Over 100,000 Lego pieces, 4 people a year to create, and a 12 foot by 12 foot chess board make this the largest most awesome Lego hack we’ve ever seen. Take that Lego Printer.
For a mere $30,000 you too can have such a setup. Not a lot of information is out yet, but we do know all the pieces are remote controlled via a PC with LabVIEW and a total of 38 NXT controllers are used. Oh, and of course you can see it live at the 2010 Brickworld. Check out a video of a replayed game after the jump.
[via Geekologie]
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAwwKEXn6Mk&feature=player_embedded%5D
I wonder how Castling works.
@JMLB
Lot’s of movement and patience! ;)
The extra action of the figures is a different touch.
Wow that is impressive. The movement and twisting of the pieces was genius. And to think at first I thought this was going to be a flam war for a simple Lego chess set :D
Wow, I dont even care how long it takes to play a single game… that is badass!
viper, i thought the same thing. Although i was pleasantly suprised! This must have taken equally as much time to code as it was to assemble!
Pretty cool, but anyone else wondering why the pawns need to turn around to go backward?
Anyone else think of Wizard’s Chess right away? A modified version of this could be very entertaining at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Orlando.
As a lego lover, and Chess lover. This is awesome. I would love to be able to play on such a scale.
this is truly amazing!!
at the risk of starting another labview-war… did anyone else wonder why the whole thing would be controlled by labview?
Very nice, I especially like the knight’s galloping, but why the hell are the pawn daleks?
Now I’m tempted to go dig up my 5,000 Lego bricks out of the attic and see if any of the little neighborhood kids will donate theirs so I can make a giant Lego Go board. Or maybe backgammon.
I’d imagine that they could very easily convert this to a checkers set if they wanted to, which would be even better bragging rights (as if having the world’s largest Lego chess set isn’t enough…)
My only issue with it is the amount of time from when you make the move on the screen to when it actually finishes the move. I’d be too tempted to go pick it up and just move it. But still. So freaking awesome.
I wish I could tell the size of the pieces, there isn’t really anything in the movie to scale them against. I’m guessing they’re about 1 to 2 feet tall?
now you need to set up a cam site and allow people to play chess online using that set. Id pay to play that at least once.
I could see malls buying and installing this. I remember some malls in Winnipeg having chess sets around the same size at this setup in common areas. The players needed to lug the pieces around though.
Lego has certainly evolved from being more than a childrens’ toy. I would certainly pay to play this chess set.
LOL I livin off from 30k a year sure thats all I need to buy a piece of shit chess like this…
@kristian
LabVIEW is the official software for use with Lego NXT,in fact it even comes bundled with a heavily cut down version so you can’t use it for anything else.
too bad if you want to open with a knight…
Please tell me I’m not the only one who thinks that the King and Queen look like Stephen Hawking and Davros?
Lego is probably the best toy a kid can have.
My childhood would be completely different if I didn’t have lego.
Glad I live within 40min of this convention. My kid is gonna so love 20’000 sq.ft. of LEGOs
Very impressed! But I am a little picky:
It move be way cooler if the capture is done by first moving the chess and removing the one being captured. Sometime it is hard to figure out why one is captured.
The diagonal movement is very nice. I wonder why the knight does not move diagonally?
The white knight seems to be misaligned in at least one move, but the next scene shows it in the aligned position. Seems like someone moved the knight manually in between.
I’m loving the base4 location system.