How We See Embedded Processing

I tend to deliver a lot of presentations to embedded engineers, and to be frank, we are not the easiest bunch to keep engaged. Let's set aside the fact that the majority of technology presentations are woefully dull; this is a given. When it comes down to it, there are big problems that engineers are tasked with solving—so the engineer's mind has lots of fodder for daydreams. I do keep a proverbial ace up my sleeve, though, that I use when I start to see eyes glazing over and heads nodding off… it's LEGO Mindstorms. For those of you who don't know, National Instruments skinned and simplified its graphical programming language (LabVIEW) for LEGO to be shipped with their largest product introduction ever. Whenever I bring this up, eyes brighten and smiles appear and I can't answer questions fast enough… So what makes this "toy" so appealing to engineers? What is it about the LEGO Mindstorms product that simply makes us smile?

Part of me believes that it's much the same feeling that Roger Clemens must get when he watches his son play baseball—parents really like the idea that their children look up to them enough to follow in their footsteps. That would explain the smiles, but not stuff like this.

The link above is one of hundreds of LEGO NXT based applications that have been conceptualized, created, and documented by adults. Engineers for that matter. Just search YouTube for "mindstorms".  These guys spend all day engineering the latest and greatest consumer widgets or software packages, and then they come home and build a program candle lathe out of LEGOs. This is the equivalent of neurosurgeons coming home and spending hours playing the board game Operation. Or Tom Brady and Peyton Manning getting together to play John Madden football on the Playstation 3 (I have heard that the last one actually happens, but I'm not one to spread rumors…)

I think I have it figured out, though. The real reason that I see all of those smiles is because, finally, these engineers can take their crazy ideas and make them happen. In the real world, making a custom lathe would involve hundreds of thousands of dollars in machined parts, CAD tools, control systems, and software development. There's no way I am going to do that in their spare time… but with the LEGO Mindstorms NXT, I can do it in a weekend and still have the time to mow the lawn.

I think that this says something a bit sad about the state of professional engineering today. I don't know why you became an engineer, but I wanted to make stuff. In my case, I was fascinated by pinball machines and I wanted to buy broken machines at auctions and fix them up. Sadly though, real engineering projects are so complex that sometimes I think that we get too far detached from the fact that we're creating something. With shortening release schedules and large development teams, with millions of lines of code in every device, with fragmented development tools…it's a wonder we even have a moment to breathe.

 So what does LEGO give us? It's really the ultimate rapid prototyping tool. LEGO Mindstorms makes engineering fun again and reminds me of that wide eyed kid inside of me who just wants to play some pinball.

Robert Cravotta just finished up a two-part article series on robotics platforms in which he highlights a project he created using LEGO Mindstorms NXT—check it out: Part 1, Part 2.

—P.J. Tanzillo