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TCP/IP Enabled Lego Brick
An anonymous reader submits: "Yesterday, Olaf Christ announced that he has the world's first TCP/IP-enabled Lego brick that can be used as a web server. Imagine the possibilities of connecting your collection of Lego Mindstorms to the Internet! He has ported the extremely small uIP TCP/IP stack to the Lego Mindstorms platform. uIP has also been used to run a Commodore 64 as a web server, and is ported to the 8-bit Ataris and laptop keyboard microcontrollers."
Ever since I added TCP/IP remote control capabilities to my Mindstorms web-cam robot, it's been trying to crawl up the intern's skirt...
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
mirror the poor brick before you slashdot it.
[o]_O
imagine the possibilites....and all the new worms on the way :)
Macs as a fetish property
Next thing you know they are going to gain sentinence and then we'll be stepping on them barefoot all the time.
"Dogs and cats, living together...it's mass hysteria!"
This TCPIP stack has severe problems with overflow. I am working on limiting code to fix the problem. More info and a link to follow in a later post.
Do you want to remove linux?
This looks kind of shady. I could go into a newsgroup and post that I had done, well... anything, and then come here and submit the story as an anonymous coward?
I thought someone validated these stories before posting them.
It's easy to stand out when the general level of competence is so low.
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We killed it. The first lego block to take a step into the grand open world of the web, and its slashdotted beyond any sense of hope.
"Its worse than that, he's dead Jim!"
I'm not impressed.
Yesterday, Olaf Christ announced that he has the world's first TCP/IP-enabled Lego brick that can be used as a web server. Imagine the possibilities of connecting your collection of Lego Mindstorms to the Internet!
I would tend to think that if Christ's as powerful as everyone says he is, he would've done this years ago.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
--Chag
a beowu^H^H^H^H^Hlego city of these!!!
Have you no shame?
What happens when one of the bricks gets the Slashdot Effect? I forsee smoldering Lego structures and very frightened toddlers.
Yeah, so it's really cool that he was able to port a TCP/IP stack to the Mindstorms RCX. But isn't this just a novelty act?
*****
There are many people in this country who, through no fault of their own, are sane.
Maybe there should also be little sysadmin lego-people?
Sig: What Happened To The Censorware Project (censorware.org)
With IPv4 address space getting tighter every day, why not develop a small IPv6 stack so we can (at last) deploy thousands of gadgets without worrying about numbers and without resorting to ugly, nasty NATs?
Hope he's not using that thing as his webserver though...
;-)
Here's the text for those of you who reach a "server overload" message.
Subject:
true tcp/ip on the RCX
From:
"Olaf"
Olaf Christ
Newsgroups:
lugnet.robotics.rcx.legos
Date:
Mon, 28 Jan 2002 20:16:29 GMT
View Raw
Message
I ve got the very first and only tcp/ip enabled RCX in my room, cool, eh ?
I will make a webpage at the end of the week to make the very first
(rudimentary, but working) version available to the public.
Right now, the tcp/ip stack is compiled into the kernel and the stack calls
the usercode itself.
The code to pass the incoming packets to the stack and to send packets to the
pc is currently running as a simple userprogram. (*.lx).
On the pc the lnpd runs a program that acts as a gateway between the tower
and the pc.
This gateway passes the packets coming from the tower to e.g. 192.168.0.1
and sends packets from 192.168.0.1 to the rcx.
Right now the only thing you can do is pinging the RCX.
But writing e.g. a very small webserver shouldnt be that big a deal
Because, lnp is still alive i had to disable the sound support to free some
RAM.
Right now i got approx. 3 KB RAM left, still enough to do a lot of useful
stuff.
I think, the best way to fully integrate the tcp/ip-stack into the
Legos-kernel would be replacing lnp by a tiny slip-driver.
On the pc we could get rid of the lnpd.
Olaf Christ
If only it was on the internet, instead of that guy's local network, it could also be the first lego brick to get slashdotted!
...image the inevitable frustration forthcoming when your little brother brings down your high-traffic portal to build a dinosaur!
I'm still getting over my guilt complex about clicking the link to the Lisa web server and contributing to that poor girl's painful demise, and now you tempt me with an even meeker, treasured childhood toy? These poor little things don't deserve to be slashdotted. Oh the humanity!
Lego was nothing but red, square, identical blocks. You could connect them together to build larger red, square blocks. That's the real man's Lego, damnit!
sic transit gloria mundi
Imagine the possibilities of connecting your collection of Lego Mindstorms to the Internet!
That would be awesome! You could be the Biggest... Dork... EVER!
--
You're reading Managed Agreement.
So what is next? a tcp/ip enabled condom? .plan might show up.
Just don't try to finger it.
A nasty
isn't there enough crap connected via IP at the moment
Hook your Lego Mindstorm box up to the internet, attach a small LCD screen, and program it to check autopr0n periodically. Then it could drive around and find you to alert you to freshly-posted pr0n! YES!
Learn to Play Go
Build whatever computer I want out of LEGOs !! yippeeeeeeee
Bob: "Check out the new server cluster we got"
John: "uh... it's a big lego model of natalie portman"
Oh well.
Imagine a beowulf cluster that G.I. Joe and Barbie could live in!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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Bill, son, that's very nice, but why do all of your lego blocks spell out 1 0WNZ J00?
all ready built in
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Net-enabled lego-blocks, communicatng with each other... this is exactly how SkyNet got its start.
Sure, it starts with cute rocketships, next thing you know there'll be Hunter-Killer 'bots the size of houses, made entirely of lego.
To think that the end of humanity (until John Connor of course) should come out of Denmark...
uIP has also been used to run a Commodore 64 as a web server
I suggest he upgrade that server.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
However, it does make "assembling a cluster" have a whole new meaning.
"I'm a man... But I can change... If I have to... I guess..." -- the man's prayer, Red Green Show
They've already got this thing running! .. even has an LCD output screen!
1 60/index.html
http://www.applefritter.com/compubrick/compubrick
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
That's all I need. Getting spam saying, "You're running low on red bricks! Click here to order more below wholesale!" :-D
Now someone can *r00t* my lego's and command them to take over my home?!?!
I SURVIVED THE GREAT SLASHDOT BLACKOUT OF 2002!
In one submission, slashdot managed to /. all the major or high-profile uTCP/IP stack-powered web servers on the internet... I hope the C64 uServer was overclocked to a wh00ping 8mhz to handle all the requests :)
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
>has also been used to run a Commodore 64 as a web server
Come on folks, if we can't slashdot this, we aren't really trying.
Pretty soon all those lego servers will be serving this.
Very Good stuff. I've used mine to control my web cam for a while now. Hopefully others will build off of this :)
because it's necessary to say:
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these things. It would be like the cities I built...
and then my mom vacuumed up.
"It has always been this way and it won't change, god bless the fucked up USA" The Briefs
Wasn't Yellow Dog's Brique first? No, waitaminute... Nevermind. :)
Seriously though...
:D
I also love the fact that I'll be able to sell my DreamCast Broadband adapter to some dude who wants to run a DC server.
LEGO Mindstorms is so extremely cool. My girlfriend's little brother got it last x-mas and I was playing with it a lot more than him. :-) And this is even better, now you can ping your little robot and most likely you'll be able to control it remotely over the internet. DAMN, I wish I was ten years younger... or perhaps this is the best time to get some kids!? Honeeey!!
Ciryon
Imagine a beowulf cluster of these! In the form of a house! Watch out VA!!
Reminds me of something:
Karma: Ran over your dogma.
I have to be a party-pooper, but doesn't this violate the DMCA ? and to my knowledge, Lego doesn't much like people who rev-engineer their brick.
From his post:
Right now i got approx. 3 KB RAM left, still enough to do a lot of useful
stuff.
Oh, lordie, if every programmer had that kind of attitude...
i want a baewolf cluster of these... now i actually have a valid reason (since i'm a computer professional and all) to go buy me some legos. me 1 : wife 0. thank god. oh wait, that's a different christ.
really needs to read up on this ...
And discover the excitement of something like this brings and the desire for people to go out and buy the product.
And in turn read up on how people feel very negative towards lawsuits and threats for even thinking of making modifications to there products.
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Mindstorms is a great start - now all we need is the same technology embedded in Nerf guns, and I've finally got an excuse for ALL the toys on my desk at work :)
A sneak-preview of the new server-racks.
For some reason I just imagined the future breed of software architects to talk about scalability of systems build from Lego bricks:
-Our system is designed with scalability in mind, we use multitier software. Once the software is pushed to the limit, the scalability problems will be resolved in the hardware level. We will simply add more of these Lego blocks to our servers and there will be no problem.
In related news, a large army of Robots build from lego pieces is taking over Manhatten. These robots are looting every toy store in the area and are using more Lego systems to build more robots.
You can't handle the truth.
Heh, imagine if as a kid you weren't just building a race car or a fishing boat. Soon it'll be time for your 6 year-old to make his first WAN :)
All right... someone else noticed that great ad campaign. Second on the list of my all time favorites to the line they used when they ported Internet Explorer to Solaris: Microsoft brings the Web to UNIX.
And ./ a C=64 ? Bah...
If we could get Eric Harshbarger to build the Beowulf cluster it would rock. Either the Linux Penguin, R2D2, or the Desk are a few of the best.
As a fellow Mindstorms owner, this is incredibly interesting. I'm not that great of a builder myself - not compared with some of the folks I've seen on the 'net - but I'm looking into ways right now to get multiple bricks (RCX's) to communicate with each other.
Now with the ability to pass TCP/IP traffic back and forth, that opens up even greater avenues of possibility for device communication. Not only can you create software that will allow you (or someone over the web) to interact with the devices directly, it's now easier to get the RCX's to interact with other devices. One great example would be to have a brick as a part of a security system. How about intergrating it with an X10 system? Turn your robot on with the flick of a wall switch.
This just isn't a case of "let's port Apache to a Lego RCX brick!" The fact that these things are the brains of such a flexible system, with a wide variety of sensors, really opens up a great deal of possibility. More importantly, it allows for even more creativity and learning. After all, that's what these devices were made for, right?
--
Welcome to the land of the easily amused...
The concept of adding self-contained "bricks" of hardware/software to build functionality in a system of devices sounds a lot like the goals of Sun's Jini project, not necessarily limited to traditional computing applications though.
take your sig and shove it
Enough crap connected to the net?
Ok, I'll go buy a Aibo and hack it so you can serve up web page from where you can tell him to sleep, pee, etc.
That would be usefull-ess
First Lisa, now Lego.
No need to buy 42U racks for a couple thousand $. Just snap together and go!
Kind thoughts do not change the world
Microsoft responding to this new market has announced an IIS enabled lego brick. The IIS Lego Brick mesures 8"x5"x1", features a special edition of WinXP for Lego, and is fully .net enabled.
It's estimated reatil price is going to be $688.95 and will be available q3 of this year.
Inside sources at Microsoft reveailed a new "bumb" schema for "MSLego(tm)" that adds new "features," but may make it incompatable with industry standard Lego "bumps."
I believe sex is highly over rated... unless it involves me
what about those people who have PC Case mods made out of lego's!
Not the Christ. Just His pesky little brother.
That would be Bob, right?
Hmmm. I have an Apple //gs sitting in my basement that has a 4Mb memory card, 40Mb HD and a 7Mhz accelerator card (and the old Orca C compilers). This might be an interesting project for it...
Does anyone else think Olaf Christ is the coolest name in the history of surnames?
Sigh. Stupid boring-ass "Ryan Bruels", yeesh. I'm changing my name.
Olaf
"All your base are belong to this file I send in order to have your advice."
The /. trolls will have a field day. We've actually hit a point in technology where you could make a Beowulf cluster in the shape of a full-sized replica of Natalie Portman.
Couldn't that be a very easy methode for programming ? Most humans can understand things they can touch much faster than abstract things like a source code file.
Wouldn't building your programm by putting together some lego bricks, be something that could make programming understandable for many people ?
Jan
... all stuck together.
I think this is how the borg was created...
You feel sleepy. Close your eyes. The opinions stated above are yours. You cannot imagine why you ever felt otherwise.
I know what you mean, I'm really groovin' on this Open Sources Technology!! I mean, I've been installing Linux 7.0 at work and It's really cool. With Open Sources I like to have the C+ code right on my home machine. I can look at it and pretend I am programming it. I sent some patches to to Linux, but he forget to get back to me.
cpeterso
Yea but the TI Modem is only a 4800 baud, so one user would slashdot it.
One great example would be to have a brick as a part of a security system. How about intergrating it with an X10 system? Turn your robot on with the flick of a wall switch.
It's already possible thanks to IR. Of course you need PC to read signals from RCX.
TCP/IP Enabled Lego Brick
Makes me immediately think of a generic 4x2x3 (you know the one) lego brick with a Cable Modem, keyboard and monitor attached.
Probably a yellow brick I think.
I believe the Inferno language by Lucent at Bell Labs has been around a year or so at least. There is a package to make the brick show up as a directory structure w/ pseudo files.
More info:
http://plan9.bell-labs.com
http://einstein.ssz.com/hangar18
Granted, the images are timing out, but I'm still getting the main HTML page back from it.
This gives me another item to tinker with when it comes to building a CD Changer out of Lego's.
My brother has a small cd-r label, and so does a lot of burning. I've been contemplating how I could make a cd-changer to automate the most boring part of it all, changing cd's, one at a time.
So far I've gotton it mostly figured out, except how to load a new cd from a spindle.
It's either figure out the spindle issue, or find some way to preload cd's for easy swapping.
Now, maybe I can have the cd-changer interact with the burning process. woot! "Hey, do I put in a cd now? NO, we're stuck!" at which point I activate some little lego man to wave his arms. heh.
Computational Madness in a round package.
That reminds me of the scence where the single ornament nearly smites the lowly tree.
"Arrggg, I've killed it!"
Cave, wreck, and deep diver.
It melts and you get a very cool lego mouse pad
Trollem mirabilem hanc subnotationis exigiutas non caperet
I hadn't seen the C64 before, but since its wimpy 38400bps link is slashdotted right now, I mirrored it here.
;)
It's not quite the same, though, seeing as I don't have a C64 to mirror it on
Image how easy it would be to build a beowulf out of these?!?
Zack Zack he's a Beowulf maniac
whoo hoo
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
the meatmen fucking rule!
Mess Stuff Up
...imageine a beowulf cluster of people saying "can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these"?
Mess Stuff Up
Which is when my son will be old enough for me to buy myself some without the wife complaining. I'm looking forward to gigabit wireless ultra-wide-band network communications between Mindstorms bots and my central server.
Maybe I'll be able to use Mindstorms to measure the distance to the moon to the nearest millimetre, or the speed of light.... or I'll just have fun building them and making them hurt eachother. Yeah, that's it... Robot Wars with Mindstorms... who care's about running a stupid lego web server?
WOw, seeing the C64 spit out bytes so slow reminds me of the BBS days. This is almost exactly like 2400 baud.
Is that an emoticon or a VMS version number at the end of your post? It is about the ninth "Beowulf cluster" joke in this story, after all.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
Can you imagine a Beowulf cluster of these things?!?!
No, this isn't a joke.. =)
I haven't touched uIP myself, but we're using lwIP (its big brother) in KallistiOS, the DC hobbyist OS project. Adam sent this to me pretty recently and I thought it kicked ass beyond belief:
lwIP will be used in the post-production of Lord of the Rings 2 and 3
-Dan Potter
Cryptic Allusion - New Mac and Dreamcast Games!
Slashdotting a poor C64. That's mean!!
/me notes a C64 with smoke coming out of it in the corner...
--joshua
With one of those big green backplanes, Olaf could probably put together quite a cluster.
The coolest part is that you can download your model into Quake and frag your friends inside the structure you built.
There was a paper on this at Siggraph 2000 and a tech report is here.
obviously the Nerf projectiles can substitute for avian carriers. You can also use the Legos as a reconfigurable version of clay tablets...
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
"Yesterday, Olaf Christ announced that he has the world's first TCP/IP-enabled Lego brick that can be used as a web server.
To Jesus?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
NAT / ipmasq / etc. are one approach to hiding large private address spaces behind small numbers of IP addresses, but they're not the only one. Another approach is proxy-type firewalls and DMZs. In a typical corporate network, to get to the web you use a proxy server (which also does some caching), and to send email you go through an SMTP server at the firewall, and to receive email you go to a corporate server which actually gets the mail from outside and either forwards it to your internal mail server or else provides the mailbox service itself. NAT can be useful if you want to run other protocols, and ftp can either be handled by NAT or by proxies.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Apple is thinking of using Lego blocks, but they've announced they will only use the higher-tech, fancier (and more expensive) Lego Technic blocks, even though it's actually slower to build stuff with them.
If we had a Beowulf cluster of these arranged in a 2-D grid (sitting on top of a Lego desk of course), we could use it to do image processing. First image to process? Calista.
By the way, has anyone built a cellular phone out of Lego blocks yet? I.e. do we have Wireless Lego yet?
FYI someone's making a webserver for the gameboy advance. check it out here http://www.fivemouse.com
Now you really can build your own TCP/IP stack, and make it as tall as you want.
13 year old white supremacists are shitty web designers.
This is what they look like:
horror.jpg.html
This news is cool, but the cost of outfitting your server farm may be going up a bit if eBay has their way.
They are trying to put the hurt on the best fan run brick source. See: Legal Notice (on BrickBay(tm) ) for details, as well as this story on LUGNET(tm)
your just another brick in the wall
Good thing they aren't hosting the story on the lego block webserver.. image how fast that would get slashdotted..
..."
and don't anyone bother with the "...imagine a
Here is some technical information about this achievement.
The "brain" in the Lego Mindstorms product family is the RCX; essentially a small microcontroller with an LCD display built into a Lego brick. It has connectors for sensors and motors as well as an infra-red port. The microcontroller is an Hitachi H8/3292 from the H8S/300 family. It has 32k RAM and a 16k ROM which hosts Lego firmware code.
The microcontroller can be entirely reprogrammed, which turns the RCX into a small but powerful embedded computer. With 32k RAM, this is enough to run the open-source legOS operating system - an operating system written for the RCX Lego bricks. Olaf Christ has taken the uIP TCP/IP stack (which was originally written for this project) and incorporated it into the legOS system.
IP packets are sent to and from the RCX over the IR link. The LNP protocol is used as a link layer protocol to deal with collision detection and link layer checksums.
The main problem with the TCP/IP-enabled Lego bricks is that the IR port on the RCX only is capable of running 4800 bit/sec. Since that's even slower than most really old modems, a Lego web server is easily slashdotted by one user alone...
While the uIP TCP/IP stack was originally written for this project it has since taken a life of its own and has not only been used to power good old C64s, but is also used in several embedded systems such as card-readers and other point-of-sale-type applications.
I have personally been running Olaf Christ's TCP/IP code on an RCX and can confirm that it works. In fact, I have one sitting here and serving web pages right now. Sorry, I won't give out the IP address due to the slashdot effect...
It's called a server rack. You want to add a web server? Buy a 1U "brick" and plug it in. To get to what you are talking about, all we need is a standardized hot swappable bus that runs along a backplane, so that you plug in a 1U server and it docks (similar to a laptop) and with that one hot swap connection has electricity, network, and KVM connection. That'd be cool, the worst thing about rack servers is going behind them and rummaging through the tangle of wires. A standardized rack bus would be great!
"Da ist ein Technölüst in mein Unterpanten!"
For those who don't pay much attention to Lego-ings-on, Lego has a VERY ENLIGHTENED attitude to Mindstorms hackers. They don't explicitly support RCX-hacking, but they definitely approve. Based on their statements to the press, they understand that RCX-hacking helps both the users and Lego. They *want* people to go nuts with the thing. (It's a great toy, and I love it; I just wish it had a port-extender for more sensors/actuators. Maybe a piggyback module that communicates with the RCX via the IR port?)
./ story a while back), but Lego were extremely reasonable and polite about the whole thing. (In trademark law, they MUST defend the trademark or else lose it).
There was an incident with the LegOS alternate operating system recently where Lego requested that the fellow change the name so as to not dilute Lego's trademark (see
As concerns DMCA, there's NO issue there, 'cause there's no attempt to prevent or control access to the brick's brains. Lego are the complete opposite of Sony in this regard.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
http://www.foundrydx.com/zaku_factory_01.htm
Imagine if your cluster could look like this!
I also think this is great, but thinking about connecting to other devices, the IR builtin in RCX isn't that well suited for a robot running around without boundaries, is it?
How about Bluetooth support? If they make a Bluetooth brick that can communicate with RCX on the robot, wouldn't that be better?
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
This is tangentially similar to an idea I've been playing with for some time. My main problem is that as as S/W enginner I have little idea where to start, I was thinking PIC, but I'm really not sure. The idea would facilitate real large scale automation. Perhaps this could be the first 'open-hardware design' :-) However the main reason I'm raising this an attempt to invalidate any future patent.
It's a TCP/IP/UDP trigger/switch. However the concept relies on being tiny, simple and cheap to produce, pence rather like the 555 timers we played with in school electronics. It needs to be a mass produced chip with a [very] low price point.
The chip(s) must operate in two modes. Switch and Trigger.
The trigger operates by producing a [multicast]packet contanining a unique GUID, when a specific input line is triggered dragged high(low).
The switch operates the opposite way by dragging a line high(low) when it receives specific GUID, within a [multicast] packet.
I'm thinking PIC(s) Would it be possible to implement a TCP/IP stack in PIC logic ?
I'm thinking multicast packets with TTL:1, to keep everything withing the subnet.
I'm thinking the IP equivalent of mecrcury/magnetic switches, relays etc for burglar/fire alarms, door switches, light switches, thermostatic switches, infact massive automation. It would then be possible to control just about any device via pretty much any IP enabled/connected computing device.
Consider some applications.
Switching Night Lights.
Burglar/Fire Alarm switches.
Light switches
Thermostats
See the potential ?
What do you think ?
Martin
I was thinking...with all this talk about 'emergent' behavior and AI, it wouldn't be very cheap to by a thousand Lego Turtles to try Starlogo in realtime BUT with an internet connection...couldn't you link a buncha Lego Turtles together and try doing a Starlogo thing, Hardware style? Just a thought Tim the Moron
"Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?"
I had hoped to see some interesting posts concerning the idea to connect a Mindstorms module to the internet. There are some problems, sure, and some venues for Borg-ian humor, of course...but where is the intelligent dialogue I was hoping for? Are you Nerds or Nerd-wannabees? If it won't work...explain why! If there is some promise...let's discuss it...if there is room for humor...get a separate thread and sew away! I want to see some intellectual action! For instance...has anyone thought of Starlogo and Lego Mindstorms Bricks? Has anyone thought of the possibilities of taking something out of the clouds of software and slamming it down onto the ground of Hardware? Talk about parallel processing! And if a few toddlers get frightened...good! Fear is a great motivator! Hunter/Killer Bots the size of a house made out of Legos...bring 'em on! Now, how about the main course? Make mine a big heaping bowl of Intelligent discourse, please!
"Are you a Good Witch or a Bad Witch?"