Mindstorms RCX ... in hindsight

[DrJB]

I was contemplating the various intelligent bricks I have at home and was pondering ... Why on earth did TLG come up with a complicated solution with the RCX, namely the USB IR tower? ... Yes, it looks neat, it is wireless, but a simple USB cable from the computer to the yellow brick would have sufficed. I can't understand why a company would venture into developing its own wireless hardware/protocol ... when it should be focusing instead on its core business ...

Yes it is hindsight, but was TLG simply after a wireless connection? ... or is it the option of two bricks talking to each other? If it's the latter, how much of that functionality was actually put to use e.e., how many people out there built contraptions that required two bricks to talk to each other?

[le60head]

Good question!

Since all 3 generations of LEGO Robotics have some sort of built in wireless connectivity, my guess would be that was the reason to use infrared in RCX.

For NXT and EV3, they replaced IR with Bluetooth.

So in therms of connectivity the major difference between RCX and the latter two generations NXT & EV3 was that they included a wired connection between the Brick and a computer.

Another thing i would like to mention is the Spybots and the Micro Scout.

Those were from generally the same time as the RCX, and both used only Infrared to communicate with a computer.

In the case of the Spybots, an optical cable was plugged directly into the Scout, so that i could transmit IR signals between the devices.