Lego Mindstorms EV3

History

Lego offered the first version of Mindstorms, based on an 8-bit microcontroller, for retail sale in 1998. In 2006, the company unveiled the next generation, called Lego Mindstorms NXT, which included more advanced sensors and computing capabilities. The Mindstorms NXT 2.0 was launched in 2009. The brain of the Mindstorms set is a computing brick called NXT, which can be programmed with easy-to-use software powered by LabVIEW from National Instruments. In 2013, Lego announced the Mindstorms EV3, which the company described as a more "hackable" robotics kit. One of the biggest upgrades is the EV3 programmable brick, the heart of every Mindstorms project. The brick has been revamped internally and externally. The central processor is an ARM 9 chip, with 64 MB of RAM and 16 MB of Flash built in for storing programs. A SD-slot allows the memory to be expanded, and there's a better display. But the biggest innovation is that Lego made it easier for the EV3 brick to communicate via Bluetooth with Android and iOS apps.