Lego To Discontinue Mindstorms Robot Line After a 24-Year Run (arstechnica.com) 43
The Lego Group announced this week that it will discontinue its Mindstorms-branded products at the end of 2022. From a report: In an official statement, the company said it will redirect its internal Mindstorms team into "different areas of the business" and that its Mindstorms Robot Inventor App digital platforms will remain live until the end of 2024. Lego Mindstorms debuted on September 1, 1998, as a breakthrough educational tool -- originally developed at MIT -- that allowed kids and adults alike to craft robotic systems using standard Lego parts and a computerized control brick.
The set gained a key part of its appeal by allowing owners to program the control brick easily on a personal computer using a drag-and-drop visual programming language, making sophisticated robots possible with a relatively simple set of parts. Over the years, hobbyists and researchers took the Mindstorms series in unexpected new directions while Lego itself iterated the product line with increasingly sophisticated offerings.
The set gained a key part of its appeal by allowing owners to program the control brick easily on a personal computer using a drag-and-drop visual programming language, making sophisticated robots possible with a relatively simple set of parts. Over the years, hobbyists and researchers took the Mindstorms series in unexpected new directions while Lego itself iterated the product line with increasingly sophisticated offerings.
Shame because they could have made (Score:2)
RRight up to when the aliens step on them (Score:2)
Hurt their feet and decide to take revenge.
Kidding aside, it's a shame they were great toys and my kids loved them.It's a shame they are going out of the world
Prolly some app coming (Score:2)
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Make a lot more money on those.
How very ironic that you identify the very addiction this generation has that likely helped perpetuate the downfall of a physical toy that requires kids to actually think creatively and use their minds.
Regardless of profit, it will be downright sad if Lego goes that route. It would be akin to the vegan walking into their favorite restaurant for lunch to find the owner/bartender serving up greasy hamburgers and lard-fried hot dogs wearing an FUCK IT trucker hat.
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Make a lot more money on those.
How very ironic that you identify the very addiction this generation has that likely helped perpetuate the downfall of a physical toy that requires kids to actually think creatively and use their minds.
They are a company foremost and will do company things. Like chasing profits. And spending on a marketing department to make it seem that we are "for the kids" when we really are for the profit.
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Make a lot more money on those.
How very ironic that you identify the very addiction this generation has that likely helped perpetuate the downfall of a physical toy that requires kids to actually think creatively and use their minds.
They are a company foremost and will do company things. Like chasing profits. And spending on a marketing department to make it seem that we are "for the kids" when we really are for the profit.
Yeah, I get that whole chasing profits thing, but let's not try and pretend Greed found a reasonable limit with that. Next thing you know, they're a public company being sued by their own shareholders because they chose to not sell off customer data to everyone buying. Or chose to make titanium jewelry instead of M16 firing pins.
Quite frankly, maximizing profits should not surpass everything else in business, but we seem to be rapidly approaching that mentality, or are already there. What's next, more gl
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Meh. Sad to see it go, but there are alternatives (Score:4, Interesting)
There's a lot of third party mechanically compatible stuff out there right now. And full blown computers with integrated motor controllers and I/O can be purchased for way less than the lego controllers cost back in the day.
The dedicated will find ways of making their lego bots scurry around their kitchens, like I did 20+ years ago.
Kinda sad/miffed that I won't be able to buy an out of the box thingie for my kids when they're older, but I can make it work.
People who aren't as clued regarding electronics are gonna be a little more up the creek though.
Re: Meh. Sad to see it go, but there are alternati (Score:2)
They are dropping a product after nearly a quarter-century - it's clearly a popular item, I strongly suspect there's something better coming down the line... greater features, lower price, easier to use, etc. I don't think they'd just walk away from the market for such devices.
What about the FLL? (Score:2)
Re: What about the FLL? (Score:3)
Lego never seemed that interested (Score:1)
Shame.
Re: Lego never seemed that interested (Score:1)
SPIKE (Score:5, Informative)
I'm guessing they never made a lot of money selling Mindstorms to the general public. It was always a bit expensive and complicated for the uninitiated. They have sold a *ton* to schools and independent Lego-centric coding schools (there are three of these near my house.)
So they are going back to an education-focused model with Mindstorms' replacement - SPIKE. This is similar to how DACTA was the educational/technical line in the 80's and 90's, until Mindstorms took over.
There's a stripped-down version of Mindstorms called Boost that it looks like they are going to continue to sell.
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They never really tried.
I attempted to get one for a friend age ago and they were not easy to get hold of. I gave up eventually.
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Lego Boost is a better option for the mayority of users.
This dumbing-down of toys and games is sad. (Score:3, Interesting)
One of my younger cousins got interested in engineering from playing with Mindstorms as a kid and will be graduating with her Course 2 mechanical engineering degree next year. Myself, I got into electronics and programming from playing Rocky's Boots and Robot Odyssey as a kid. I wonder how many others have had similar introductions to STEM? And how many others will not get those introductions because educational games are long-gone and educational toys like Mindstorms are on the chopping block?
If anything, we need MORE things like Mindstorms and Robot Odyssey. It's sad to see kids these days treated as idiots who can only handle severely dumbed-down hobbies versus what used to be available.
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From what I observed locally, Mindstorms was de facto educational instrument to introduce robotics to young folks here. Had luxury of getting one as they became available, and showing it to the kids of our guests ended in the long run by them setting their company of robotics education. Amount of excitement from this set was enormous, also it was created with the collaboration of the MIT Media Lab. Sad to see it go.
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Re:This dumbing-down of toys and games is sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think part of the problem for Lego is exactly the opposite - the "robot camp" crowd has moved onto more advanced/capable stuff. There's a million kits with Arduinos - or even "real computers" like Pis - and they're way more expansible and capable and interoperable.
It used to be that if you wanted a simple programmable microcontroller, you were in for a real confusing slog - and Lego could fill that niche. Now you have a million easy options. You can still use Lego products to build the physical bits of your device if you want - but they weren't bringing enough heat on the CPU/programming side.
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That's perhaps part of the problem. A parent or child has to figure out which to buy and how to use it. It's a little bit similar to one reason that Linux has never taken off on the desktop -- there are too many distros to choose from and picking among them is just too confusing or not worth the energy for the vast majority of consumers and results in fragmentation of available help resources.
Mindstorms was the "safe" and "accessible" bet. Every parent who has ever ste
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It's sad to see kids these days treated as idiots who can only handle severely dumbed-down hobbies versus what used to be available.
Many people today seem to be terrified of typing stuff into a command line. Students AND teachers alike. So these drag-and-drop "programming" environments are always popular. Then the platform goes end-of-life, and the hardware withers and dies without software to drive it.* I wish I could come up with an answer. Not having a solution is part of the reason I quit being a STEM teacher.
*There are some good third-party platforms for programming Mindstorms though. Good luck getting a *school* to support these,
Keep the platform up or ruin all future business (Score:2)
Nobody invests time or money into anything Google does, and there's certainly no emotional attachment, because Google kills services all the time and renders working hardware useless by doing so. Any "investment" in Google's services can only be seen as throwaway consumption, and as enticing as that sounds to managers, it really ruins the perceived value and the willingness to pay for their products. If you do not keep the digital platform for long-lived toys up and maintained, you ruin the value propositi
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Except Lego doesn't have a history of killing products.
...yet. Lego is the kind of product that parents hand down to their kids. If that doesn't work with the digitally enhanced products, they will be perceived as digitally encumbered products.
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Google may start lots of things then kill them after they fail to take off, that's fine.
Some day they may fall into Microsoft's "me too!" business model, where they wait for others to find a popular new thing, then launch a clone and try to leverage their size.
This hasn't worked for 15 years, and they remain also-rans in these things.
Arduino and Maker is where it's at (Score:2)
With just a littttle bit more education and know-how, even kids can start with Arduino and all the possibilities that ecosystem gives you.
And the maker ecosystem is infinitely broad and can be directly used in real-world stuff later on. It's great.
Some people made 3D printed adapters, so that you can use Arduino stuff with Lego mechanics. It's a match made in heaven! But it got
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However, the activation barrier is lower for Mindstorms -- esp. for the majority of parents who are not highly technologically inclined. If nothing else, just selecting what to buy for your kid in the Arduino (et al) world requires much more research (even if you are generally technologically inclined but haven't been playing with them).
Just dumping a bunch of Arduino kit and parts on kid is far more likely to result in failure (kid giving up and playing with something else) than dumping a Mindstorms kit on
Not everybody enjoyed them. (Score:2)
Had one (Score:2)
I had one of the originals from 1998 when I was a kid. It was a lot of fun with it and it was my first exposure to programming.
first robotics (Score:2)
my kids did some lego robotics daycamps and school things, I don't think it really worked. I liked that the kids got exposed to real problems - like how much torque could a motor/linkage support but there did not seem to be much learning going on - more frustration and playing with making things that could have been made out of ordinary lego.
Things like this need a community, which first robotics did try to create at least, but I think that a well crafted challenge / national competition is a better approac
A Mindstorms Icon/Symbol on /. ? (Score:2)
Problem was EV3 Mindstorms was a better product (Score:3)
Big LEGO and robotics hobbyist here. LEGO usually does a great job of researching and testing new products -- but they screwed up with their latest version. Robot Inventor (51515) is in many ways is an inferior product to the older EV3 Mindstorms (31313). Tons of user videos and articles on the debate.
EV3 lasted for like 7+ years, Inventor only 2, which tells you something...
EV3 control brick had a screen, could be daisy changed, you could use their block / drag and drop programming, Python (with MicroPython on VS Code), or tons of other open source languages and apps. It was backwards compatible, including the sensors and motors, with early versions such as NXT.
The new one was dumb down, not backwards compatible (all new connectors, different motors/sensors), no screen anymore, couldn't be daisy chained, had to use their poor mobile/table app to program it, etc. They fixed some of these things later, but the damage was already done, and a lot of community took a hard pass on it, myself included.
Kind of mad, Mindstorms was a great entry point for a lot of kids, and it was simply fun to work/play with.
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The new one was dumb down, not backwards compatible (all new connectors, different motors/sensors), no screen anymore, couldn't be daisy chained, had to use their poor mobile/table app to program it, etc. They fixed some of these things later, but the damage was already done, and a lot of community took a hard pass on it, myself included.
Kind of mad, Mindstorms was a great entry point for a lot of kids, and it was simply fun to work/play with.
My advice to anyone buying hardware is, if it needs an app to work, don't buy it. This policy applies for all kinds of hardware - vacuum cleaners, baby monitors, security cameras and toys.
A phone or tablet app is fine, and can *add* functionality, but if the hardware RELIES on the app, that's a problem. Apps are ephemeral. Even with the best will in the world, they are beholden to the whims of the app store, android/IOS updates. Sure, we could argue about sideloading onto a rooted device, but that's not sui
VEX IQ (Score:2)
Has Lego been running camps and competitions recently? All I ever see are VEX IQ. It's what all the schools around here use.
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One of the big school robotics groups is FIRST (https://www.firstinspires.org/), they have 3 competition tiers, the entry is FLL (First LEGO League, younger audience) which uses LEGO robotics, then they have FTC (First Tech Challenge, high school mainly), and then FRC (First Robotics Challenge, upper HS, college) -- the latter two use more advanced systems like VEX and/or REV (here's some of the REV electronics/hardware (https://www.revrobotics.com/ftc/electronics/)
A moment of silence please..... (Score:1)
They kept "bricking" old Mindstorms kits (Score:1)
drag-and-drop developed at University of Colorado (Score:2)