Going for Gold: The Story of the Golden Lego RCX and NXT

Mindstorms and the original RCX were a huge part of my college memories; I had a professor who used them for one of our classes. I built a substantially large "dragon" robot where the head + neck were actually a robot arm that could grip things, and it moved on treads. It took three RCX's "networked" together to get enough inputs and outputs for all the motors and functions. I accomplished the 3-way communication by making a parabolic reflector for the IR out of white cardstock; the three RCX's sat side by side and all aimed at the same reflector. The one in the middle controlled the outer two; each knew to only reply based on the first part of the message, so there was no contention.

I left that model with university which they kept as a display; I felt a little guilty having used up most of three Mindstorms sets for my project. Later I bought my own Mindstorms set, and then one of my then-wife's coworkers - whom we didn't know, and I don't know how she knew of me - randomly gave her a 2nd Mindstorms set to give to me. I keep meaning to re-create this dragon robot someday, leaner so it only takes two RCX. I have a lighter design now for the gripper + wrist section which, like the rocket equation, would allow the whole rest to be smaller if the last stage is smaller.

Getting a Lego Mindstorms RIS 2.0 set for Christmas in 2001 is what instilled the love of programming, computing, and engineering in me. I’ve pretty much known what I’ve wanted to do with my life from that point forward.

The homebrew community that grew around it was also legendary. I learned Java (via LeJOS) because the block based programming became too restrictive for what I wanted to do. I learned C (via brickOS) once I hit code size limits with LeJOS and became less scared of pointers :)

The ancestor of the RCX was the "programmable brick" project out of the MIT Media Lab in the mid-1990s

http://archive.pbrick.info/The%20MIT%20Programmable%20Brick%...

https://web.archive.org/web/20011212030110/http://fredm.www....

Growing up in New England at the time, I was very lucky that they ran a pilot project at my elementary school. We programmed our "sketches" (though we didn't use this term) in LogoWriter on Mac LC IIs and flashed them using a weird dongle that connected to the brick via RJ11 cable.

I owe a lot to my teachers and Fred Martin's group. I don't think I'd be a developer today without that experience.

What a lovely article! For me also the RIS 2.0 was my first exposure to programming and had a huge impact on my life. Still vividly remember the lightning sound when the software started. :)

I hope Lego leans into the user programmability aspect with the new smart brick as well!

I'm in the process of designing some electronics bricks for one of my kids so he can take a schematic, given all of the parts then place the bricks on a baseplate and connect them with the circuit represented as close as possible. It's an interesting project, the biggest challenge I seem to have is to source the spring terminals, I have yet to find a place that will sell them separately.

Great read. I have fond memories of eagerly awaiting the launch of Mindstorms, having gotten to play with LEGO LOGO kits that my dad was able to bring home from the school he worked at.

I appreciate that LEGO has always leaned into programmable tech for consumers.

Also, shoutout to any OG rec.toys.lego group members if any of y'all are reading.

That RCX #000001 is super cool.