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.Net On Lego Mindstorm

Posted by timothy on from the send-miguel-a-set dept.

troop23 writes "A blog posting by Benjamin J. J. Voigt says this "The University of Potsdam has a project to develop a .NET VM for the Lego Mindstorms system. Lego Mindstorms just got a higher priority on my shopping list!" While the thought of using .Net to program Lego Mindstorms may not be palatable, having a mainstream dev environment sure is." Perhaps Mono would work just as well.

7 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Is Lego back on firm financial ground? by Phoenixhunter · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Last I heard they had to axe some of their newer lines of products...they doing okay? I'd hate for my children to grow up in a world without Lego one day...

    1. Re:Is Lego back on firm financial ground? by Planesdragon · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Lego, like D&D or Disney, is a secure enough brand that even if its current owner went belly-up the brand itself would be bought, lock stock and barrel, and someone else would put out Legos.

      The only thing that could kill Lego would be someone competing with Lego and doing Lego better--in which case your kids would have leogos, just with a different name.

    2. Re:Is Lego back on firm financial ground? by dune73 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      After the financial flop of mindstorms and other stuff, that techies love and grandparents do not understand, they pulled the lever and are heading in a different direction now.

      The cash flow dropped by 25% in 2003 alone. So they want to cuts 500 jobs by 2006.

      You can read more at
      http://www.wdr.de/themen/kultur/stichtag/2004/ 05/0 1.jhtml
      (German only).

  2. Why? by cbrocious · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't get it. Why would they go with .NET rather than just writing a C/C++ compiler for it? We're talking about a low-speed embedded device here, a situation where the use of a VM is less than ideal. Is it just because they want to make the front page of slashdot, or is there a real reason?

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    1. Re: why? by ron_ivi · · Score: 5, Interesting
      Or even better, use a more powerful microcontroller for your legos like a GameBoy. Programmable in C or C++, has Sound and a color LCD display, and with a 32-bit RISC CPU, you can do far more with this than the current Mindstorm microcontroller.

      Bluetooth modules are apparently also available for this device. Engadget has a description and a link to a cool video of this Gameboy/Lego interface in action

  3. Mindstorms Robot by andrewdk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Bah. My LEGO Mindstorms robot + Vision Command camera beats everything when I use Perl and PHP to allow people to drive it around my room from across the world. A link to this robot's interface would mean doom to my connection so I'm keeping it under covers ;)

  4. More power to mindstorm. by Gentlewhisper · · Score: 3, Interesting

    While mindstorm is cool, but i'm kind of disappointed to see how underpowered the motors are. If only they'd have some kind of "adult" mindstorm sets where you can build you own remote controlled helicopter out of legos.. wow, that'd be so darned cool.

    Of course I doubt usual lego blocks would do though, too heavy to fly, but there's the idea. I'm sure many parents still have a secret longing for the toys they played in their childhood.

    Guys never grow out of their toys! =)

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