LEGO Stylus Solves Ruzzle Tablet Game

February 19, 2013 by 1 Comment

mindstorm-ruzzle-solver

This grid of letters is a puzzle game for tablet devices called Ruzzle. The contraption attached is an automated solver which uses LEGO Mindstorm parts to input the solutions on the screen. [Alberto Sarullo] is the mastermind behind the project. As you can seen in his demo video after the break he has a flair for the cinematic. But he makes you work a little bit to discover the details of his project.

His post gives a general overview of how this works. A Linux box takes a screenshot of the Ruzzle board. After processing the graphics with Imagemagick he uses Tesseract — an Optical Character Recognition program — to figure out which letter is on each square of the playing area. From there NodeJS is used to discover all possible words with the help of a dictionary file. The final solutions are pushed to the LEGO parts to be traced out on the touch screen with a stylus. The nice thing is that he published all of his code, so you can drill much deeper into the project by pawing through his repository.

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Solving A Rubick’s Cube With LEGO And Popsicle Sticks

December 15, 2012 by 20 Comments

solver

We’ve seen automated Rubick’s Cube solvers before, but never one that has garnered as many awards as [James]’ popsicle stick and LEGO Rubick’s Cube solver.\

To keep the project complexity down, [James] opted not to use a webcam to detect the color pattern on each face of the cube. Instead, he wrote a little Python app to manually enter the pattern on each face before letting his algorithm loose on the cube and calculating how to solve it.

So far, [James] has seen a huge amount of success from his project. He entered it in the New Zealand Brightsparks competition netting him $1000. This competition led to a win in the Realize the Dream science competition where he won a major prize and an entry into the International Taiwan Science Fair held early next year. An awesome accomplishment from a budding hacker, and we can’t wait to see what he comes up with next.

You can check out a video of [James]’ cube solver after the break.

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LEGO LP Player

November 26, 2012 by 1 Comment

This LP player is made entirely out of LEGO parts. It plays the songs encoded on each record, but not by using a stylus in a groove. Instead, each LP has a color code on the bottom of it which is interpreted by the optical sensors underneath.

In addition to its functionality [Anika Vuurzoon] made sure that the build looked the part. The horn is a nice touch, but you’ll also appreciate the rotating mini-figures on the front side of the base. To the right there is a hidden door that provides access to the NXT brick which drives the system. New records are produced using a couple of different tools. First off, the song is written using Finale, a mature musical notation program. That is exported and run through a second program which produces the colored disc design which is applied to the records. You can hear the songs for yourself in the clip after the break.

If LP playing toys are right up your alley you’ll want to check out this 3D printed record hack for a Fisher Price toy.

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LEGO Record Player

October 3, 2012 by 7 Comments

Some people claim that the sound of vinyl is superior to digital playback. While this hack wont win any awards for audio quality, [Ryan]’s LEGO Record Player is a unique use of one of our favorite toys. Most of the components including the tone arm, counterweight, and base, are built entirely of LEGO. A large gear from an educational construction set is used for the platter. Unfortunately, the rotation isn’t terribly smooth, and the playback is rather distorted.

The turntable uses a standard cartridge and stylus, which should allow it to be connected to any receiver with a phono preamplifier. Using these off the shelf parts, it’s possible to build the mechanical components a turntable out of a variety of things. As the video demonstrates, getting the platter to turn correctly is a bit of a challenge.

Check out a video of the wobbly playback featuring Cindy and Bert after the break.

Via Make

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Tens Of Thousands Saved By Building A BAM Microscope Out Of LEGO

October 1, 2012 by 35 Comments

A Brewster Angle Microscope (BAM) can run you around $100,000. If you don’t have that lying around you could just use some LEGO pieces to build your own. Having been faced with no budget to buy the hardware, and needing the data to finish his PhD, [Matthew] figured out a way to build something passable on the cheap.

These microscopes bounce a light source off of a pool of water and into the lens of a camera. The thing is the angle of the sender and receiver must be just perfect at 53.1 degrees. [Matthew] was able to afford a used camera, and started experimenting with some lab equipment to mount the rig. But he just couldn’t get the adjustments right. Since he had to move the mounting hardware by hand it was impossible not to over or under shoot the corrections. But then he had a eureka moment. LEGO pieces have very accurate tolerances, and you can get geared and motorized parts. He leveraged the quality of the toy into a BAM whose alignment can be tweak with great precision.

It may not look like much, but you can see stearic acid floating through the microscope’s field of vision in the clip after the break. This is exactly the type of observations he needed to perform. Of course if you just need a microscope you can use a laser and a drop of water.

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Motorized Wheelchair Built From LEGO Pieces

September 26, 2012 by 18 Comments

You’re certainly not going to sneak up on anyone if using this LEGO motorized wheelchair. The high-pitched whine of all those tiny motors sounds like an army of robotic mosquitoes out for blood.

Six of the LEGO Mindstorm bricks are used to drive the motors, with a seventh acting as the master. It’s not pictured above, but there is a joystick on the right hand side which allows the rider to navigate. The master brick monitors the four sensors on that joystick. It then uses a pair of motors to actuate switches monitored by the slave bricks. Each slave has one switch for forward, and another for backward and drives two motors. To get around problems with angular velocities dues to turning, all of the wheels are multidirectional.

The plan is to add Bluetooth control in the near future. The master/slave setup should make that relatively easy as it only affects one of the bricks. The idea is to facilitate Android control to the chair like we’ve seen in other Mindstorm builds.

Don’t miss the demo embedded after the break.

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17-stage Great Ball Contraption Must Use All The LEGO Pieces

September 19, 2012 by 31 Comments

Looking at this 17-stage Great Ball Contraption makes us think that [Skiyuky] should be working in industrial automation. The build, which has been assembled from an untold volume of LEGO parts, moves a reservoir of round plastic balls around a circuit. Each module exhibits a different mechanical way of handling the parts. It’s certainly not the first GBC we’ve seen, but the previous offering combined stages from many different makers. [Skiyuky] built this one all himself over the last two years.

The video after the break starts off at the main depository of tiny soccer and basketballs. To help illustrate how long it takes to move around the entire circuit [Skiyuky] adds a red and blue ball which are both easy to spot. From there it’s a Willy Wonky type of ride through all manner of contraptions. We’re struck by accuracy and efficiency with which all of the stages operate.

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