LEGO releases Micropython image for the Mindstorms EV3

· by Raghu Rajagopalan · Read in about 1 min · (186 words) ·

This is just so awesome! LEGO officially released Micropython image that can run on the EV3.

For the uninitialized

  1. LEGO mindstorms is LEGO’s robotics focused kit. Think LEGO technic blocks + a programmable microcontroller and assorted selection of motors and sensors.

  2. The EV3 'Brick' runs a visual programming interface built on Labview(?). It’s nice for kids to get started with but a PITA as you need a windows machine.

  3. As your projects grow, the visual programming doesn’t really scale…​ It’s been possible to run other OSes/programming platforms for sometime thanks to the LEGO community

  4. However, this is big news since

    • It’s first party

    • It’ll probably be supported for long.

    • And I really hope it’s open source as it’ll be fun to hack into the guts - and will also ensure that it continues to live for long even if LEGO drops the ball.

  5. Extra kudos to LEGO for also releasing a Visual studio Code plugin with project templates, file sync and other functionality.

I haven’t yet actually dug into this - so now you know what I’ll be up to next weekend!