LEGO Mindstorms to be discontinued

[Toastie]

3 hours ago, jodawill said:

I guess if we're just doing small projects, we could buy used stuff

I wouldn't be so disappointed at all!

See, what I tried so say before is: There are still (and I believe will be for long) these die-hard total nerds, that for some reason believe, making an old machine work or just getting "vintage" stuff going, is awesome, cool, mesmerizing, fantastic, unbelievable, electrifying etc. etc.  You can get the full suite of LEGO stuff, beginning with the RCX at much better prices than the original sets, plus the whole suite of original as well as third party software essentially for free. Yes, that needs tinkering. But there are references here and elsewhere how to get all that going on even Win10/11 machines. It really "all" works. Getting it going is fun.

The complete old sets are just totally overpriced, I would not consider that at all. Get the bricks you need separately, as well all the PBricks you need.

You can still do all that without TLG giving you one step per page instructions! Just go for it!!!

Best,
Thorsten

[allanp]

I did begin to wonder if mindstorms still had a reason for being when Technic/powered up can basically do all the same things, just needs a couple of sets with sensors included and you're there. I wouldn't be surprised if future powered up Technic sets may include some sensors. Maybe a "control centre 3" style universal set with a big multi-axis robotic arm, a dinosaur, an excavator, self driving forklift etc. Kind of like how the creator sets was a spiritual successor to model team, powered up can make some Technic sets the spiritual successor to mindstorms (only bigger with lots more pieces, like 42100) but only if they come with sensors and multiple, completely different models that can be built. I might not be that excited for it as I'm not a big fan of mindstorms (mainly because I don't find coding all that exciting!) but I think this control center 3 type set would be a big hit with the many mindstorms fans out there while also appealing to a wider audience in general.

But this whole business does raise a wider question with the whole powered up system. App support for mindstorms is stopping in 2024? Well then what, is all that hardware that the fans have spent a bunch of money on useless after that? My control centre 1 and 2 sets, my barcode truck set and all my power functions sets are still working just fine. Should I not buy any powered up set knowing that one day they'll just stop working?

[JaBaCaDaBra]

19 minutes ago, allanp said:

sets with sensors included

Actually Boost allready has one.

[BatteryPoweredBricks]

The newer electronic offerings have been moving away from me for quite some time.  One reason being cost, but also because of how much I hate smart phones .  It pains me to think of these products being for "a limited time only!", powered by an app that won't be supported in a few years.  I say this as someone who is still using the official Lego DACTA Control Lab software from 1993 on my Windows 98 PC.  I am well aware of third party software developed for these products and I use them more often than official software, but not every user of this stuff is quite as tech savvy.  It's easy to forget how many years of experience some of us have with computers and electronics.  It's sad news to hear for sure, it won't effect me very much but I've always wanted the Mindstorms line to live on and give similar experiences to newer generations.  Much the way the NXT and EV3 did.  Lego Mindstorms will never die for me, but it may never spark to life for many who are younger.

I'll close with a short excerpt from a recent video, the 9v era means the absolute world to me, maybe too much

 

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, allanp said:

Technic/powered up

PoweredUp is not Technic - it can be used with Technic. Technic are beams, pegs and pins - PoweredUp is used throughout the LEGO universe. A PUp motor is not a Technic motor - as PF motors never were. They had Technic holes, sure, but that was it. Same with PUp. 

1 hour ago, allanp said:

Should I not buy any powered up set knowing that one day they'll just stop working?

9V is not supported anymore since ages - but it still works - as washing machines do. Even with PUp, if you are willing to grab a soldering iron. When you want to have PUp running forever, get enough PUp stuff, keep your current smart device(s) with PUp software installed, or branch to PyBricks, and keep all that in a safe place on your computer. As it is with all software stuff. And with hardware as well.

Hey, we were all laughing at Microsoft when they kept going and going and going with DOS compatibility - and when they officially pulled the plug, all essential things still work ... you can still format a 720k floppy on Win11, provided you kept the hardware. TLG won't do that, for sure. They are good at making plastic pieces, others then assemble. 

No, PUp will not stop working if you take care of things. It is the same with Mindstorms.

This is at least my take.

Best,
Thorsten

[howitzer]

Even for those who don't care about tinkering, the ending software support just means that we won't get any more official updates for the Mindstorms app but it will remain as it is. Perhaps it will have issues or missing features, but as long as there's enough backwards compatibility with the OS, the app can be used.

Hopefully someone will make a new app for controlling the Mindstorms bricks in the future, similar to ControlZ and others.

[kbalage]

12 hours ago, whitepen said:

Yeah i feel like the only good sets for me are Speed Champions, and even those are getting worse

Any proper reasoning for this statement? Speed Champions never ever got this amount of attention with new building techniques, new parts and so on. 

22 hours ago, howitzer said:

I can't see them abandoning programmable Lego platform aimed for the consumer market, and C+ just isn't a replacement for Mindstorms with it's lack of rechargeable battery and only 4 ports. So there must be something new in the works.

I agree, I don't see Powered Up becoming a coding platform on its own. TLG always focuses on sets, they simply wouldn't put much effort in a generic app.

I really hope the developers of Mindstorms are regrouped to work on the next generation of LEGO electronics well in advance, which would be the proper thing to do. But I also hope they are not approaching it only with a coders' mindset, they would desperately need a solution that offers easy to use offline experience as well besides the app-centric coding interface. 

[Unbrickme]

3 hours ago, kbalage said:

they simply wouldn't put much effort in a generic app.

Before the discontinuation of Mindstorms, LEGO spent a ton of effort on the Mindstorms app, updating it regularly. They put in models into the app from fans like myself, constantly added new coding features, and much more! They recently added machine learning, and so much more! To me, it felt like the mindstorms app was receiving very intense development and hard work on the side of the mindstorms team. 

That being said, hopefully the powered up team is just as dedicated. Also I hope they directly consult with some fans and implement their desired features. My point is, LEGO is clearly capable of putting in a lot of effort into an app. Perhaps some of the mindstorms developers will get to work on the powered up app.

[JaBaCaDaBra]

15 minutes ago, Unbrickme said:

some of the mindstorms developers

I really don't think there are multiple teams..
..if it are teams anyway.

One software engineer with a fulltime job can do this on her/his own easily.
Since the coming of this socalled scratch language it's also almost the same software for everything.

Maybe a graphic designer assists the programmer.

Edited October 28, 2022 by JaBaCaDaBra

[kbalage]

9 minutes ago, JaBaCaDaBra said:

I really don't think there are multiple teams..
..if it are teams anyway.

There are multiple teams, and that might be one of the root cause of the challenges. They use a shared hardware platform but develop products based on them somewhat independently, resulting software difference at the end using the very same hubs (e.g. Spike Prime versus Mindstorms apps), and the lack of cross-compatibility.

21 minutes ago, Unbrickme said:

That being said, hopefully the powered up team is just as dedicated. Also I hope they directly consult with some fans and implement their desired features. My point is, LEGO is clearly capable of putting in a lot of effort into an app. Perhaps some of the mindstorms developers will get to work on the powered up app.

It is really not the question of dedication and the will to consult, and it totally doesn't depend on the team members' themselves. The Powered Up team owns the PU app, but they don't really own any related products unlike the Mindstorms team had. TLG apparently focuses effort and resources on products and the directly related applications, like in the case of Mindstorms, or certain Technic sets and their Control+ profiles. The Powered Up app has profiles for a few non-Technic sets that use the hardware, so the team is in charge of these, but otherwise the free coding canvas is not tied directly to anything so that might be the reason why it did not get a priority in the past few years. 

This might change though and I would be really-really happy to see Powered Up getting a boost (Oh wait, it will get Boost soon ), but if I would need to speculate I'd say the Mindstorms team will work on some future products and platforms instead. 

[whitepen]

8 hours ago, kbalage said:

Any proper reasoning for this statement? Speed Champions never ever got this amount of attention with new building techniques, new parts and so on. 

Technic sets are just getting too expensive, Speed Champions are cheap, detailed, use more advanced techniques, don't take up much space, and are easy to mod/improve. Also there are many great mocs and mods of sets.

[kbalage]

3 minutes ago, whitepen said:

Technic sets are just getting too expensive, Speed Champions are cheap, detailed, use more advanced techniques, don't take up much space, and are easy to mod/improve. Also there are many great mocs and mods of sets.

I totally agree with the Speed Champions part, just curious why did you say then after all these positivity that "even those are getting worse" :)  

[whitepen]

9 minutes ago, kbalage said:

I totally agree with the Speed Champions part, just curious why did you say then after all these positivity that "even those are getting worse" :)  

The licensed sets are $25 and sticker quality sucks sometimes. The dual vette pack (for me at least) had horrible stickers

[Ngoc Nguyen]

I see the line about the Mindstorm app being discontinued, and I think about the day when Control+ App is discontinued. We'll be left with a bunch good-for-nothing models we spent a lot to buy.

[howitzer]

24 minutes ago, Ngoc Nguyen said:

I see the line about the Mindstorm app being discontinued, and I think about the day when Control+ App is discontinued. We'll be left with a bunch good-for-nothing models we spent a lot to buy.

Apparently the new Mindstorms didn't sell very well and forced the discontinuation. I believe C+ sets have been selling quite well for the most part, so it probably won't be discontinued for a good while yet. And hopefully if it happens, another compatible app will replace it.

[Toastie]

13 hours ago, Ngoc Nguyen said:

We'll be left with a bunch good-for-nothing models we spent a lot to buy.

Yes, provided that the end of the support of an app is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend. The end of our elaborate plans. The end of everything that stands - as The Doors put it.

As with all hardware and software, they'll eventually die. Motors live rather long, dumb electronics maybe a little less, smart electronics even lesser - and hardware dependent software, like BLE 5.x or software dependent hardware like a BLE5.x server = PUp hub, live as long as folks come up with something new. I had a 2.4 GHz only cell phone from a couple of years ago - well, done with it. 5GHz is the new standard. So out with it. This is how it is today.

And the way out with LEGO? Keep a cell phone or two up and running just for the LEGO hubs. Not the $1000 thingies that can do whatever these do, no, the dead cheap ones, but with BLE5. And keep the apps. Chances are, they will work in the future, but who knows. Make backups. Keep them in a safe place. This is simply how it is with software. And old hardware.

As it was since these "pairs" became mainstream - in the 1980's I'd say. Try to fit a modern 5 1/4" DS/DD floppy into a current Win11 computer equipped with a 2TB SSD. The latter sells for about $50.

12 hours ago, howitzer said:

And hopefully if it happens, another compatible app will replace it.

Sure, could happen. It could also happen that a new pair of actuators (motors, LEDs) + drivers/servers (smart hardware, as were PBricks and now are hubs - these are all the bloody same) plus matching clients as cell phone apps or remotes pop up in LEGO universe. They have done that since the day, electricity was funneled into their sets.

So with all the old Technic sets, C+, City, Boom and Bang: Swap the motors, swap the brain, make appropriate changes to the model, fire up any current client - maybe of the infinite improbability variety, and off you go again!

All is good.

Now back to my beautiful IBM XT from 1985. I cannot get this thing to boot DOS3.3 ... it has 2 x 5 1/4 360k floppy drives. And boots to cassette BASIC - and that one does not know floppies. It also has the cassette interface removed (it is an 5160) but IBM needed, as per contract, to equip their PC's/XT's with BIOS resident MS DOS at that time. So: I can write BASIC programs, but not save or load them . And all I have here is a stupid DELL Precision laptop with 32 gigs of RAM and a graphics card that may even be able to beam stuff ... and some other "modern" computers ... simply because I did not keep selected critical infrastructure 

But there is hope, as in: University storage rooms, which exist because they exist! Some people don't even want to go in there ... You won't believe what people stored over the decades ... maybe I find an "old" ISA mother board, you know, the weird stuff from back then, when there were jumpers and intact Tantalum capacitors ... 

Best,
Thorsten 

Edited October 30, 2022 by Toastie

[dr_spock]

Farewell Mindstorms by dr_spock_888, on Flickr

 

Toastie capacitors seem like a weak point.  Lately I have been replacing electrolytic capacitors in my mid-2000 electronics (TVs, power supplies, etc.) and they work again.  It's not rocket science but they some times do go boom with a puff of smoke like in my NXT. 

LEGO NXT Repair? by dr_spock_888, on Flickr

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, dr_spock said:

Toastie capacitors seem like a weak point.

Well, yes and no - it took me awhile, as Google did >not< (Holy Molly!!!) respond to these "three pin" Tantalum capacitors IBM soldered in (really, I tried sooo hard ), but just finding out that on the IBM board the outer pins are in parallel - so two pin capacitors will do (and yes, there are references to that on the internet :D).

BUT!!! Much more importantly ...

... your diorama with the NXT and the ... cross is so cool. I truly love it.

Man. It is so nice to be here around with you guys ... and particularly with you @dr_spock

All the best,
Thorsten

[Coder Shah]

Well, I'll still be playing with mine.

 

[Moz]

On 10/28/2022 at 12:35 AM, howitzer said:

than there was in the heydey of VIC-20 and C64. Learning is much more accessible

Yep. I remember having a C64 and being the only kid I knew who coded at all. None of the Spectrum or Apple kids did more than school assignments. So I ended up with a couple of adult fronds from the electronics community as my mentors/teachers... but they were more into the C64 as a cool thing to hack. So I had a C64 with variable clock that ran up to about 2.5MHz (from the base 1MHz) and had 4 16kB banks of RAM that I could soft-switch in using spare register bits. Which was handy for copying games once I added a debounced switch to one of those registers :)

These days you buy a kit from one of the Arduino companies if you're a "real geek", or just use a Pi or one of the 200 other sorts of little hardware. I gave one to a 12yo a while ago so they could set up a MineCraft server that ran 24/7, and then we had to plug it in at my work because their parental units like to turn the internet modem off when they're not using it. So now kid uses SSH and a YubiKey to access their server... "back in my day" indeed.

My experience of MindStorms is very untypical - I got the first kits, played with NQC, used an IR dongle on my PC to fiddle with them, then decided that writing code all day then coming home to write more code wasn't making me happy. Unless there was something I couldn't do otherwise I never really got into MindStorms. I sold one unit with a MOC and the other two just sat there until I sold most of my Technic when I was in a nomadic phase of life. Then I deleted the virtual machine that I used to talk to those Mindstorms once I no longer had them. But it was hairy... the official MindStorms serial device plugged into a USB-serial adapter forwarded to the VM.

I think something like PyBricks is the way to go, just because kids are learning that or similar languages already so the whole visual programming stuff isn't necessary. Even the C-like stuff for Arduino seems pretty accessible to the kids I deal with (there's a strong selection effect there, though).

And I keep thinking that there might be a place for an equally modular controller. Make a set of joystick, slider, knob control elements that plug together into a compute/comms/battery module. That would get around the problem of future phones not being backward compatible with the original Control+ Hub. I don't like my chances of using an Android emulator talking to a USB-C BlueTooth 5.1 adapter to run the Control+/Lego Control+/Technic Control+ app (pick a name, Lego, pick one name for the darn app).

[Fuzzock]

This is a real shame to hear, but I guess not overly surprising.

Mindstorms brought me out of my Lego dark ages in the late 90's, and I still love my RCX sets partly for this nostalgia. I have always planned to get back into Mindstorms, but just kind of never got round to it for one reason or another. 

Goodbye fair Mindstorms, and thank you for bringing me back to Lego... 

Ian...

[HydroWorld Outlook]

First of all, TLG's discontinuation of Mindstorms is unwarranted and beyond unacceptable. Even more so than discontinuing the EV3. They knew they were making a good profit off the kits, and they knew that the kits were successfully rivaling other robotics systems, like VEX, for example. Although it was disappointing to watch the EV3 go last year, they still addressed our concerns with the new Robot Inventor System and added the features we asked for, resulting in a huge software improvement. The Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) Daisy-Chaining Features were incredibly useful, and the many models featured in the app were astonishing. So much so, that I even began to consider the Robot Inventor even better than the EV3. I was willing to go along with the change and had plans to work around it. But now, of course, they're throwing away all that work and all that money by using an educational system that isn't even half as useful to replace a robotics system that has served both markets even better than the Spike Prime could do alone. If TLG really wanted an updated robotics system that would replace the current one, why not just come up with one system in one set of neutral colors instead of two with all the features they wanted to begin with and expand from there? That's what they did for the EV3. But no, they wanted bright, annoying colors and more features just for the educational version. Didn't even bother to consider those who might be colorblind, they just did what they wanted. This shows us that LEGO does not care about its customers and what the customers want to see; they just care about their money and what they want. 

So, I for one, am incredibly appalled and disappointed about this, and I strongly believe that we should definitely reach out to the team and explain their concerns. I highly disapprove of the business direction LEGO is choosing to travel in with this. "Other priorities" could be the same excuse they throw at us when they kill off the Technic line too. I know are there might be solutions and workarounds to this, but this sudden discontinuation of the Mindstorms line, without even caring to release a gradual sunset timeline so that people could at least prepare for this, is a complete disservice to the customers and to the robotics market. And knowing that this could just as easily happen to Technic one of these days, I do think we should stop this before that happens. And I for one, am holding off on buying anything else from LEGO until they pull it together. Completely unacceptable, TLG.

Edited November 1, 2022 by HydroWorld Outlook

[dr_spock]

On 10/30/2022 at 5:42 PM, Toastie said:

Well, yes and no - it took me awhile, as Google did >not< (Holy Molly!!!) respond to these "three pin" Tantalum capacitors IBM soldered in (really, I tried sooo hard ), but just finding out that on the IBM board the outer pins are in parallel - so two pin capacitors will do (and yes, there are references to that on the internet :D).

BUT!!! Much more importantly ...

... your diorama with the NXT and the ... cross is so cool. I truly love it.

Man. It is so nice to be here around with you guys ... and particularly with you @dr_spock

All the best,
Thorsten

Thanks.  I had to come up with something for Halloween themed Adult Night at the LEGO Discover Centre.  Weirdly, my EV3 touchless candy machine locked up after one of the guests played with it. I guess it couldn't go on with the LEGO discontinuation. 

Let's continue the old computer discussion in this thread:

 

 

[Toastie]

28 minutes ago, dr_spock said:

Let's continue the old computer discussion in this thread:

Yes - good call. I almost forgot

Best,
Thorsten

[Brickroom7]

I'm very disappointed in this news. I have two 51515 hubs and just got started making things with it. Made this really cool Simon game clone..plays and feels like the actual game. 

(16) Simon game using the LEGO 51515 Robot Inventor hub - YouTube

Should I sell these on ebay and move on?