Summer Is for Learning and LEGO

When I was a kid, there were three of us, and our mother was a stay-at-home mom. So, I am convinced it was her mission to pack us off to as many summer camps as possible. There was always the week of camping with the Boy Scouts, of course, but there was also rocketry camp, science camp, bible camp, nature camp, and LEGO robotics camp.

Outside of Boy Scout camp, these were all day camps. Go to the local high school everyday and build model rockets while learning about space. Go to some local park everyday and put pepper and soap into water for some reason. Go to the church gym everyday and make Jesus out of macaroni. Go to the woods everyday and be dared into eating leg-less daddy-long-legs. Mom got me out of the house, I learned stuff about surface tension and explosions and dirt and Father Abraham's many sons, many sons had Father Abraham.

Other than Boy Scout camp, which was probably the most fun, LEGO robotics camp was the best. This was probably like 1995 or 1996? I would have been in middle school. I was a self-taught programming whiz in those days, which is to say I taught myself QBasic with the help of a book from the library and could do pretty simple stuff on my own. My brother and I were sent off to LEGO robotics camp together, and we naturally selected each other as partners.

This was pre-LEGO Mindstorms. LEGO robotics in those days was through "Dacta," LEGO's educational line, which had their own programming language. There doesn't seem to be much out there about it on the Internet, but you could write code to test the input of various sensors, and output commands to motors. There were temperature and touch sensors, and various motors and lights and stuff. This thing here was the interface between the PC and the LEGO:

from Eurobricks

It's kind of hard to see in the picture, but the studs on that have metallic rims; the sensors and motors connected to them so data could move through. The core of the whole thing was, I believe, LEGO set 9701, the "Control Lab Building Set," which contained parts and directions for a variety of things you could do.

My kid brother and I were an amazing team; I would write the code and he would build the LEGO. We quickly moved through all the easy stuff and soon we were making the greenhouse. The greenhouse had a temperature sensor inside, so when it got too warm, the door would open; then when it got too cool, it would close up again. Here's the cover page to the directions:

from bricks.argz.com

The interior didn't really heat up, to be honest; I think we had to cheat the whole thing by squeezing the temperature sensor with our fingers. But we accomplished it together. In researching this, I've even found a bit of what I think is the actual code floating around on the Internet:

to open
tto "motora setright on
waituntil [angle5 > 16]
tto "motora off
end

to close
tto "motora seleft on
waituntil [angle5 < 1]
tto "motora off
end

to greenhouse
loop [if temp1 > 22 [open] if temp1 < 22 [close]]
end

There were directions and code for a scanner, even, which used a light sensor moving slowly across a piece of paper to feed into the computer its light/darkness bit by bit. Even for us this was too ambitious. (I should note that memories conflict on this point; Andy insists we did build the scanner, and says he remembers scanning in a picture of Mickey Mouse. But I was ten and he was eight, so I know whose recollections I trust more here.)

The next year we went back, but we were too good, and the camp director broke us up, and we accomplished much less paired with others than with each other.

I remember the LEGO sets having this air of age to them, but the LEGO wiki tells me set 9701 came out in 1995, so clearly not. Perhaps it was just that even in what was 1996-ish, the graphic design was sparse, but I guess in retrospect that was probably because it was an educational product, not available commercially, and done on the cheap in some ways.

As a result of these experiences we were so hyped up for LEGO Mindstorms when it came out a couple years later... and we were profoundly disappointed. The GUI-optimized puzzle piece code of Mindstorms was nowhere near as robust as the Dacta programming language, and we lost interest pretty quickly. Which, in retrospect, makes me feel bad, because I suspect it hadn't been a cheap buy for our parents.

But, you know, I'd had the second most fun I ever had at summer camp. (I kind of do miss programming at times.)

#579: What would your ideal summer camp be like?