display - not knocking that style of play, it certainly seems to have helped LEGO's bottom-line)
posted by rozcakj at 8:27 AM on October 31, 2022


This is a really interesting announcement. I assume that FIRST Lego robotics leagues will still continue, since the Spike Prime platform will continue to exist for educational customers. I definitely read that the serious FIRST Lego Robotics teams were not moving to the new controller that came with the 2020 released MindStorms Robot Creator because it was less capable the older EV3 controller so this shouldn't even effect them in short term.

This sounds like they are just shutting down the consumer product line to focus on the educational market. The competitor in this space VEX IQ doesn't really market it's robotics kits as toys, although, they do market a small line of "VEX" building toys, and the "HEXBUG" line of simply motorized toys. There may really just be no big market for these kits outside of educational markets.

I am guessing that STEM boosterism in education has made Robotics sound too much like schoolwork for it to sound fun as a toy. I know my kid feels like his robotics team is a part-time job, and his "fun" time is spent writing programs in Scratch or modding Minecraft.
posted by 3j0hn at 8:42 AM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


I was initially wondering primarily how this would affect the FIRST robotics league - I hope they can carry on with the Lego league. Both of my kids had overwhelmingly positive experiences with FIRST robotics and while the competitions themselves could be a little stressful, the critical thinking, problem-solving and teamwork aspects all struck me as really well thought out.

My daughter didn’t get involved until high school- past the Lego & into the big bots that needed trailers to haul them around, but my son started in Lego league and they both went to Nationals, which were mostly giant parties with rounds of competitions interspersed. They were major highlights of their educations.

The new product line may make it harder for teams to get going in schools without strong science programs though, as the Mindstorms set was a relatively low barrier for entry & the new I e sounds more difficult.

It might not be the path that kids interested In programming need, but it’s a great experience towards engineering of all sorts.
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:04 AM on October 31, 2022 [2 favorites]


I'm pretty sure FIRST Lego League (FLL) Explore and FLL Challenge have already switched to Spike. My experience with FLL is limited to occasionally helping out at community faires and demos; my mentoring time was exclusively FRC (big metal robot) with a little FTC (smaller metal robot). And, yeah, my experience with FIRST all around has been extremely positive.
posted by xedrik at 9:12 AM on October 31, 2022 [4 favorites]


scruss's comment about the connections made me look up what the older system used - a RJ12 6 wire with an offset tab. And it looks like jacks are available for interfacing directly to the 9v motors.
posted by zenon at 10:01 AM on October 31, 2022


. . .
. . .
posted by 7segment at 10:04 AM on October 31, 2022 [8 favorites]


FIRST is indeed a great program, and probably Dean Kamen's best "invention." When I first got involved with my son's team I thought the concepts of "gracious professionalism" and "coopertition" were dumb buzzwords. But there truly was a focus on helping each other across teams and levels, of wanting to excel more than to win. At the World Championships I cried multiple times. It's such a great program for nerdy kids, and it helped my son immensely. The Lego competitions especially were designed to reach kids where they are at. I need to get back into that world.
posted by rikschell at 11:11 AM on October 31, 2022 [6 favorites]


And Mindstorms was a crucial stepping stone to bridging the gap between those extremely shit "200 in 1" project toys from Radio Shack.

Bite your tongue. ;-) My "50 in 1" electronic kit, that I received as a Christmas gift around 1970, was pivotal in shaping my first career in electronics.

To be fair, the sets teach different things; the X-in-1 kits (which are still available in some form) teach electronics, whereas Mindstorms is essentially Robotics 101.
posted by Artful Codger at 12:02 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


Yeah... have you revisited that thing lately? The only thing I learned from it when I was 10 was that electronics is weird and hard and I can't understand it.

Then I grew up and learned electronics, and when I went back to look at my old 200 in 1 manual I realized that it was complete gibberish written by an amateur. No one with a working conscience would put that in front of a young person on purpose. Just my 2 cents.
posted by Horkus at 5:46 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


I’ve kinda been mourning Mindstorms since they started producing NXT - long time, I know. But even the Vex kits could not beat the simplicity and fun challenge of making a line following, literal brick RCX bot. The original programming interface - or what it was around 2001 - was amazing for its elegant graphical approach.

🧱
posted by JoeXIII007 at 7:12 PM on October 31, 2022


the X-in-1 kits (which are still available in some form) teach electronics

they mostly taught me how much I enjoyed making the spring terminals go "bddrrr!"

If you're looking at the Elenco X-in-1 kits, please be aware that a bunch of their stuff in made in Myanmar
posted by scruss at 9:03 PM on October 31, 2022 [1 favorite]


Horkus: I had the 30-in-one and the 60-in-one and they taught me a shitton.

Diminishing returns regarding the project count kicked in pretty quick: I remember the 60-in-one had a cooler-looking panel with more stuff on it than the 30-in-one, but not twice as cool or twice as much stuff. A lot of the experiments were like "hold two magnets together. Now turn one of them backwards. What have you learned?" (This would count as two of the 60 experiments). I can't imagine what kind of crap made the cut to sell parents on the 200-in-one.

That said, there's only so much actual electronics a 10-year-old can learn. Kids' chemistry sets have existed since what, mid-century? They don't treat how to balance a stoichiometric equation or calculate the enthalpy of vaporization or anything that's taught in formal study of the subject, but they do teach one (hopefully) how to measure things and pour things and not spill things and other basic lab techniques and safety practices that are both age-appropriate and assumed when undertaking further study.

I'm sure the pedagogy isn't up to modern standards (and, seriously, fuck Radio Shack in general), but it's not like their kits were going to teach Laplace transforms or Kirchoff's laws to kids that age. Looking back, here's some things I learned from those kits:

1) basic sense of voltage and current, sign conventions, and measurement
2) basic (if not qualitative) sense of what different passive and active components do, and, more importantly
2a) what these components look like in their common packaged form
3) that there existed some relation between the netlist/wiring instructions that told you how to build the circuit and the schematic provided

I also built an AM, an FM, and a shortwave radio. I didn't know how they worked, but they did, and it was absolutely MIND BLOWING at the time.

That particular technology is probably less impressive now, in the same way there are more discrete LEDs on my desk at this moment than there were total illumination sources in my entire family home during the time I'm talking about, 35 years ago. But I feel like I really got the best from those kits, and I'm sorry you for whatever reason didn't.
posted by 7segment at 11:13 PM on October 31, 2022 [3 favorites]


^ ^ Well-said. Especially about that "Eureka" moment when something actually works, and that rats-nest of wires becomes a working device. That is a pretty great moment for a kid.

Yes, with hindsight the circuits were often trivial, but they were also building blocks and patterns that show up in more complex circuits. When you see the same transistor in 20+ circuits, you start to recognize the biasing. Etc.

This is not to say that I wouldn't also have massively enjoyed a Mindstorms kit, but by the time they came out we had a mortgage, and Santa was only bringing me ties and sweaters.

bddrrr!
posted by Artful Codger at 7:06 AM on November 1, 2022


Elenco is still making the electronics kits, and their Snap Circuits kits are also pretty great.
posted by xedrik at 8:55 AM on November 1, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yes, I used to be able to sell all the Snap Circuits kits I could get. They are very well thought out, and the SC100 basic kit has a lot for the money. Elenco changed hands a couple of years ago, and I think that's when all the production moved to a police state. I'm glad I don't sell them any more
posted by scruss at 1:14 PM on November 1, 2022


Looooved the x-in-1 kits as a kid (born in 1976). The AM radio actually sorta worked. The "burgler alarm" was fun. Can't say it taught me EE concepts beyond the basics but in terms of having a baseline of following the directions, troubleshooting and experimenting has served me well over the years.

The home chemistry set pretty much just taught me that if I put a "carbonate" + water into a test tube, corked and shook it up, I could make a primitive projectile weapon.
posted by mmascolino at 1:20 PM on November 1, 2022


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