Engineering student here, NXT still gets used for rapid prototyping when you need to quickly come up with a proof of concept to iterate on. It's also genius because every engineering class is guaranteed to have at least a dozen people who have LEGO building ingrained deeper into their psyche than writing.
I can certainly thank Lego for the Mindstorms sets because it absolutely influenced my decision to pursue engineering. Now I'm an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry and I will always have Mindstorms to thank for this!
Hey Nick, I'm an engineering student at the University of Arkansas. One of my General Engineering courses covers robotics and they use Mindstorm NXT for it. It's also a great gateway into the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League where kids interested in STEM careers can learn about technology and engineering by going through FIRST's programs. It's a full partnership between FIRST and LEGO. I believe they use a version of the Mindstorm tech.
In my high-school in Germany we had about 20 mindstorm sets and one large department store chain (idk how to describe it in English, sorry, it's called galleria Kaufhof) even had a competition where my school participated. The video about it is still here on UA-cam. We had to build and Programm it to collect dropped logo pieces in the children's area.
But because we where in quite an edgy phase I told one of my friends to build a swastika and put it in one of the displays. No one noticed so it even is visible in the video
I remember begging my parents for years to buy me one of the NXT models, and gotta say I had so much fun with it, it also introduced me to programming and for that I'll always be thankful
Like Technic, like CCBS, Mindstorms can never truly die. It’ll always be in the background, not highlighted, not talked about, but there still, doing the unglamorous jobs. Or maybe just the trains, because “WHY DOES [LEGO Mindstorms] COST SO MUCH MONEY???!!!!?”
Aw man, I'm glad you mentioned Spybotics. I remember the Lego website having a really awesome flash game based on that line, where you controlled various computer programs in a turn-based strategy grid.
Okay seriously if somebody can find me a link to a saved version of that on the Way Back Machine or something I will love them forever, that was my first Cyberpunk experience and I never got to the end!
The one Zennistrad2 mentioned is definitely Spybotics: The Nightfall Incident. I can't remember if the Biomedia Project has it or not, I'd bet they do since they kept all the old Lego site stuff like the Johnny Thunder and Alpha Team games, but I do know that you can generally just punch the name into a search engine and it'll show up on a number of flash aggregator websites. Technically stolen content, but hey, its still playable. EDIT: Its available on the website Jayisgames, and they apparently have permission to keep it up. You'll need to download the ancient Macromedia Shockwave to play it though, make sure you have a trusted source.
@@NickonPlanetRipple Oh yeah, Robohunter! I loved that game! Really tricky, but really good. I also remember these flash animations involving the spybotics team where they were sending the robots into a base. They had a guy infiltrating a base and one of the spybots being captured, it was cool! I haven't been able to find it anywhere, though. I hope somebody remembers them and uploads them to UA-cam someday...
It will *turn you on* Mindstorms was always way too out of my price range. I'm a bit of a collector when it comes to LEGO, so if I can buy a full line of sets for the price of one set from another line, I'll go for the full line.
I have almost no experience with Mindstorms, so I don't have much to contribute on this video unfortunately. I was always fond of the look of the original Mindstorms sets looking back. Kind of the same way I look at classic Technic. It was a style of its own that we'll probably never see again. I didn't see that shower commercial before. Never expected Lego to go that way ever. The 90s were truly a weird time. Though whoever narrated the Star Wars commercial at the end of the video, his voice is heavenly.
I ended up finding a Lego Mindstorms RIS 1.5 at an Charity Shop earlier in the year. They were charging $10AU for the set, in its original box. And it even came with a few Spybotics smart bricks and assorted spare parts for good measure. So when you say about the growing expense of Classic Mindstorms sets, with inflation account, it's good that people like me can find something out of the norm in a situation like this.
1:21 that is some deep research to find this commercial, I've never seen that before and I've looked for Lego commercials on UA-cam for a long time. I still can't believe that was actually made. Becomes a little less psycho parody and a little more pervy
NXT absolutely came in clutch for a generation of schools and summer camps, as far as after school and summer programs in teaching kids & teens programming and engineering. Costs became much less of an issue when it's institution's bankrolling acquisitions.
I never really got into or was old enough at the time to have spybotics, but I do remember a friend years ago gave me the purple spybotic one and I loved it. Though it was just the body I got without the remote, I still had fun brainstorming myself what kinds of parts I could add to make it mobile and robotic. What a cool series
I remember one time when me and my friend signed up for a robotics class that used Mindstorms. The class was fun, the best days being the final two, as we got to arm our robots to the teeth with gadgets and put them in an arena to fight to the death (Which was basically when the robots either toppled over and couldn't get back up, were pushed out of the arena, or turned off). We used all the Technic parts available in the class to make weapons for our robot, but we just got bored with them and started tacking on our own Lego parts as weapons, like a Zamor Launcher or a Power Miners saw piece. The robot was really ineffective, mostly since of the “Weapons” we had, only the Zamor Launcher was hooked up to the sensors and motors, and that thing did chip damage. It was still fun watching it fight, though.
surprised you didnt talk about lego's push for mindstorms as educational tools in school. i remember lego funded lego clubs where kids would learn to build and program robots. there were local and national competitions and everything
Software engineer checking in. It's all Mindstorms' fault. Thanks for the run down memory lane Nick! One major correction: Mindstorms is NOT discontinued. It's just an unusually static theme, averaging one release per 7 years.
One of my favorite parts of Mindstorms is how phenomenally open source it is- LEGO documented the crap out of it and released the whole thing. It turns out the NXT had 2 processors - a small AVR which is similar to an Arduino to manage the sensors and motors, and a larger ARM processor similar to what you'd find running a cell phone in 2006. That ARM was programmed using Atmel's SAMBA interface. One of my favorite easter eggs is on page 17 of the Hardware Developer Kit for the NXT: > The NXT is made up of multiple processors and there are some minor requirements that must be upheld for the system to function correctly. > A small startup sequence has been implemented to [coordinate power usage]. The ARM will expect the following message from the AVR within 5 minutes of startup: > "Let's samba nxt arm in arm, (c)LEGO System A/S" So, the NXT has 2 processors, one of which sent the other a love note every time the brick was turned on!
Bro, I wouldn't be so quick to kiss off Mindstorms as 'just another haphazard marketing ploy'. These are very quality toys, and more than that, they're great educational tools. I know of Engineering schools and middle-school STEM classes that have these 'toys' in the classroom. Lego is a great platform for working on electronics, motors, and mechanical autonomy, because Lego lets you build whatever mechanical system you want. Real-world robotics is literally this exact same thing, except with a LOT more mucking-around on the internet shopping more motors, brackets, and aluminum bits. Basically, these things are the condensed version of everything good and cool about robotic engineering. I myself got my personal start in computer programming and mechanical design with the NXT 2.0, after wanting one of the original mindstorms for many years. I graduate with a Mechanical Engineering degree in the Spring, and these things were the biggest tool in getting me started doing what I love.
@@NickonPlanetRipple I might've been reading too much into it. But around the opening you were poking fun at the growing need to keep kids entertained with cheap electronics, and implying that Mindstorms was just Lego's answer to supplying kids with brainless entertainment. Which may have a small bit of accuracy, but I think is missing the larger picture of what these sets are for. Also, I feel really bad that my first comment on your channel would be a bad one, because I actually seriously love your material. (I'm not quite sure how I found you here, considering we first met on DeviantArt a few years back. I liked your Metroid comics.) And I really enjoy your insights into the history of Lego. Gives a lot of story and depth to those few odd sets I have, or that one picture I remember seeing in a catalogue at one point. Seriously man, keep up the good work.
He was just saying that visually, MindStorms used to look a lot crazier before the NXT line. Admittedly, growing up with MindStorms 2.0, the color scheme was all over the place. That turquoise and purple stuff was left over from the 90s, and combining that with yellow and blue made it even weirder.
Yep, I played with these things as a kid, even had two of the Spybots, and today I am a computer engineer. So they definitely inspired a love of technology in many people.
More than anything this series has reminded me of the lost hours I spent pouring over lego catelogs as a kid, and the endless adventures I had with it's various themes. Keep up the amazing work, Nick!
I feel like you undersold the impact Mindstorm had. It was basically the first of it's kind, the first toy to teach kids about robotics and programming and for many kids it was their first introduction into programming. In Europe the First Lego League became incredibly popular, it's an offshoot of the First robotics competition where you use NXT to build and program robots made to complete certain tasks and my class participated in it a few years in a row. The league also included other more theoretical segments where you had to come up with solutions for current day challenges, while it's all of course just dreamed up stuff it really got you thinking about finding engineering solutions to these problems. LEGO would also provide educational sets for schools to use which were heavily discounted so Mindstorm became a great teaching aide. Mindstorm had a huge impact in many ways and was incredibly forward thinking for it's time and while it was expensive I think it's way better value for your money than basically any other set ever made because it offers you so much potential, I got a set and I've used it way more than any other and I still have fun using it today just because the tools you're provided give you such endless possibilities. Not to mention you can even install your own software on it and get even more potential out of it. It is definitely my top LEGO line because more than any others it captures the core LEGO ideas of using it how you want and making of it what you want.
I had the red and purple Spybots. It always seemed like a fun one, and I loved the little animations the software had for the different missions. Plus, there was a pretty fun online game tied into it as well. I would love to see some sort of spiritual successor to that line crop up someday.
I grew up during Mindstorms' sleek white and grey era, and at the time those sets were way too expensive for my family. However, my dad got me one of the original blue sets from Craig's List. Looking back I'm pretty sure it was the Insectoids one, but at the time I had no idea Insectoids even existed so I didn't get the connection. I had so much fun with that thing even though from what I remember the programming potential was pretty limited. Now I kind of want to find it again, even though it probably costs a fortune now XD
Even though I never owned a Mindstorms set, the 2006 version was something I really wanted as a kid. I never got the chance to own one seeing as how they were too expensive, but if I ever got the chance to play with one, I'd do it.
God the Nostalgia buzz I got from this. I do admit I remember Mindstorms back in the day and playing games online like robohunter and stormrunner. Mindstorms always kind of spooked me out as a child, but in a good way, it will always have a special place in my heart right next to bionicle (who I still love today)
Holy Flip, I remeber the Spybotics, I always loved thier designs, especialy the red one (I like tanks) and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be hunting them down soon after watching this
In highschool I competed in a national competition called the First LEGO League where you built task managing robots with Mindstorm 2.0 stuff. It was a blast
One summer in middle school, I went to a camp that used the NXT models to teach us the basics of robotics. My parents bought me an NXT kit of my own later, maybe for Christmas, and I had some fun with it for a few months. I found it pretty limited, though, mainly because you could only plug three motors into the computer at once. For instance, if you spent the necessary two motors to give a robot full two-dimensional movement, you only had one motor left for everything else. For me, Mindstorms fell by the wayside before long in favor of my game development hobby.
As someone who's only known of Mindstorm's existence through Lego catalogues and got introduced to it when it had that more modern look, seeing the crazy and vibrant colors it started with is almost bizarre. Though I guess that's how almost all of Lego's been for me the last few months. From that one Bionicle figure I bought back in 2009 cause it looked cool apparently having some amazingly deep lore associated with it to some barely significant polybag I had ages ago being part of a Lego theme inspired by Japanese Mecha anime, Lego's history has surprised and blown me away quite a few times lately.
Combining the dragon with the robot sets just makes it look like something the Daleks or Cybermen have gotten their hands (or plungers) on. Artificial bits coming out every which way on a beast that's now in constant pain. Makes you wince.
If you ever feel toys are dying, just remember: When you (provided you did had toys) want to relive your childhood, you simply get an old toy out, or try to buy one you had; let it be something retro from the early 2000's -90's or 80's, somethimg somewhat older or even antique like a wind-up toy, you can just simply get it, you can go buy it, search for it on bricklink, ebay or any other website and simply get it again. However, today's kids will never be able to do that with old apps, hell not even today! Apps change so much from Month to MONTH, an app can change from an open level fun game, to a microtransaction, ad infested nightmare that only lets you advance if you watch 200 ads, in question of mere months, and those apps who become uotdated or old become obsolete, kids in the future will NEVER be able to relive those phone or computer games, they will be gone, and while you may argue some games will be saved or will stay as they are, much won't. So yeah, you can still buy your He-Man, Jurassic Park, Max Steel, Bionicle or whatever you want, but your kids won't be able to replay their games unless it's a super popular one or are willing to spend more time on microtransactions and watch more ads than play the game.
This is the same reason I like buying physical copies of games and movies, but I never thought of how this concept applies to children's entertainment. It is nice to know that there will likely always be some way to re-experience my favorite childhood toys.
*raises hand* I was one of those kids who played with this, and then got into computer science, and now work at a company that makes robots. The lab I did my master's in had about 12 of the old v1.5 Mindstorms sets (same as the original, but with a USB cable for the IR programming tower instead of RS232) on a shelf leftover from old research projects. Even today there are still open-source compilers that let you program your old Mindstorms sets using C and similar programming languages.
Managed to pick up a Spybotics kit (the green one) off of eBay a few years ago for a good price. It's definitely harder to get the hang of programming, but doesn't have to be programmed in order to have fun with it. The controller has a default setting thing that just allows you to control it like you'd expect and R/C car to be controlled. Mostly just forwards and backwards, but most of the sets have a function that operates depending on if the wheels/motors are spinning forwards or backwards. The green one (pretty sure it's called Technojaw), for example, has the claw on the front. When it's driving forwards, the claw opens, and it then closes when it starts going in reverse. If someone is looking into getting one of these nowadays (and want to program it), be sure to get a serial port to USB adapter (unless you have an old computer with a serial port that works) and a CD drive of some kind.
Funny how the Spybotics lineup reminds me of the old candy-colored Macs back in the day, and then the evolution to Mindstorms Next ends up, as you point out, looking something more like the sleek Apple aesthetic. Cool parallel, considering someone in some article I read once called LEGO the Apple of toy industry and design.
I remember getting the EV3 kit, though I ended up never making many actual robots and took the parts to make bionicle things. I'd never heard of spybotics before, so thanks for introducing me to that. A bit odd to not talk about Lego robotics competitions though, since that's what I feel most of the public would think about when they hear 'Lego Robots'
I remember using the EV3-s in middle school. Even went to a competition whit a descent result. They also happened to have one of the old RCX setts laying around in storage, witch took me by surprise, since they are very rare in my country. I managed to convince my computer class teacher to let me take the sett home, so that i could try to make it function. Finding the correct programs and drivers for it was a real challenge, but whit the help of my brother, we eventually succeeded. Programing it was an interesting experience. It felt nothing like the NXT i own or the EV3 i used in class. Still, it wasn't ridiculously complicated, so i figured most of it out. In fact the whole thing was a completely different animal than the new ones. I even have a photo of the RCX and my NXT together, both in their humanoid configurations. When i eventually returned it to school, along whit the software needed to operate it, i tried to make an offer to buy the machine of them (since it was far outdated compared to the EV3-s they were using),but sadly they refused. The RCX currently remains at my former middle school and i sincerely hope they find a good use for it.
Actually, my middle-school Robotics class made use of the NXT series as our robots, and they were quite unique compared to other robot kits. While I haven’t gone on to be an engineer, I did continue coding with Video Game Development and I’m currently learning the ropes of 3D animation.
i remember we had those at high school in germany, was part of the it class to learn about the gap between program and excecution, was also used in a lot of youth research programs, these things were really versatile
None of my schools got Mindstorms. I got a classic set and the 1st NXT model. Building robots was easy. Programming them was hell because to this day, I can't apply measurements to real life. Ask me the distance from us to that flagpole and I'll black out. I enjoyed Spybots more because they were all I had for Lego RC cars, just with programmable games. But yes. Classic Mindstorms had more charm.
I got the Robotics Invention System (1.5) in 2000. The optical sensor felt like magic at the time. And the flowchart style of visual programming going from packaged big dark green blocks for beginners to the "minor" light green ones allowed for insane control. You even had tutorial teaching you logic (loops, wait for, if else, etc). It was actually surprisingly great value that you got for those 100$. Only problem was that the damned RCX, loaded with 6 AA batteries, was heavy as heck, and guzzled amps for a pasttime.
You know, I seem to remember these online games and flash animations involving Spybotics. There was the satellite hacker game, The Nightfall Incident, and several flash animations including one where a guy almost got disintegrated by lasers and a Spybot got trapped somewhere. I remember these because they were so dark, but very interesting and really memorable to me. I cant find them anywhere, though.
Nxt was the standard issue for my Lego robotics competitions. But then these madmen came in and beat everyone with an RXT set! Everyone else had on team t-shirts but these guys all had black suits and dyed hair straight out of some cyberpunk hackers. Always remember them dudes.
I love the aesthetic of the first run of RCX Mindstorms kits, there's a certain charm to it that the NXT and EV3 kits don't have. Hence why I (and only I it seems) collect the RCX era kits. Great episode! I guess you could say Mindstorms can TURN ME O.. ok no I'm not making that joke.
Bahahaha when I was a kid my parents bought Mindstorm for my brother and stuck me with the uncanny valley *girl* sets because they were deeply in denial about which kid was the smart one. RCX was the first programming language I ever learned...You could do a surprising amount with Mindstorm, especially if your dad was a software engineer lol Edit: WOW those commercials were incredibly horny! We weren't allowed to watch a lot of TV as kids so I had no idea
A couple of important notes: 1. Mindstorms v3 is still available from lego in 2019, meaning the brand isn't dead 2. It's modern incarnations are primarily designed for school robotics classes 3. Boost is designed for earlier grades and runs alongside mindstorms Before i dropped out i was actually in a class that used a copycat of mindstorms. Not a bootleg, as it was high quality and wasn't compatible with lego, but it used it's general ideas and was fully customizable. A lot cheaper than the real thing but worked just as well, assuming you didn't want to make it look pretty. Think if mindstorms had exclusively technic beams instead of bricks, and was built on plates that were super wide versions of beams
you can program those using either the premade block "language" that visualizes the basics of programming rather well but imo the real value comes from just how far you can take these as an educational tool be it by learning yourself or by being taught. my middle school had an after school club with these where we were taught some version of C to code these with
I'm surprised you didn't at least mention FIRST Lego League competitions, aka the whole reason Mindstorms continued as long as it did. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an organization run by Dean Kamen, the guy who invented, of all things, the segway. It focuses on organizing robotics competitions all around the world. Originally, they stuck to just big metal robots in FIRST Robotics Competition events. Upon seeing the NXT Mindstorms though, the organizer created a separate division of FIRST called FIRST Lego League for late elementary schoolers to middle schoolers to compete in their own events. Having been a part of one of these teams, I can confirm that yes, many, many kids DID go on to be engineers because of Mindstorms, and many more are still on their way. It's a great way to teach engineering concepts like torque, stability, and consistency through a familiar medium, as well as programming through their simple block programming language. Mindstorms has done an incredible amount for the robotics community as a whole. Heck, their last hoorah with all the edgy designs specifically added requested sensors and features that we had been asking for for years, like a color sensor to replace the dodgy light sensors we had to put up with. It's one of the most unique communities that Lego has had a part in creating and it deserves more love tbh.
I never had the Star Wars stuff, but RIS 2.0 and Vision Command were instrumental in shaping my love of robotics... even if my dreams of being an engineer were cut short due to my terrible luck at college level Physics. Ah, oh well, I still look for new ways to get creative with old Mindstorms. Someone did a Toa Mata band with it and now I want to as well! Also, look up Mindstorms Bridge Layer and be amazed!
I remember my mum giving me a mind storm set when i was a kits and it set sat aside until my highschool started a robotics class. it took our sets till half way through that year to arrive if i remember correctly but then there was my showed up day one with a completed mindstorm robot. only to be later shown that we were going to be using nxt
I still have the R2-D2 kit fully assembled. And Spybots were the shit back then, the violet one was probaply the best driving wise, though the blue was always my favourite.
Engineering student here, NXT still gets used for rapid prototyping when you need to quickly come up with a proof of concept to iterate on.
It's also genius because every engineering class is guaranteed to have at least a dozen people who have LEGO building ingrained deeper into their psyche than writing.
I can certainly thank Lego for the Mindstorms sets because it absolutely influenced my decision to pursue engineering. Now I'm an electrical engineer in the aerospace industry and I will always have Mindstorms to thank for this!
Getting to hear stories like this now and then makes me so glad I did this episode.
Hey Nick, I'm an engineering student at the University of Arkansas. One of my General Engineering courses covers robotics and they use Mindstorm NXT for it. It's also a great gateway into the FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Lego League where kids interested in STEM careers can learn about technology and engineering by going through FIRST's programs. It's a full partnership between FIRST and LEGO. I believe they use a version of the Mindstorm tech.
In my high-school in Germany we had about 20 mindstorm sets and one large department store chain (idk how to describe it in English, sorry, it's called galleria Kaufhof) even had a competition where my school participated. The video about it is still here on UA-cam. We had to build and Programm it to collect dropped logo pieces in the children's area.
But because we where in quite an edgy phase I told one of my friends to build a swastika and put it in one of the displays. No one noticed so it even is visible in the video
ua-cam.com/video/qAFXM0TYQ5g/v-deo.html
At 6:06 it is visible on the table in the case with all the bricks, it's made of these light brown pieces
@@spassstoepsel3398 impressive how you got away with that. I tried doing something similar in a related project and also did get away with it
@Maximillium NOWAK lol. a teacher not figuring out you needed to have a bluetooth functioning device to operate them.
@Maximillium NOWAK wait there were 80's?
Nevermind
I remember begging my parents for years to buy me one of the NXT models, and gotta say I had so much fun with it, it also introduced me to programming and for that I'll always be thankful
This video T U R N E D M E O N
hey i was going to make that comment
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Didn't know you felt that way about technic
"You can make an AT AT...an AAAT" Idk I found this very funny. Good video as always.
AAT~
XD
Like Technic, like CCBS, Mindstorms can never truly die. It’ll always be in the background, not highlighted, not talked about, but there still, doing the unglamorous jobs. Or maybe just the trains, because “WHY DOES [LEGO Mindstorms] COST SO MUCH MONEY???!!!!?”
Aw man, I'm glad you mentioned Spybotics. I remember the Lego website having a really awesome flash game based on that line, where you controlled various computer programs in a turn-based strategy grid.
I remember one where you drive the vehicles around a town at night, going through small spaces and eluding the tall, lumbering humans.
Okay seriously if somebody can find me a link to a saved version of that on the Way Back Machine or something I will love them forever, that was my first Cyberpunk experience and I never got to the end!
The one Zennistrad2 mentioned is definitely Spybotics: The Nightfall Incident. I can't remember if the Biomedia Project has it or not, I'd bet they do since they kept all the old Lego site stuff like the Johnny Thunder and Alpha Team games, but I do know that you can generally just punch the name into a search engine and it'll show up on a number of flash aggregator websites. Technically stolen content, but hey, its still playable.
EDIT: Its available on the website Jayisgames, and they apparently have permission to keep it up. You'll need to download the ancient Macromedia Shockwave to play it though, make sure you have a trusted source.
@@NickonPlanetRipple That was probably Robothunter 2 ua-cam.com/video/nl-ohEjYxxE/v-deo.html
@@NickonPlanetRipple Oh yeah, Robohunter! I loved that game! Really tricky, but really good. I also remember these flash animations involving the spybotics team where they were sending the robots into a base. They had a guy infiltrating a base and one of the spybots being captured, it was cool! I haven't been able to find it anywhere, though. I hope somebody remembers them and uploads them to UA-cam someday...
It will *turn you on*
Mindstorms was always way too out of my price range. I'm a bit of a collector when it comes to LEGO, so if I can buy a full line of sets for the price of one set from another line, I'll go for the full line.
I have literally never heard of Spybotics and I thought I had seen it all. What a weird feeling.
I like the cockpit pieces of Spybotics. They remind me of Galidor or Power Rangers Time Force.
The best part about the Spybots line were the flash games, spent hours playing those without making any progress on school nights!
Appreciate the Sonic Adventure music in the background.
Adore that soundtrack.
*obligatory sonic shorts comment*
SoNiC aDvEnTuRe
I have almost no experience with Mindstorms, so I don't have much to contribute on this video unfortunately. I was always fond of the look of the original Mindstorms sets looking back. Kind of the same way I look at classic Technic. It was a style of its own that we'll probably never see again.
I didn't see that shower commercial before. Never expected Lego to go that way ever. The 90s were truly a weird time. Though whoever narrated the Star Wars commercial at the end of the video, his voice is heavenly.
I ended up finding a Lego Mindstorms RIS 1.5 at an Charity Shop earlier in the year. They were charging $10AU for the set, in its original box. And it even came with a few Spybotics smart bricks and assorted spare parts for good measure. So when you say about the growing expense of Classic Mindstorms sets, with inflation account, it's good that people like me can find something out of the norm in a situation like this.
I can confirm i am a mech eng now because of playing with these in First Lego League back in the day with mindstorms 2.0...
1:21 that is some deep research to find this commercial, I've never seen that before and I've looked for Lego commercials on UA-cam for a long time. I still can't believe that was actually made. Becomes a little less psycho parody and a little more pervy
There's always another layer of weird to peel back from lego's past.
Followed by one of my favorite Lego commercials 1:36 again they had to know this was a euphemism
NXT absolutely came in clutch for a generation of schools and summer camps, as far as after school and summer programs in teaching kids & teens programming and engineering.
Costs became much less of an issue when it's institution's bankrolling acquisitions.
I never really got into or was old enough at the time to have spybotics, but I do remember a friend years ago gave me the purple spybotic one and I loved it. Though it was just the body I got without the remote, I still had fun brainstorming myself what kinds of parts I could add to make it mobile and robotic. What a cool series
This was the funniest Lego rewind yet. Love the vids
Watch the old technic that one is so funny
I remember one time when me and my friend signed up for a robotics class that used Mindstorms. The class was fun, the best days being the final two, as we got to arm our robots to the teeth with gadgets and put them in an arena to fight to the death (Which was basically when the robots either toppled over and couldn't get back up, were pushed out of the arena, or turned off). We used all the Technic parts available in the class to make weapons for our robot, but we just got bored with them and started tacking on our own Lego parts as weapons, like a Zamor Launcher or a Power Miners saw piece. The robot was really ineffective, mostly since of the “Weapons” we had, only the Zamor Launcher was hooked up to the sensors and motors, and that thing did chip damage. It was still fun watching it fight, though.
surprised you didnt talk about lego's push for mindstorms as educational tools in school. i remember lego funded lego clubs where kids would learn to build and program robots. there were local and national competitions and everything
Software engineer checking in. It's all Mindstorms' fault. Thanks for the run down memory lane Nick! One major correction: Mindstorms is NOT discontinued. It's just an unusually static theme, averaging one release per 7 years.
One of my favorite parts of Mindstorms is how phenomenally open source it is- LEGO documented the crap out of it
and released the whole thing.
It turns out the NXT had 2 processors - a small AVR which is similar to an Arduino to manage the sensors and motors, and a
larger ARM processor similar to what you'd find running a cell phone in 2006. That ARM was programmed using Atmel's SAMBA interface.
One of my favorite easter eggs is on page 17 of the Hardware Developer Kit for the NXT:
> The NXT is made up of multiple processors and there are some minor requirements that must be upheld for the system to function correctly.
> A small startup sequence has been implemented to [coordinate power usage]. The ARM will expect the following message from the AVR within 5 minutes of startup:
> "Let's samba nxt arm in arm, (c)LEGO System A/S"
So, the NXT has 2 processors, one of which sent the other a love note every time the brick was turned on!
Bro, I wouldn't be so quick to kiss off Mindstorms as 'just another haphazard marketing ploy'. These are very quality toys, and more than that, they're great educational tools. I know of Engineering schools and middle-school STEM classes that have these 'toys' in the classroom. Lego is a great platform for working on electronics, motors, and mechanical autonomy, because Lego lets you build whatever mechanical system you want. Real-world robotics is literally this exact same thing, except with a LOT more mucking-around on the internet shopping more motors, brackets, and aluminum bits. Basically, these things are the condensed version of everything good and cool about robotic engineering.
I myself got my personal start in computer programming and mechanical design with the NXT 2.0, after wanting one of the original mindstorms for many years. I graduate with a Mechanical Engineering degree in the Spring, and these things were the biggest tool in getting me started doing what I love.
Cody Martinson where did that come from? You think I’m dismissing it?
@@NickonPlanetRipple I might've been reading too much into it. But around the opening you were poking fun at the growing need to keep kids entertained with cheap electronics, and implying that Mindstorms was just Lego's answer to supplying kids with brainless entertainment. Which may have a small bit of accuracy, but I think is missing the larger picture of what these sets are for.
Also, I feel really bad that my first comment on your channel would be a bad one, because I actually seriously love your material. (I'm not quite sure how I found you here, considering we first met on DeviantArt a few years back. I liked your Metroid comics.) And I really enjoy your insights into the history of Lego. Gives a lot of story and depth to those few odd sets I have, or that one picture I remember seeing in a catalogue at one point. Seriously man, keep up the good work.
@@codymartinson9518 I was trying to say Mindstorms is better than that. And thanks.
He was just saying that visually, MindStorms used to look a lot crazier before the NXT line. Admittedly, growing up with MindStorms 2.0, the color scheme was all over the place. That turquoise and purple stuff was left over from the 90s, and combining that with yellow and blue made it even weirder.
The last mindstorms, the EV3 was acrually good. It has a lot of features, and its easy to make a lot of things with it.
Yep, I played with these things as a kid, even had two of the Spybots, and today I am a computer engineer. So they definitely inspired a love of technology in many people.
More than anything this series has reminded me of the lost hours I spent pouring over lego catelogs as a kid, and the endless adventures I had with it's various themes. Keep up the amazing work, Nick!
I feel like you undersold the impact Mindstorm had. It was basically the first of it's kind, the first toy to teach kids about robotics and programming and for many kids it was their first introduction into programming. In Europe the First Lego League became incredibly popular, it's an offshoot of the First robotics competition where you use NXT to build and program robots made to complete certain tasks and my class participated in it a few years in a row. The league also included other more theoretical segments where you had to come up with solutions for current day challenges, while it's all of course just dreamed up stuff it really got you thinking about finding engineering solutions to these problems. LEGO would also provide educational sets for schools to use which were heavily discounted so Mindstorm became a great teaching aide. Mindstorm had a huge impact in many ways and was incredibly forward thinking for it's time and while it was expensive I think it's way better value for your money than basically any other set ever made because it offers you so much potential, I got a set and I've used it way more than any other and I still have fun using it today just because the tools you're provided give you such endless possibilities. Not to mention you can even install your own software on it and get even more potential out of it. It is definitely my top LEGO line because more than any others it captures the core LEGO ideas of using it how you want and making of it what you want.
Mindstorms returned
I forged a high grade on a french exam to get my parents to buy me a Mindstorms NXT.
I definitely didn't play enough with it to justify how I got it.
I had the red and purple Spybots. It always seemed like a fun one, and I loved the little animations the software had for the different missions. Plus, there was a pretty fun online game tied into it as well. I would love to see some sort of spiritual successor to that line crop up someday.
It's crazy that everyone I knew who owned one of these grew up to a condescending adult
So glad it's back
It's good to have You on UA-cam
I'm on a rewatch of all of Lego Rewind and I just wanted to say I love your sense of humor man
Considering some of the bad jokes in this episode, that means a lot.
@@NickonPlanetRipple Back on another pilgrimage and this still holds true. I'm a sucker for bad jokes lmao
Nick:mindstorms proper is over
The new mindstorms set: Hello >:)
I guess I'm one of the few people who remembers the mindstorm r2d2
same
I grew up during Mindstorms' sleek white and grey era, and at the time those sets were way too expensive for my family. However, my dad got me one of the original blue sets from Craig's List. Looking back I'm pretty sure it was the Insectoids one, but at the time I had no idea Insectoids even existed so I didn't get the connection. I had so much fun with that thing even though from what I remember the programming potential was pretty limited. Now I kind of want to find it again, even though it probably costs a fortune now XD
NXT was a mainstay at summer camps when I was a kid
We use Mindstorms (EV3) for education at my school, so it has a special place for me.
Even though I never owned a Mindstorms set, the 2006 version was something I really wanted as a kid. I never got the chance to own one seeing as how they were too expensive, but if I ever got the chance to play with one, I'd do it.
And... now its over. This Lego theme is older than me and its just over. Without a warning That's so weird.
I remember watching Zoom on PBS and they mentioned making robots out of Legos. I guess they referred to Mindstorms
I had my first contact with computers through 2006s mindstorms.
Now I'm an engineer. It definitely awakened something in me.
God the Nostalgia buzz I got from this. I do admit I remember Mindstorms back in the day and playing games online like robohunter and stormrunner. Mindstorms always kind of spooked me out as a child, but in a good way, it will always have a special place in my heart right next to bionicle (who I still love today)
I actually grew up with this theme as a kid and like you we went inti the deeper history of the theme.
Holy Flip, I remeber the Spybotics, I always loved thier designs, especialy the red one (I like tanks) and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna be hunting them down soon after watching this
In highschool I competed in a national competition called the First LEGO League where you built task managing robots with Mindstorm 2.0 stuff. It was a blast
I want to say thanks for helping me see toy videos in a new light.
One summer in middle school, I went to a camp that used the NXT models to teach us the basics of robotics. My parents bought me an NXT kit of my own later, maybe for Christmas, and I had some fun with it for a few months. I found it pretty limited, though, mainly because you could only plug three motors into the computer at once. For instance, if you spent the necessary two motors to give a robot full two-dimensional movement, you only had one motor left for everything else. For me, Mindstorms fell by the wayside before long in favor of my game development hobby.
Another great rewind! One of my favorite series
As someone who's only known of Mindstorm's existence through Lego catalogues and got introduced to it when it had that more modern look, seeing the crazy and vibrant colors it started with is almost bizarre.
Though I guess that's how almost all of Lego's been for me the last few months. From that one Bionicle figure I bought back in 2009 cause it looked cool apparently having some amazingly deep lore associated with it to some barely significant polybag I had ages ago being part of a Lego theme inspired by Japanese Mecha anime, Lego's history has surprised and blown me away quite a few times lately.
i can tell you had lots of fun recording that :D
and goddamn that outro voice
he could narrate anything with that voice
mhmmm
T U R N E D
O N
Combining the dragon with the robot sets just makes it look like something the Daleks or Cybermen have gotten their hands (or plungers) on. Artificial bits coming out every which way on a beast that's now in constant pain.
Makes you wince.
If you ever feel toys are dying, just remember:
When you (provided you did had toys) want to relive your childhood, you simply get an old toy out, or try to buy one you had; let it be something retro from the early 2000's -90's or 80's, somethimg somewhat older or even antique like a wind-up toy, you can just simply get it, you can go buy it, search for it on bricklink, ebay or any other website and simply get it again.
However, today's kids will never be able to do that with old apps, hell not even today! Apps change so much from Month to MONTH, an app can change from an open level fun game, to a microtransaction, ad infested nightmare that only lets you advance if you watch 200 ads, in question of mere months, and those apps who become uotdated or old become obsolete, kids in the future will NEVER be able to relive those phone or computer games, they will be gone, and while you may argue some games will be saved or will stay as they are, much won't.
So yeah, you can still buy your He-Man, Jurassic Park, Max Steel, Bionicle or whatever you want, but your kids won't be able to replay their games unless it's a super popular one or are willing to spend more time on microtransactions and watch more ads than play the game.
This is the same reason I like buying physical copies of games and movies, but I never thought of how this concept applies to children's entertainment. It is nice to know that there will likely always be some way to re-experience my favorite childhood toys.
@@kumatorahaltmanndreemurr
It is right!
*raises hand* I was one of those kids who played with this, and then got into computer science, and now work at a company that makes robots. The lab I did my master's in had about 12 of the old v1.5 Mindstorms sets (same as the original, but with a USB cable for the IR programming tower instead of RS232) on a shelf leftover from old research projects. Even today there are still open-source compilers that let you program your old Mindstorms sets using C and similar programming languages.
Mindstorms is actually back now
mindstorms ius back!
Managed to pick up a Spybotics kit (the green one) off of eBay a few years ago for a good price. It's definitely harder to get the hang of programming, but doesn't have to be programmed in order to have fun with it. The controller has a default setting thing that just allows you to control it like you'd expect and R/C car to be controlled. Mostly just forwards and backwards, but most of the sets have a function that operates depending on if the wheels/motors are spinning forwards or backwards. The green one (pretty sure it's called Technojaw), for example, has the claw on the front. When it's driving forwards, the claw opens, and it then closes when it starts going in reverse.
If someone is looking into getting one of these nowadays (and want to program it), be sure to get a serial port to USB adapter (unless you have an old computer with a serial port that works) and a CD drive of some kind.
Funny how the Spybotics lineup reminds me of the old candy-colored Macs back in the day, and then the evolution to Mindstorms Next ends up, as you point out, looking something more like the sleek Apple aesthetic.
Cool parallel, considering someone in some article I read once called LEGO the Apple of toy industry and design.
I remember getting the EV3 kit, though I ended up never making many actual robots and took the parts to make bionicle things. I'd never heard of spybotics before, so thanks for introducing me to that. A bit odd to not talk about Lego robotics competitions though, since that's what I feel most of the public would think about when they hear 'Lego Robots'
Studio MindVolt I... forgot.
@@NickonPlanetRipple Happens to everyone, and I guess I just wrote some of the season recap for you.
Your welcome... 😜
I actually had 2 engineering classes that used these things. I’m glad to see these getting some attention.
digging the sanic music in the background for this one
I remember using the EV3-s in middle school. Even went to a competition whit a descent result. They also happened to have one of the old RCX setts laying around in storage, witch took me by surprise, since they are very rare in my country. I managed to convince my computer class teacher to let me take the sett home, so that i could try to make it function. Finding the correct programs and drivers for it was a real challenge, but whit the help of my brother, we eventually succeeded. Programing it was an interesting experience. It felt nothing like the NXT i own or the EV3 i used in class. Still, it wasn't ridiculously complicated, so i figured most of it out. In fact the whole thing was a completely different animal than the new ones. I even have a photo of the RCX and my NXT together, both in their humanoid configurations.
When i eventually returned it to school, along whit the software needed to operate it, i tried to make an offer to buy the machine of them (since it was far outdated compared to the EV3-s they were using),but sadly they refused.
The RCX currently remains at my former middle school and i sincerely hope they find a good use for it.
Actually, my middle-school Robotics class made use of the NXT series as our robots, and they were quite unique compared to other robot kits. While I haven’t gone on to be an engineer, I did continue coding with Video Game Development and I’m currently learning the ropes of 3D animation.
Mindstorms is comming back!
i remember we had those at high school in germany, was part of the it class to learn about the gap between program and excecution, was also used in a lot of youth research programs, these things were really versatile
None of my schools got Mindstorms. I got a classic set and the 1st NXT model. Building robots was easy. Programming them was hell because to this day, I can't apply measurements to real life. Ask me the distance from us to that flagpole and I'll black out.
I enjoyed Spybots more because they were all I had for Lego RC cars, just with programmable games.
But yes. Classic Mindstorms had more charm.
3:29 Nick: Call Lego 'Legos'
"So you have chosen death"
I got the Robotics Invention System (1.5) in 2000. The optical sensor felt like magic at the time. And the flowchart style of visual programming going from packaged big dark green blocks for beginners to the "minor" light green ones allowed for insane control.
You even had tutorial teaching you logic (loops, wait for, if else, etc).
It was actually surprisingly great value that you got for those 100$.
Only problem was that the damned RCX, loaded with 6 AA batteries, was heavy as heck, and guzzled amps for a pasttime.
I remember spybots, and also the spybots game on the lego website, all those fun flash games. fun times.
0:19-1:09 that’s too real man
Huh?
Can you do a rewind for the old ninja theme?
My middle school used this in one of our classes it was fun to see what you could do with it
This was great, keep it up.
I loved the spybotics especially the green ones
You know, I seem to remember these online games and flash animations involving Spybotics. There was the satellite hacker game, The Nightfall Incident, and several flash animations including one where a guy almost got disintegrated by lasers and a Spybot got trapped somewhere. I remember these because they were so dark, but very interesting and really memorable to me. I cant find them anywhere, though.
Nxt was the standard issue for my Lego robotics competitions. But then these madmen came in and beat everyone with an RXT set! Everyone else had on team t-shirts but these guys all had black suits and dyed hair straight out of some cyberpunk hackers. Always remember them dudes.
I've waited a long time for this...
The wait was worth it.
Having Roblox in a Lego Rewind episode reminds me of the old Hero Factory sponsored events they used to held...
Wait, WHAT? Holy cow, I didn't know about that.
ua-cam.com/video/ZxyQ2G6DkoU/v-deo.html
I always wanted the Dinosaur and Star Wars builds. But they were So expensive
That Boost guitar(!) look's like an actual pro-custom job.. OK, and Stormbringer's definitely collector material
My memories of mindstorm revolve around when We messed around with mindstorm in my computing course
I love the aesthetic of the first run of RCX Mindstorms kits, there's a certain charm to it that the NXT and EV3 kits don't have. Hence why I (and only I it seems) collect the RCX era kits. Great episode!
I guess you could say Mindstorms can TURN ME O.. ok no I'm not making that joke.
Bahahaha when I was a kid my parents bought Mindstorm for my brother and stuck me with the uncanny valley *girl* sets because they were deeply in denial about which kid was the smart one. RCX was the first programming language I ever learned...You could do a surprising amount with Mindstorm, especially if your dad was a software engineer lol
Edit: WOW those commercials were incredibly horny! We weren't allowed to watch a lot of TV as kids so I had no idea
The 90s were so weird
A couple of important notes:
1. Mindstorms v3 is still available from lego in 2019, meaning the brand isn't dead
2. It's modern incarnations are primarily designed for school robotics classes
3. Boost is designed for earlier grades and runs alongside mindstorms
Before i dropped out i was actually in a class that used a copycat of mindstorms. Not a bootleg, as it was high quality and wasn't compatible with lego, but it used it's general ideas and was fully customizable. A lot cheaper than the real thing but worked just as well, assuming you didn't want to make it look pretty. Think if mindstorms had exclusively technic beams instead of bricks, and was built on plates that were super wide versions of beams
The dark side developers kit looks cool. I never saw it though because it was always just the pictures of the boxes.
you can program those using either the premade block "language" that visualizes the basics of programming rather well but imo the real value comes from just how far you can take these as an educational tool be it by learning yourself or by being taught.
my middle school had an after school club with these where we were taught some version of C to code these with
Oooohh, a new Nick on Planet Ripple Video
I'm kind of surprised you didn't mention First Lego League. That yearly competition was and is a huge part of mindstorm's history.
Spybotics was the shit for me back then! i can't remember how many things i've built with this one Shadowstrike motor!
I'm surprised you didn't at least mention FIRST Lego League competitions, aka the whole reason Mindstorms continued as long as it did. FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) is an organization run by Dean Kamen, the guy who invented, of all things, the segway. It focuses on organizing robotics competitions all around the world. Originally, they stuck to just big metal robots in FIRST Robotics Competition events. Upon seeing the NXT Mindstorms though, the organizer created a separate division of FIRST called FIRST Lego League for late elementary schoolers to middle schoolers to compete in their own events. Having been a part of one of these teams, I can confirm that yes, many, many kids DID go on to be engineers because of Mindstorms, and many more are still on their way. It's a great way to teach engineering concepts like torque, stability, and consistency through a familiar medium, as well as programming through their simple block programming language. Mindstorms has done an incredible amount for the robotics community as a whole. Heck, their last hoorah with all the edgy designs specifically added requested sensors and features that we had been asking for for years, like a color sensor to replace the dodgy light sensors we had to put up with. It's one of the most unique communities that Lego has had a part in creating and it deserves more love tbh.
Used to use these as a kid and did a few of the competitions using the control bricks. Now I'm an engineer for Tesla so I guess it worked haha.
I never had the Star Wars stuff, but RIS 2.0 and Vision Command were instrumental in shaping my love of robotics... even if my dreams of being an engineer were cut short due to my terrible luck at college level Physics. Ah, oh well, I still look for new ways to get creative with old Mindstorms. Someone did a Toa Mata band with it and now I want to as well! Also, look up Mindstorms Bridge Layer and be amazed!
Watching this after Lego released the droid developments kit is fun
Mindstorms isn't quite dead yet, since Robot Inventor is a thing now
I remember my mum giving me a mind storm set when i was a kits and it set sat aside until my highschool started a robotics class. it took our sets till half way through that year to arrive if i remember correctly but then there was my showed up day one with a completed mindstorm robot. only to be later shown that we were going to be using nxt
I remember this line fondly
Because my older brother had them all over my house
Mindstorms?
More like *mind-fucks* with those old Ads actually seeing the light of day...
I still have the R2-D2 kit fully assembled.
And Spybots were the shit back then, the violet one was probaply the best driving wise, though the blue was always my favourite.