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• brickOS,
• LegOS,
• and Java-based one.

It's capitalized legOS, and it's an open-source OS for Lego Mindstorms.

2. can i get it to run LegOS?

They cost ~£150 (or atlest thats how much I paied when they first came out)
They are pritty cool, and by default you can make some niffty stuff (like RADAR's). See the website, or the back of the box for actual content.

You need a serial port (Mac users think USB to serial port atapter).
To develop "applications" for them, either use
The Stuff That They Come With (crappy, aimmed for kids)
VB, or other OCX-enabled Windows Delopement System

Not Quite C, aviable on most plateforms, including UNIX (and alikes (Linux)), Win32, BeOS and MacOS. As the auther of the BeOS port, I can say it's piss easy to port if you need to.

LegOS, A miniOS for the RCX, looks pritty darn cool.

leJOS, Java RCX and tinyVM for Java based interfaces.

mlk

Homepage

legOS is an open-source embedded operating system for the LEGO Mindstorms, a LEGO brick with a brain. Compared to the standard software, it offers vastly superior performance and flexibility.

As of version 0.2.0, legOS features include:

* Dynamic loading of programs and modules
* Full IR packet networking
* Preemprive multitasking
* Dynamic memory management
* Drivers for all RCX subsystems
* 16 MHz native mode speed
* Access to 32k RAM

Not sure about you, but the crappy IDE click and drag blocks all over the place doesnt quite the cake for building a robot. I wish i had a block to try this OS out. Legos ruuulllll333!!

I'll let the Mindstorms run the motors and poll the sensors, and the PDA can talk to the outside world. I've got 2 Mindstorms, so I can control 6 motors and read 6 sensors.

The PDA can run a web server for public stuff and ssh for programming.

I'm in total agreement here -- Lego Mindstorms is an ideal way to start a child with programming. The only drawback I can see is the expense.

The programming environment that comes with the system is a very simple GUI that runs under windoze. That programming environment is fairly limited, and your child will probably outgrow it fairly quickly. Once that happens, you can introduce him or her to the more advanced methods available to program the system, including Visual BASIC, pbForth and the various Gnu compilers under *NIX using legOS.

There's also a web page at http://www.crynwr.com/lego-robotics/ that has links to lots of other programming environments for Mindstorms.

Lego mindstorms is expensive, but very versatile. Officially its only supported by Windows, but there's also LegOS

LegOS rocks! For anyone unaware, it's an open source replacement for the firmware, allowing easy development of programs for the RCX in C. The programer(s) that wrote it really went off on this...it has a small 7segment font, and it's even multitasking!

From what I remember, legOS was a replacement operating system from the MindStorms kit that let you program C applications for your robots.

Check it out here for yourself.

Yeah, the price is pretty fixed at around $199. On the other hand, if you already have a ton of technic pieces (gears and such) and don't mind not having the official lego software (which is lose95/98 anyway) you may be able to save a little bit by getting the RCX unit and sensors separately. Try the lego world shop. I'm pretty sure they have them separately.
As for software, well, with Linux you are pretty much stuck with PBForth or legOS. Both of those are going to require a language (forth or C, respectively) but are going to be much more powerful than the standard software.
~luge

This has to be quick, but- for anyone who uses Linux, legOS is not at all difficult to setup or maintain. John Knudsen is a good guy, but he (and the target audience) are windows users. If you can get RH running, you can get legOS running. It is easily the best way to use the Mindstorms from Linux. Check out the homepage or my HOWTO.
~luge (use it before you criticize, guys...)

All the software on the CD is uncompressed and unencrypted, so you can easily copy their "firmware" even if you don't use the Windows software. There are several alternatives to "RCX code" available on the net (and they're needed!), the most popular of which is probably NQC, one of those that use the standard firmware. It includes the download abilities. There's also a free replacement OS, legOS, that you can use if you want to cross-compile directly for the Hitachi CPU using GCC. Again, communication tools are included.

--

"Anybody know of an OSS equivalent of the Mindstorm stuff?"

Yep. Check out NQC or Forth(no links at the moment, sorry) or legOS. All are free (legOS is MPL) and reasonably well supported by their communities. If you want something reminiscent of the "good old days," you might do well to remember that reverse engineering is just as hard if not harder than DIY, and then take a look at kekoa's page. If he hadn't destroyed his bot, there would be no open source anything for the mindstorm. Very good geek stuff.
~luge

Yup. I've never once even opened the Windows CD. If you are a serious programmer, you wouldn't want that crud ported to Linux anyway- it is designed for kids, and you can't do serious work with it. Like the guys have said, check out legOS.
~luge

If you want a real programming language for the legos, check out legOS. Full C and C++ support for your legos.
~luge