Working Artificial Horizon Built Into A Single LEGO Brick

March 20, 2023 by 16 Comments

Back in the day, LEGO spaceship sets used to come with these little wedge blocks painted with fake gauges on them. [James “Ancient” Brown] decided that wasn’t good enough. Thus, he took everything he needed for a functional artificial horizon, and stuffed it inside a single LEGO brick. Yes, it’s real, and it’s spectacular.

We featured [James’] electronics-infused bricks some time ago when they first hit the Internet. The basic story is that he managed to cram an OLED screen and an RP2040 into a silicone mold for a LEGO-compatible brick. His first iterations stunned the world, as they ran pretty monochrome animations that brought life to formerly-inanimate chunk of plastic.

Since then, [James] has been busy. He’s managed to squeeze an accelerometer into the brick form factor as well. That allowed him to build a LEGO piece which displays an impressively-smooth artificial horizon display, as you might find in an aircraft. He demonstrates this by putting the instrument on a LEGO craft and zooming it around the room. All the while, the artificial horizon accurately tracks the motions of the craft.

It’s an impressive build, and something we’d love to see included in future LEGO vehicles…even if they’re just 3D renders. Continue reading “Working Artificial Horizon Built Into A Single LEGO Brick” →

DOOM Ported To A Single LEGO Brick

March 18, 2023 by 18 Comments

By now you’ve all seen the tiny LEGO brick with a working screen in it. The work of one [James “Ancient” Brown], it was truly a masterpiece of miniaturization and creativity. Since then, [James] hasn’t stopped innovating. Now, he’s demoing a playable version of DOOM running on a single plastic brick.

We’ve covered the construction of these astounding screen bricks before. Long story short, [James] designed a tiny PCB that hosts an RP2040 microcontroller which is then hooked up to a tiny OLED screen. The components are placed in a silicone mold, which is then filled with transparent resin to form the brick. The screen is then powered via contacts in the bottom, much like older-style LEGO motors.

Early experiments involved running various graphics to emulate a spaceship dashboard, but [James] has now gone much further. He’s implemented RP2040-doom to run the game. It uses tilt controls thanks to an accelerometer, combined with capacitive touch controls for shooting. The monochrome OLED is driven very fast with a special library of [James’] own creation to create three levels of grayscale to make the game actually visible and (just barely) playable.

It’s a hack, of course, and the controls are far from perfect. Nobody’s speed-running E1M1 on [James’s] LEGO brick, to be sure. Perchance. With that said, it’s still a glorious piece of work nonetheless. Just imagine, sitting with friends, and announcing you’re going to play some DOOM — only to pluck a piece of LEGO out of your pocket and start blasting away at demons.

Just because [James] doesn’t know when to quit, we’re going to lay down the gauntlet. Let’s get network play happening on these things, yeah?
Continue reading “DOOM Ported To A Single LEGO Brick” →

An image of a Modulex brick (left) next to a LEGO brick right. Both are 4x2 studs, but the Modulex brick is much smaller at 20x10x5 mm vs the LEGO's 32x16x9.6 mm.

Modulex Is LEGO’s Long Lost Cousin

February 8, 2023 by 23 Comments

We love LEGO here at Hackaday, but did you know that LEGO spun off a parallel product line made for architectural models called Modulex?

[Peter Dibble] takes us on a deep dive through the history of Modulex, starting with Godtfred Kirk Christiansen needing a better way to model actual buildings after trying to design a house in LEGO. The LEGO brick’s 5:5:6 ratio proved challenging for modeling full-sized projects, so Modulex was conceived around a 1:1:1 ratio 5 mm cube. This change means Modulex is not compatible with LEGO System bricks.

As architectural styles morphed through the mid-20th Century, designs based around blocky shapes became passe, and Modulex pivoted to targeting factory and city planning customers. Products later branched out to include wall charts and Plancopy photocopy-able planners along with reconfigurable signage. Modulex (now ASI) still goes on as one of the biggest signage companies in the world, but discontinued the bricks in 2004. An attempt was made to revive Modulex bricks in 2015, but LEGO Group bought the company that had the rights to the bricks and has no intention of producing Modulex.

For more LEGO hacks, checkout this machine learning LEGO sorter or these giant LEGO-like pieces.

Continue reading “Modulex Is LEGO’s Long Lost Cousin” →

Lego Guitar Is Really An Ultrasonically-Controlled Synth

January 26, 2023 by 4 Comments

The phrase “Lego Guitar” can be a stressful one to hear. You might imagine the idea of strings under tension and a subsequently exploding cloud of plastic shrapnel. This build from the [Brick Experiment Channel] eschews all that, thankfully, and is instead a digital synth that only emulates a guitar in its rough form factor.

The heart of the build is a Lego Mindstorms EV3 controller. It’s acts as the “body” of the guitar, and is fitted with a Lego “fretboard” of sorts. A slide is moved up and down the fretboard by the player. The EV3 controller detects the position of the slide via an ultrasonic sensor, and uses this to determine the fret the user is trying to play. The button the user presses on the controller then determines which of five “strings” the user is playing, and the selected note is sounded out from the EV3’s internal speaker. It’s strictly a monophonic instrument, but three different sounds are available: a bass guitar, a rock guitar, and a solo guitar, with all the fidelity and timbre of a 90s Casio keyboard.

It’s a fun and silly instrument, and also kind of difficult to play. The slide mechanism doesn’t offer much feedback, nor are the EV3 buttons intended for dynamic musical performance. Regardless, the player belts out some basic tunes to demonstrate the concept. We doubt you’d ever be able to play Through The Fire and Flames on such a limited instrument, but [Brick Experiment Channel] used their editing skills to explore what that might sound like regardless.

We’ve seen some other great synth guitars before, too. Modern microcontrollers and electronics give makers all kinds of creative ways to build electronic instruments with unique and compelling interfaces. Some are more successful than others, but they’re all fun to explore. Video after the break.

Continue reading “Lego Guitar Is Really An Ultrasonically-Controlled Synth” →

A Simple Air Suspension Demo With Lego Technic

January 25, 2023 by 18 Comments

The most common suspension systems on automobiles rely on simple metal springs. Leaf spring and coil spring designs both have their pros and cons, but fundamentally it’s all about flexing metal doing the work. Air suspension works altogether differently, employing gas as a spring, as demonstrated by this simple Lego build from [JBRIX]. 

The suspension system is employed on a Lego Technic car, with a relatively unsophisticated design. The car has no real form of propusion, and serves solely to demonstrate the air suspension design. They may look like dampers, but the system is actually using Lego pneumatic pistons as springs for each wheel. The pistons are connected to the upper control arm of a double wishbone suspension setup. Each piston is pneumatically connected to a main reservoir. With the reservoir, and thus the pistons, pressurized, the suspension system can support the weight of the car. If a bump perturbs a wheel, the piston compresses the air in the system, which then returns the piston to its original position, thus serving as a spring. If the reservoir is vented, the suspension collapses. Air springs on real, full-sized automobiles work in basically the same way. However, they usually have a separate reservoir per corner, keeping each wheel’s suspension independent.

Overall, if you’re working on some kind of Lego rambler, you might find this suspension concept useful. Alternatively, you might simply find it good as a learning aid. If you want to learn more about oddball suspension systems, we can help there too. Video after the break.

Continue reading “A Simple Air Suspension Demo With Lego Technic” →

3D Printing Giant LEGO-Like Blocks To Build Big Toys

January 18, 2023 by 21 Comments

[Ivan Miranda] is all about big 3D prints. He’s now set about printing giant blocks in the vein of LEGO Technic to build himself a full-sized rideable go kart. The project is still in progress, but [Ivan] has made great progress with his design.

The benefit of 3D printing giant blocks like this is that they open up the possibilities for rapid prototyping of big projects. It’s already easy to snap together a little LEGO tank, boat, or car at the small scale. Bigger blocks would make that possible for larger builds, too. Plus, once you’ve got plenty of blocks, there’s no need to wait for the 3D printer to churn out parts. You can just play with your toolbox of existing components.

[Ivan]’s design has faced some teething problems along the way. He struggled to solve various coupling problems for joining the blocks in various orientations, and made iterative changes to solve the issue. Eventually, he realized if he just eliminated an offset between the top and side holes of his beam design, everything would neatly work out. Plus, he learned that he could print a tiny scale version of his big blocks in order to test out designs without using as much plastic.

We love the idea of having a garage full of adult-sized LEGO-style blocks for big projects. The only caveat is that you really need a giant printer like [Ivan’s] to make them. Continue reading “3D Printing Giant LEGO-Like Blocks To Build Big Toys” →

A Christmas-themed LEGO train engine and coal car

ESPHome Powers Festive Lego Train Set

December 27, 2022 by 5 Comments

While the basic concept of LEGO bricks might have changed little since the mid-20th century, some components such as motors and sensors are still affected by technological progress and end up obsolete and unsupported. [Travis] ran into this problem when he was building a festive train setup and realized he didn’t have the speed controller to match his train engine. Without that part, the engine would only run at full speed and derail as soon as it hit a curve. The official speed controller had been discontinued and was hard to find, so [Travis] had to resort to building his own.

The basic components needed were an H-bridge driver to operate the motor and an ESP8266 to generate PWM signals. In order to keep the bricky appearance of the train engine intact, [Travis] hollowed out a few cheap imitation LEGO bricks to house the electronics. He also cut out slots for JST connectors, which are far more convenient to work with than LEGO’s brick-style connectors.

Two imitation LEGO bricks with electronics insideThe ESP8266 runs ESPHome, which enables [Travis] to control the entire setup using Home Assistant. The train is programmed to run a few laps at the top of the hour and play choo-choo sounds from a mini MP3 player hidden in the coal car. That car also holds a standard AA battery holder to power the system, which makes it easy to swap the batteries without having to partially disassemble the train.

There are various ways to control LEGO creations using standard computer platforms: we’ve seen the ESP32 powering a LEGO tank, for instance. If you need a bit more computing power, there’s even an official LEGO Raspberry Pi HAT.

Continue reading “ESPHome Powers Festive Lego Train Set” →