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Lego Allowing Open-Source OS 104

Posted by CmdrTaco from the isn't-that-nice dept.
JAZ writes "Forbes has an article on on Lego Mindstorms and the independent Open Source (MPL) LegOS and how Lego is not trying to stop it (obviously Lego is NOT an American Corp=]) It seems that sharing Intellectual Property can actually help sales... who'da thunk it "
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Lego Allowing Open-Source OS More

Lego Allowing Open-Source OS

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  • Maybe an Erector Set would be a more appropriate case...er...medium. (Do they still make erector sets?) Plenty of places to screw stuff down and I seem to remember some kind of paneling for walls. It could be pretty cool.

    - G. B. Smith
  • This ignores that most of the video game manufacturers collect royalties off of game sales. I've heard that the Playstation is actually sold at cost or slightly below to keep the market for games high.
  • A couple of thoughts on this:

    1) I've been pretty active with LegOS for quite some time. It is not new; rather, it is nearly a year old and has been under active development for most of this time. There already are several developers- not more than 3 or 4, really, but enough to keep this type of project going.
    Kekoa has done almost all of the grunt work on the HW end, and from that Markus and a couple of others took care of basically all of the code. From there, it has basically already taken on a life of it's own- there is a cross-platform emulator helpful for code debugging, substantial documentation (to toot my own horn) and it is being used in other projects (as the base for a networking project and a projected JVM.)

    2) It will never be like Mozilla, not just because the people working on it are not employed by LegOS, but because the complete system is ~10K lines of code. That means that slackers like me can actually read, understand, and even once in a blue moon fix the code- unlike Mozilla, which, while a great project, has a ridiculous learning curve.

    -luge

  • On the other hand, it might be also argued that the LEGO Group Companies could, say, go fuck themselves.

    Jesus, I simply *cannot* picture someone saying "LEGO Bricks or Toys" instead of "legos" in normal conversation. There is nothing I hate more than blood-sucking lawyers trying to regulate the way we speak.
  • Everytime I go to a toy shop I look at Lego with a huge feel of nostalgia. It is a great toy system. However one must grow up and look for other "toys" in his life. Childhood was something left in a foggy past. Farewell Lego you have helped me grow up...

    But now this LegOS is changing my mind... Suddenly I started thinking that in my age I could make some interesting toys out of Lego. This idea would never come to my mind without such system. At least in a prototype level this combination of Lego + LegOS could give some interesting food of discovery and exploration. The combination is perfect for making perliminary small and cheap experiments. Maybe I would even risk to make some weird practical stuff out of it.

    Well strange as it seems, but I'm reckoning of that feeling of willing to run over the nearest toy shop...

    Hope that Lego understands what it has nearby. They can't do such thing no matter how they look at it. Their minds are mainly locked on kids. LegOS is a door that no Lego manager would ever imagine to open. It opens Lego into a new world between toys and serious stuff. In a good development rythm LegOS may give a chance for many people to "play" robotics and start feeding a new world in electronics.

  • Sidenote on brick specs. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I remember seeing somewhere in the past that Lego bricks are manufactured very uniformly to highly accurate specs. Some Italian scientist had discovered that they are excellent for building quite accurate scientific instruments (in this case I think they were optical devices). Apparently much cheaper than and just as accurate than what they had to manufacture specifically for the instruments prior to the discovery.
  • Actually this kind of sueing makes a lot of sense. A company can effectively lose a trademark if it becomes "common vocabulary" that in normal speech has a general meaning.

    You can maintain trademark without suing, just make a contractual agreement with the other people using the name, specifying how they need to identify the trademark, that they need to identify themselves as clearly not part of the Lego corporation, etc. More companies need to think about doing this rather than throwing lawyers at people, since it can potentially help profits to do so.
  • You can buy parts packs from Lego Shop @ home, 1-800-453-4653, including packs of bricks, plates, slopes, baseplates, windows, doors, hinges, connecters, wheels. They should be able to send you a catalog.

    Failing that, the freestyle sets have lots of basic sets.

    George
  • ..and the RCX would have been the size of VCR. :-) Imagine the size of the motors and the batteries you would need. Not too mention the amount of bricks just to build something half useful. The Mindstorms kit would come with buckets and buckets of bricks too.
  • I saved my metal erector-set for my son, he is 6 now and isn't very interested. They have a plactic "equivalent" called K'nex that he is really into. He builds some neat stuff, and the parts are a lot lighter and flexible than the old metal kits. It goes together a lot faster than the metal nuts and bolts. He can put together a huge crane in an afternoon where I would have taken the better part of a week to make the same size thing if I had even had enough parts back then.

    I too was kind of resistant to the 'tinker toys' sets that are made of plastic. But I have to admit, my kids do a lot of neat stuff with them that we could never have done with the wood ones (the bendable plastic rods open up a whole new dimension.

    The only thing I don't really care for is the proliferation of the Lego theme-kits (although I love the star wars stuff). The effect this seems to have is that the kids want the next set so they can make whatever the kit is designed for (space vehicles, pirate sips, subs)instead of using generic parts they already have and using their imagination to make something original.

    Then the parts get all mixed together and they get real frustrated when they pull out the plans and try to rebuild a specific kit. But, still a cool toy and my kids (and I :-) ) still love playing with them together.


  • Since LEGO Group always always always refer to the term "Lego" as a collective noun, it was natural when I was growing up on Lego to use the phrases "a piece of Lego", "Lego bricks", "play with Lego" and most unnatural to say "a Lego" (instead of "a Lego piece") or "two Legos" (instead of "two Lego bits").

    Realistically, it's their term - it's even a registered trademark! - so they can legally say how they'd like people to use it. In fact, they have to. Otherwise they risk losing the registered trademark :-).

    Wade...

  • Better yet, how about a hybrid case? Erector would make a great internal frame and place to mount hardware and Lego would make a great shell for it. I was wondering how I would build the internal mounts for drives and etc, Erector sets would be a great answer. Like Lego, they allow for future expansion...

  • Using the argument that this is a wonderful educational tool for my daughter, I think I've convinced my wife that we should purchase a set. Or she's just pretending to believe me because she knows how much I love gadgets. :)

    When I am too old to play with LEGO, just put me in a box and bury me, I'm dead.
  • Not Linux, but at least *nix.

    There was a demonstration of a Java/Mindstorms combination at JavaOne. More information (including a link to the webcast and where to look in the webcast) can be found in this lugnet robotics message [lugnet.com].

  • This is exactly why manufacturers of sound and video cards should release the source to their drivers. It only makes sense that more people will buy their cards if they can actually USE them on the machine of their choice.

    The *only* one that seems to benefit from WinModems, for example, is M$...
  • This place has it all - including parts that are damn near impossible to find retail! You can buy individual parts - not just whole kits (anybody need a bag of 1x1s?), so you can get those pieces you really need...

    Even has online ordering - cheap prices too (for Lego)!

    Pitsco-Lego/Dacta [pitsco-legodacta.com]
  • There has been some discussion on the lugnet robotics forums [lugnet.com] about this. IIRC, they are targeting it for Xmas release. However, as I understand it, Lego is also planning on releasing RCX 1.5 for the holidays, so I'd imagine that O'Reilly might delay their book so as not to be immediately obsoleted.
    -luge
  • How about legi? sorta like lagi (rabbits). Latinesque!
    ---

  • Re:Lego case (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I know where you can buy a fishbowl case. Just go down to your local home electronics warehouse store, eg. Future Shop, walk over to the computer section, and grab an iMac. Most people don't realise it, but the stuff you can see through the case is actually printed on laminated cardboard. Behind the "artwork" is a goldfish swimming around with big electrodes attached to it. It's a special CRT, too. Everything behind the face isn't actually in the case, but is in an extra-dimensional space, which the electrons fly out of and hit the phosphors. That way, the fish can't electrocute itself.
  • Since the article is pretty short on details, I thought I'd throw out some notes:

    1) The Lego uses a Hitachi H8-300 chip, which is a target for gcc, so compiling code for the chip is merely a matter of rebuilding gcc as a cross-compiler.

    2) Strictly speaking, LegOS is not an OS but a library, which you compile along with your actual code to give you OS-like features: threading, time management, etc. It also frees you from lego's arbitrary limit on variables (only 32! with no data structures! eww...) and other such problems.

    Umm... that's all the geek info I can think of off the top of my head. URLs:
    The Official LegOS homepage. [multimania.com]
    LUGNET [lugnet.com], which is a discussion area for all types of lego stuff. the robotics list there serves as the main discussion area for LegOS development and use.
    The Internals page. [crynwr.com] Already mentioned here on /. by Russ Nelson.
    EmuLegOS. [geocities.com] An emulator for LegOS. Gives you a yellow box on your screen, just as if you owned a Lego brick yourself :) Also very useful for debugging.
    My HOWTO. [duke.edu] More or less the official documentation. Enjoy.

    Good luck- help Lego back into the black-
    luge

  • What about /dev/lego1 or /proc/lego? :-) I guess most people don't access their Lego Mindstorm droids from their Linux servers..?
  • Good luck -- those crater plates are in high demand; they probably command higher prices than any other single lego piece.

    --

  • There are three things that basically generated the danish Lego success story we know today.
    1. The patented tube-and-stud system for connecting them.
    2. The unique and IIRC patented plastic they use.
    3. The highly accurate and very very tight manufacturing tolerances.

    Have you looked at their web site? It's very interesting.

    Wade.

  • Re:O'Reilly book (Score:2)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If O'Reilly writes a Lego book, what animal will they use for the cover? Maybe the dragon from one of the Lego fantasy sets? I'd love to read the colophon from the back of the book...
    "The animal on the cover is a small plastic dragon (Draco draco var. injectus moldii). Habitat includes the area under sofas and sock piles."

  • At least they recognize the fact that an open-source project might actually /make/ them money, unlike some /Japanese/ firms who won't let emulators out there hit the market.

    It seems that the Japanese firm in question recognizes the fact that an emulator will NOT make them money. An emulator lets you use hardware you already own to perform the function of the hardware the manufacturer would like to sell to you. Therefore you don't need to buy the hardware and the company doesn't make any money. Yeah, I know, all the people using the emulators are buying the games.

    Lego clearly benefits from an Open Source development environment. Nintendo clearly loses with widely available emulators. Open Source is not the answer to every question.

  • Cool... Didn;t think about that.. I'll start on it the week. I should have enough. Hmmm... Where are my lego's?

    If i finsh it i'll post it some where
  • hmm. i have in my hand a single piece of legum. on the floor is a pile of legae.

    i enjoy going to my local legatorium, to buy new items of legata.

    i like to legate on a regular basis.
  • Correct Lego is a Danish company...

    ....and just for the people who don't know where that is, I'll just say that it is NOT Sweden :-)

    Allthough both coutries is Scandinavian countries.
  • Why doesn't anyone make a case for PC's out of LegoS? I've seen the MAc ones before...
  • Man, why didn't they have these when I was a kid?!
  • I've built one. Unfortunately I didn't have enough to make it cool looking, or even solid... It did work alright though.

    But talk about expandable! :)
    It'd be neat to operate a company that does specialty cases. ie: hardwood, lego, nerf, fishbowl (fish that like hot water I guess), marble (heavy!), etc... It'd be really fun. :)

    And why does everyone say legos? grrr.. That has to be the most annoying word. I've always thought (and continue to think) that you can't pluralize lego. "What's that in the box?" "Oh, it's lego."... y'know? Maybe I should ask Lego what they think about ppl pluralizing lego.

    ok... I'm done venting.
  • "Why doesn't anyone make a case for PC's out of LegoS? I've seen the MAc ones before..."

    Okey-doke, number 2367 on my list of things to do when my life slows down a little.

    George

  • Count one extra sale here (Score:3)

    by HeghmoH ( 13204 ) on Tuesday July 27, 1999 @06:59AM (#1780763) Homepage Journal
    I just got myself a Mindstorms kit last week. There is no way in smurf I would have bought it had LegOS not been available. I own a Mac, and the silly software that comes with it won't run, not to mention how unprogrammable it is. Give me C++ over some graphical programming any day.

    To Lego: You got a $200 sale to me precisely because you have allowed this to happen.

  • One small step for a Legomaniac... (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 27, 1999 @06:41AM (#1780764)
    Eureka! The solution to NASA's budget problems:

    Use Legos to build the International Space Station! It doesn't get more modular than Legos.

    And even better, you're much less likely to step on one of the suckers in zero G.
  • Programmable lego is cool. X10 home automation is cool. Combine the two... wow.
  • It will be interesting to see if several developers actually jump into the project and make a successful open source story.

    Or if it ends up like netscape where not many developers really jumped in to help out.

    I think most OpenSource programmers really don't want to give their time to propel the profits of a company, but usually we dont get to play with their toys. :)

    http://developers.forchrist.com
  • AFAIK, LEGO is Danish.
  • The info was already on the web,
    and any damages the people
    responsible could have paid would
    be insignificant to Lego. They had
    nothing more to lose by 'allowing' the
    info to stay up, only extra customers to
    gain.

    In constrast a few years ago it became
    popular to call a certain way of displaying
    data about high energy particle decays
    a 'lego' plot because of it's
    lego-block like appearance. Lego
    actually took legal action over this
    (presumably to protect the brand name).
  • lego has absoloutely nothing to lose by the OSS lego thing, since they don't sell software, they sell physical hardware. Even if someone has open-source lego software which lego got no money for, they still have to pay lego money for, well, legos.

    Since the software is useless without the hardware (which is what costs money anwyay), why would Lego care that the software is freely available? They aren't losing anything.

    It's kind of like the whole Palmpilot emulator thing. Palm doesn't try to stop emulation-- in fact they _help_ the emulators, supplying roms and stuff-- because without the hardware the software has no use.

    So don't assume lego is some benevolent company helping open source. If they were somehow losing money, they'd be fighting as dirty as Nintendo is.
  • Why doesn't anyone make a case for PC's out of LegoS? I've seen the MAc ones before...

    Have you ever tried to make a PC case out of lego's? To make something that's actually cool, it takes a LONG time. Pepare to waste an entire weekend.

  • Re:Cool (Score:1)

    by valis ( 947 )
    Well, a lot of us had the old dacta stuff, which was like this but instead of a programable brick it used you apple II or PC as the host controllor.

    Lego and Logo have mixed together a few times in the past.

  • But Lego doesn't sell it's OS anyway ... (Score:3)

    by Hrunting ( 2191 ) on Tuesday July 27, 1999 @07:16AM (#1780774) Homepage
    Lego isn't making money off the Mindstorms programming language and interface. They'll selling the hardware (and just packaging everything necessary to access that hardware along with it). It's not as if Lego separates the two. An open-source Lego OS isn't going to hurt them at all. People will still need to buy Mindstorms to be able to use it. At least they recognize the fact that an open-source project might actually /make/ them money, unlike some /Japanese/ firms who won't let emulators out there hit the market.
  • ... Lego.

    "A piece of Lego"
    "I have a lot of Lego"
    "I have built a robot out of Lego"

    One could argue that I'm only saying this because I'm British (Where the plural of 'A Lego brick' is always* 'Lego'), but I do actaully have some justification - from the rec.toys.lego FAQ: [multicon.de]

    While most people point out that they just say LEGOs, lunatic@netcom.com (Lunatic Johnathan Bruce E'Sex) dug out:

    One catalogue, dated 1980, has the following on its back page:

    Dear Parents and Children
    The word LEGO(R) is a brand name and is very special to all of us in the LEGO Group Companies. We would sincerely like your help in keeping it special. Please always refer to our bricks as 'LEGO Bricks or Toys' and not 'LEGOS.' By doing so, you will be helping to protect and preserve a brand of which we are very proud and that stands for quality the world over. Thank you!
    I see it as much like sand - you'd say :

    "A grain of sand" vs "A sand"
    "I have a lot of sand" vs "I have a lot of sands"
    "I have built a castle out of sand" vs "I have built a castle out of sands"

    Pedantic, I know - but it just always sounds so wrong when people refer to them as "Legos"...

    cheers,

    Tim

  • Are all American companies, therefore, run by stupid or evil people? Just wondering about the unspoken implications of your statement.

    I downloaded SimLego, the 3D Lego modeler [swipnet.se] for my wife back when we were still in the Windows world; it'd be lovely to have a Linux version of this fun little app. AFAIK, the author has never been hassled by the company.

    (The best companies PR machines know how to make any publicity good publicity, and how to create publicity out of even the smallest reference to their product or service. Every time they find a reference to it, they put out a press release reminding everyone how loved and widespread it obviously must be. The anti-rumor mill "spin doctors" trolling the net for negative/false information about their companies should remember it cuts both ways; treat your fans/loyal users with the respect they deserve, and you'll make new ones; alienate them, and you're dead in the water 'til the sharks come.)

  • They've also got some Star Wars expansion stuff not mentioned in the article. Imagine a relatively intelligent R2 unit wandering around... Hmm, I need to look more at the specs for this thing: voice synthesization would be cool. Mouse droids, here I come...

    This is a definite must-have for any hardware-tinkering geek.

  • I wouldn't even try to make a PC case out of Lego. What I would do is get some of those terrain sheets (you know, the big, flat sheets in green, grey, or blue) and make them the "walls" of the case. That way you could build stuff off the sides & top (& front with a little creative cutting) of the case. That way, you have something to do while downloading mpegs!

  • Combined with mindstorms, a lego case could be really, really cool. You could control it in any number of ways.

    The only problem would be controlling interference. Lego isn't exactly metal.

    -awc
  • I don't know all the technical details about LegOS, but wouldn't it be cool
    if you could get the MindStorms protocalls to work in HyoerCard?
    The thing still kicks ass, and it would be super-easy to use.
    Then again, some people might not like it...
    Ah well...

    Pope
  • Of course, there are Minstorms and Duplo which are two of the various Legos in much the same way that volcanic and coral are two of the various sands of the world.

    On the other hand, I can have many Lego bricks or many sand grains.

    I'm not sure how the sands of time fit in here.



  • only as old as you feel
  • Golly, don't tell anyone but I still play with Lego, and I'm 33. Sometimes I play with it with my 3 year old daughter, and sometimes I just play with it for the fun of it.

    I was joking about not telling anyone, my co-workers always got a kick out of the Lego X-wing, airplanes, catamarans, motorcycles and dune buggies I had in my cube.

    George
  • "Open-source is a cool idea because it is a lot like Lego," Noga says. "You can take things apart, see how they work and incorporate other people's ideas into yours."

    Man do Lego kick butts!

    "There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

  • I just sent a check out for two for $13, from an auction at Ebay, which is a darn good price.

    I think it depends on how you define single piece, the motors go for $20 and up, the baseplates with ramps and pits (from the Castle sets and Adventurer sets) are pricey, and IIRC the oldstyle people had a grandmother who was only in two sets, if you had one to sell you could probably name your price.

    George
  • Heh-heh-heh, you figured that one out too.

    I'm glad my daughter is old enough to play with real Lego, the Duplo just doesn't cut it.

    George
  • Yes, I am finishing O'Reilly's Mindstorms book now. It will have a catalog page at O'Reilly's web site soon.

    The basic approach in the book is to go beyond what's in the box--software from the Internet, new building projects, and that sort of thing.

    The book includes these topics:

    Coverage of alternate development environments, like legOS, the wildly popular NQC, pbFORTH, and (ahem) Visual Basic.

    Robot projects, including building instructions and working code.

    Mechanical design and tricks.

    Do-it-yourself sensors.

    A tag game for two robots.

    A light treatment of subsumption architecture, with implementations in NQC and legOS.

    Other fun stuff.

    I don't want to ruin the surprise about the animal on the cover. I'll just say that it's very appropriate.

  • Aaargh! A double heresy! Not only 'lego' pluralised with an 's', but also an abused apostrophe!

    /me runs away, dodging flames.
  • I tried for ages to sell my grandmother. Couldn't get anyone to buy her, even when I slashed the price by half and offered free cinema tickets.

    My grandad was a bit put out with me, though.
  • Thank you! WHY can't people get that!? :-)
  • rats... I was just looking for my latin grammar to write a comment like that one =)

    roflmao
  • Yes, but how old does she have to be to handle an errector set? I was nearly done with high school by the time I had one.

    And why aren't they interested in lego? THough one loves those horrid new-fangled, over-sized, plastic tinker toys . . .
  • I have a devil of a time finding the plain, simple, stuff that is the base of a solid lego collection. Of the three cubic feet or so of lego from my childhood (still with my parents), the majority is plain, simple, blocks.

    The basic "build what you want" sets (remember the semi-opaque plastic trays?) seem to be long gone, as well as the sets of specialty parts (axles, bevelled roof pieces, etc.). When the pieces exist, they're part of a larger set to build something specific. For that matter, almost everything available now is a set to build somehting specific, with specialized pieces. And where are the blue train tracks?

    So far, I'm having better luck with Megablocks (?)--and my daughters seem to prefer their pastel colors, too.

    Never mind the fancy doo-dads. Sell me about 20 lbs of 2x4 blocks, 2 lbs of 4x4, and about 5 lbs of miscellaneous other blocks. THen I'll be happy to add the odds & ends.

  • Good news in the LEGO MINDSTORMS FAQ (Score:4)

    by substrate ( 2628 ) on Tuesday July 27, 1999 @07:22AM (#1780797)
    It sounds like LEGO will be releasing a driver development kit that is more helpful to people working in alternate languages etc. From the FAQ:

    Will LEGO MINDSTORMS release a Software Developer's Kit?
    We have released a Software Developer's Kit (SDK), which includes a license to utilize the underlying
    technology for the LEGO MINDSTORMS Robotics Invention System 1.0. The SDK has documentation to enable
    advanced users to write commands to the RCX from alternative programming environments, such as Visual Basic.
    This documentation provides much greater access to the full range of commands and functions built inside the
    RCX.

    The first release of the SDK focuses on communicating with the RCX from Windows applications, as the current
    drivers are designed for this environment.

    Steps are being taken now to revise the architecture of the drivers to be much more platform independent.
    This will give users more options for leveraging the power of the RCX. Once the new drivers have been
    developed and tested, we will release a revised and more powerful SDK. We expect the second SDK to be
    released in 1999.

    Use of the SDK and the underlying technology is strictly under the terms of the SDK licensing agreement and
    is only for noncommercial use. The LEGO Group retains all rights to the product and the underlying
    technology.
  • I know this is getting a little off-topic, but according to the Lego Group, the correct term is just lego, not legos. Now, I just have to get some of those programmable legos. Err, lego.
  • I think this leads up to an interesting point... It's perfectly clear that open source makes for a larger fan-base, and hence more money, for hardware manufacturers, but unfortunately, too many people I've talked to assume that because there's one condition when open source is a good thing, that open source is always a good thing. I think there are cases when that's not entirely the case.
  • He wasn't implying anything. The subject is a quote from the summary, and he was pointing out that he thinks Lego is a Danish company.
  • I don't think everyone is so happy because Lego is being benevolent, it's just great to see a company that is acting intelligently. It probably wouldn't have suprised many people if they decided to fiercely and paranoidly (is that a word?) hold onto their IP.

    No company would go open source if it was going to hurt them, it would be stupid. But lot's of companies don't realize that OSS can actually help them, so it's nice to see one that does.

    -dl


  • Yes, my apologies. Okay, my question regarding implications goes to the original poster of the story...

    Anyhoo, thank the Danes again for another worthy contribution to human culture.

  • > Maybe I should ask Lego what they think about ppl pluralizing lego.

    They disapprove - the company prefers the terms "Lego bricks" or "Lego blocks" or even "Lego toys."

    How do I know? Well, I'm half-Danish (born in Aeroskobing, Aero - I forget the &-tags for the special characters) so I've had them around me literally all my life. In my closet are enough bricks to fill two large moving boxes, some of which date back to the 60's when Samsonite held a license to manufacture them. (Then again, how many /. readers have similar-sized collections? Probably lots.)

    If only we got to see half the cool stuff they make for the European market, like the extensive trainsets...sigh. Still, I'd love to have a tower case made out of Lego bricks. Not only expandable, but thoroughly customizable: suffering from iMac envy? Go grab a bucket from Toys-R-Us and change colors!

    Hmmmmm....perhaps a Lego tux? Shouldn't be too hard.


  • Man, why didn't they have these when I was a kid?!
    Yeah.. wish they had. I remember the coolest thing about Legos (when I still played with them/had some) was the lego kits where you could make things like cars and helicoptors and connect a little motor to them to make them work...
  • FYI, I read a posting in Usenet a while ago by someone from O'Reilly & Associates who was in the process of writing an O'reilly Lego Mindstorms book. That should be interesting. I assume that O'reilly would cover something like alternative OS use in the book.

    -Ken
  • lego has absoloutely nothing to lose by the OSS lego thing, since they don't sell software, they sell physical hardware.

    Not entirely true. By publishing the specs on the web, that is, the specs of the hardware, you're allowing others the possibility to reproduce it. That was the main point; not the LegOS, but the specs for the RCX.

    Secondly, the Minstorms kit comes bundled with software to program the RCX. That means they're tolerating that an open-source initiative beats the nice graphic-oriented software it probably cost them a lot to develop. Can you name one company other than Lego that would do that? Anyone?

    "There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

  • If only we got to see half the cool stuff they make for the European market, like the extensive trainsets...sigh. Still, I'd love to have a tower case made out of Lego bricks. Not only expandable, but thoroughly customizable
    I've got a whole box full of the Lego electric train stuff. I just pulled it out of the box about a month ago, but it's not working too well anymore... The tracks are a bit rusty, and I don't have a 110 to 220 Volt transformer anymore to make it run properly. If I find a few spare hours some day I'll have to fix it up again, because that stuff was ausome to play with when I was younger. Who am I kidding it's still ausome stuff (I'm only 27 yrs young after all =] )

    I lived my first 9 years in the Netherlands, and my parents were kind enough to give me Lego on every birthday.

  • Lego can't afford to alienate any potential customers. They've been experiencing financial distress for the first time in decades lately, citing competition from cheap chinese knockoffs that look like and are compatible with genuine Lego, but are not nearly as durable.

    They are looking at the possibility of making their very first round of layoffs, or already have by this point. The last thing they need is to tell a fanatical customer to take a hike.

  • Anyone interested in learning as much as possible about LegOS is invited to check out the LegOS newsgroup on LUGNET:

    http://www.lugnet.com/robotics/rcx/legos/

    The group is readable via the web, via a real NNTP newsreader, and also via email as a mailing list.

    --Todd
  • ORA has a staff member who picks all the animals. Yes, it would be cool to see a Lego dragon drawn in woodblock style.
    -russ
  • Heh, this is one of the great pleasures in being a parent. I can buy my son all the cool toys I don't have any more like Lego and spend "quality time" with him playing. :-)

  • Here's a canned search [lugnet.com] resulting in bits of archived info on the ORA book, from focused discussion forums about LEGO robotics.

    --Todd

  • Yes, that is exactly what I was implying. While I realize that many (probably most) American corps are good companies, there are a lot that are sue happy or pratice poor ethics and I'd rather not do business with them. Remember Colgate-Palmolive, Microsoft, Compaq? to name a few.
  • This isn't really as big a deal as it sounds. I mean, it's cool and all that they are thinking of other platforms, but it's use is limited.

    There are two parts to programming the Mindstorms' RCX. One is the firmware that is on the programmable brick (RCX) itself. The other is the software driver on the PC (Spirit OCX).

    It is the OCX that they are referring to when talking about an SDK. It is also the OCX they are talking about replacing with something less OS-specific.

    The OCX just used the COM port to talk to the infrared tower which in turn talks to the RCX. The RCX will still be running the limited firmware that Lego provides.

    If all you want to do is program to the existing firmware then there are already cross-platform solutions. NQC is a great example. It runs on PC's and Macs and in various OS's. However, it still deals with the same firmware limitations: only 32 variables, no call stack, etc..

    What LegOS does is completely replace the firmware allowing you to write directly to the hardware in the OCX. At that point, you are only limited by what the hardware is capable of.
  • "What LegOS does is completely replace the firmware allowing you to write directly to the hardware in the OCX. At that point, you are only limited by what the hardware is capable of."

    Ack! "Hardware in the OCX" should be "Hardware in the RCX"

    Never again will I silently berate people for not having proof-read properly...
  • The original programming "system" LEGO came up with for the RCX isn't bad - it almost allows one to create a subsumption-based achitecture "program", instead of a top-down procedural one, possibly opening up the ability to create a system more like what Rodney Brooks (sp?) has done.

    Not that I think LegOS or NQC are bad things or too hard. I like the control that they give (much more so than LEGO's stuff), but I wonder what if what the Mindstorms system comes with has been investigated in depth? I think maybe one of the problems/issues that it is more difficult to see what it can do is the fact that for certain experiments, you need more than one RCX unit...

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