This past Saturday, we had a Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group meeting at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto. The theme for the contest was “micro scale space” with two contests, one for micro moonbase models and another for micro scale spacecraft. The term “micro scale” refers to any model built to a model where instead of using LEGO minifigs, the size of a human is taken to be about the height of a LEGO brick, or smaller.[tags]lego,baylug,space,microscale[/tags]
Month: May 2006
New IR Train Set Reviewed
LEGO is coming out with a new line of battery-powered, infrared (IR) remote controlled trains this year, and Larry Pieniazek has written a review. There’s a long discussion thread on LUGNET about it here (use this link to see the full text of all replies on one page).
UPDATE: The other new set in the IR trains line, a cargo train, has been reviewed by Steve Barile. The LUGNET thread is here (full text).
Like a lot of people who have heard about these new sets, I have mixed feelings. I’m really concerned about the move away from powered track, and worried about losing the existing train system (which LEGO continues to sell for the moment as the “Hobby Train” line, but may discontinue next year if sales aren’t good – see Save 9V Trains for details). But this may be what LEGO needs to do in order to sell more trains to kids at a more reasonable price point than the current system. And I’m excited by the way the new motors have wheels that are removable, connected by Technic axles instead of permanently fixed to the power brick.
As for the BayLTC train shows, the loss of powered track would be a blow. Though we do collectively have a pretty good-sized collection of powered track, the prospect of losing our source is not comforting. And of course, one of the nice things about doing LEGO train layouts is that we can tell people where they can get the product. If they discontinue the powered rail, we won’t be able to do that. And we can’t really switch to the new system: for one thing, it “times out” if it is left running for very long (I haven’t seen a report of exactly how long) so we’d have to keep using the remotes to keep them running. And for another, the reports are that the new motors are not very strong. Our current layouts often feature very long trains pulled by several motors at once, but apparently the new system has trouble with only three cars. However, I suppose the remote control units could be useful in the yard for switching – using powered rail, it’s awkward to ensure that only one yard track has power if there are other locomotives parked there.
I think the best scenario is for LEGO to continue making and selling both lines of trains. I urge everyone to continue buying the old 9V system to send a message to LEGO that they shouldn’t discontinue it. And try the new system – it could be fun too.[tags]lego,trains,ir,9v[/tags]
Lombard Street, San Francisco
Along with the TransAmerica Pyramid , this was built for the display that my LEGO club, the Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group, had at the LEGO store in Pleasanton, CA. In January 2006 we used “mini-scale San Francisco” as the theme for our display.
More pictures of the model can be found on Flickr and on Brickshelf (once moderated).[tags]lego,lombardstreet,sanfrancisco,mymodels,microscale[/tags]
Mindstorms NXT Presentation
Today we had a special Bay Area LEGO Users’ Group meeting featuring a presentation by Mark Edelman, founder of Playing at Learning, the Northern California FIRST LEGO League affiliate and a member of the Mindstorms Developer Program.[tags]lego,mindstorms,nxt,robotics,baylug[/tags]
Mindstorms NXT Firmware to be Open Source
LEGO has announced that the new version of Mindstorms will have open source firmware! This is very exciting news for anyone who likes to hack on robotics. While people reverse-engineered the original Mindstorms to come up with an alternative firmware called LegOS (which was renamed to BrickOS at the request of LEGO’s legal department), this time around LEGO is supporting software hacking from the get-go.
Also in the announcement, they’ll be making the Bluetooth interface and the 6-conductor connector system public and releasing Developer Kits for both software and hardware. They don’t say for sure that it will be free, but I hope that it will be.
Information about the NXT system is starting to become available via the panel of adult fans that LEGO has been consulting with (the Mindstorms Developer Program non-disclosure agreements allow them to release some information as of May 1, 2006). Here are some of the things I’ve found:
- NXT details from Philippe (“Philo”) Hurbain.
- The NXT Step blog by Jim K., Brian Davis, and Christopher Smith
- Lugnet.Robotics has several newly-announced NXT models and news
I’m looking forward to August when we get to see full retail availability of NXT![tags]lego,robotics,mindstorms,nxt[/tags]