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Comment by TaylorAlexander | Hacker News Reader

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 system that kit used was great for me as a tween learning robotics.

Today I am designing an open source farming robot as a non profit project! (See my profile)

The early history of Lego Mindstorms is interesting. I didn’t realize Seymour Papert was involved but that makes a lot of sense! Especially with the name Mindstorms:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lego_Mindstorms

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindstorms_(book)

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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/

Now if only they made a Raspberry Pi for purchase...

I have 4xRaspberry Pi 4 8 GB for sale from Sweden if you’re interested in buying!

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 to a desire which has entirely been satisfied with new but different solutions?

Nostalgia?

I don’t know if there’s a word for it, but I get that too.

I say embrace it.

I never had a computer as a kid in the 90s. But I would go to electronics stores and play around with PCs - my most vivid memory was the large white and grey keyboards.

I now own a very expensive, large, white and grey keyboard :) (Leopold FC980C for you keyboard fans).

Was going to say the same thing. Worst case you buy it and it doesn't do what you need (itch) and in that case you can gift it to someone.

I think the design decisions can be educational. I'm sure mindstorms is full of compromises required to get a product to market under a certain price point (etc).

Gadget consumerism.

I’m not sure what’s the word is, but whatever it is constantly tries to convince me that I need an iPod Classic.

Aesthetic nostalgia maybe

FOMO?

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.

I love Legos and by extension the company that makes them, and I still believe what you are saying, that everyone will have to buy new stuff, is exactly the reason the LEGO company is making this choice. They don't make a penny (unless they are somehow involved in a secondary market which probably has much lower margins and higher costs) unless you buy something new, and migrating to a new ecosystem makes so much sense if that's the goal.

> unless they are somehow involved in a secondary market

LEGO owns BrickLink, as of a few years ago.

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.

I great up in the 1980s loving lego, and you couldn't buy just bricks then.

OTOH now you can get https://www.amazon.com.au/LEGO-Classic-10717-Bricks-Piece/dp... very easily (and there are smaller sets that cost a lot less too)

In the USA, you could definitely buy plain bricks in the 1970s. Probably the early to mid 80s, too, but I can’t be certain.

But unlike 1975, anyone who wants can buy plain packs online.

I used to buy Technix sets (sp?) and spend days playing with gear and pulley and wheel and motor systems. I don't think a single time in all my childhood did I ever sit down with a Lego set and build some themed toy that they suggested on the box.

All I really want is bricks, plates, shafts, couplers, gears, pulleys, motors, sensors, and assorted things. I'll come up with the projects myself. They don't seem to want people like me, since I have not been able to buy that kind of kit since the 80s.

Try some old Meccano.

Lego Technics motors, battery packs, remote controls, etc. from a few years ago are incompatible with the current ones, because they decided they wanted to raise the prices across the board and tie everything to smart phone apps.

Didn't Lego recently buy BrickLink? So they do own the secondary market, in a fairly real sense.

> not really enough to justify breaking compatibility and making people repurchase everything from scratch

That’s LEGO’s game plan though X)

I don't know if thats true. Lego as a corporation has been fairly low on the fuckery index.

LEGO kits used to be composed of fully interchangeable parts. While that is still true of the core build, there are now unique parts in every kit. This is driven by sales.

Because people like them. And the unique parts are compatible with other kits.

Nearly all of the parts are designed around a small set of common interfaces. The main change is that have moderately increased the number of interfaces vs. a few decades ago and there are more small decorative parts (and thus higher overall part counts) in most large current sets.

Designing models that are comparable to the first-party models is a more difficult challenge for kids than it used to be, but there is also a much larger pool of extremely skilled builders than there used to be (both adults and children). But there’s nothing stopping anyone from using the current pieces in older-style projects, and the older pieces couldn’t be used in quite as large a variety of models as the current ones.

EV3 was largely compatible with NXT, and while NXT wasn't directly compatible with RIS they sold separate adapter modules. 51515 was a huge regression compared to the rest of the series.

The general LEGO system has also had decades of compatibility at this point...

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.

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

And no colors :-(

I can trace my success as a software engineer to the 'too big' presents my parents bought me for xmas/birthday. I had a desktop computer of my own as 10 year old in 1992, and a laptop, a Powerbook 190 with a 16 grayscale screen, in 1995. A 33.6k modem also in 1995 (and a second phone line because my parents got sick of me tying up the main line).

I only had these things because my parents recognised my interests and bought things that were WAAAY too big for birthdays/xmas.

Same for me. And I keep this in mind when trying to help or trying to not be judgemental of people who are less fortunate than myself.

I don’t understand the Mindstorms pricing:

- Even you as a privilege background, you had to join Birthday and Christmas,

- If a Raspberry Pi costs $30, why would each single motor at Lego cost $25? Why can’t we have an excellent Mindstorms set for $200?

It looks just like segmentation and extracting the dollar fro where it is, but wouldn’t the market be much bigger if it were a little more affordable?

As long as you went to MIT, majored in mechatronics, and made a 3-legged pogo bot, it's all good. :)

I had the conflagration of about 25 LEGO sets prior to Mindstorms. Perhaps that caused me to head over to EE/CS? I did have Big Trak though that could fire frickn laser beams. :)

Yup combined Christmas and birthday presents and additionally forfeit any money I received from relatives back in the year 2000. Had to fight for it and made to feel guilty on how much it cost.

Didn’t become a robotics engineer.

Not many sleeps to go before the end of the year.

NASA has a kit for building a model of the robot probes they send to land and drive on Mars. It was priced about three thousand dollars before inflation struck.

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.

Man I wish I had a robotics club growing up x)

https://www.firstinspires.org/robotics/frc

Anyone who wants to see that happen for their children can get a robotics club added to their school. Tons of fun, not very expensive. Pretty easy to get corporate sponsorship.

Kids love it.

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.

5 is appropriate for Lego, but in my experience from volunteering at a teach-kids-to-code club, is almost always to young for programming. If only because they can't read yet, but also their eye for detail (I have seen two 7-year olds spend 10 minutes and still not see the difference between "Step();" and "Step()" when these two lines were right below each other).

What would you recommend to kinds these days?

Spike Prime is the replacement, and it’s been a nice upgrade for us

Make Twitter bots :)

There is a different feeling when programming things in the physical world, especially if you only programmed digital creatures before :) Give it a try if you haven't, Lego is a great non-intimidating way of getting into it, otherwise Arduino is pretty simple for programmers to grok as well.

Generally arduino, or raspberry pi. Learning to light up an LED and move a servo motor, plus read some kind of sensor are great ways to start to see how code can interact with the real world.

I was looking for a Christmas present robot kit for my 8 year old and still on the fence between mindstorms or the makeblock robots. (The Codey Rockey in particular, but the mbot looks really nice too)

I have colleagues that organize coserdojo sessions for young kids fully centered on the makeblock robots. You can program them in scratch to get started, but a push of the button gives you the equivalent Python code once the kids graduate from scratch.

I am surprised to see Lego cancel mindstorms, but it does make the decision easier…

I had some fun with this device - https://shop.m5stack.com/collections/m5-hobby/products/rover... - the general platform is geared more towards IoT, sensors and what you can do with software, but perhaps that's even a more relevant direction than just motion.

I forgot how early Lego went with controlled electromechanics. Even before mindstorms they had some kind of electromechanical drawing board.

It costs 385 USD !!

Whoa !

I wish there were cheaper alternatives. I'm from India, and it costs about 800 USD here, for the same set.

FYI, your site seems down (12:40am PST)

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