Lego For Girls? [Limor] Has Some Ideas.

May 25, 2012 by 48 Comments

When Lego announced that they were going to do a series of “Lego for girls”, many of us didn’t get it. When we were kids(get off my lawn!), legos were completely asexual. At least, that’s how my mind saw them, being a caucasian male. While the idea itself makes sense in marketing terms, the products they rolled out were stuck firmly in the same old gender roles. Pink abounds and flowers are prevalent. There’s nothing wrong with little girls being into those things, but it is sad when that is the only option ever presented. To attempt a parallel, I’m not into sports, and I can tell you that the availability of scientific role models kept me sane through many tough periods of life.

[Limor], who you may recognize as the brains behind Adafruit has proposed the set you see above which puts another option out there. They’ve entered the set into the Lego Cuusoo site, where it could become a real product if it earns enough votes. Here is another nice idea for female lego sets being proposed, that shows females in realistic roles such as a chemist and archaeologist .  I’m kind of surprised that I don’t see [Amelia Earhart] or [Ada Lovelace] herself anywhere in the list.

Gender roles aside, who is going to build the ultimate [Nikola Tesla] kit for us?

Lego Mindstorms Used To Automate Tedious Laboratory Tasks

April 19, 2012 by 15 Comments

lego-bone-machines

Modern society owes so much to medical research, though what happens behind the scenes in a laboratory is usually far less than glamorous. A group of scientists at the University of Cambridge are working to develop synthetic bone tissue, but the process to create the samples used in the study is incredibly tedious.

To make the bones, a substructure must be dipped in a mixture of calcium and protein, rinsed, then dipped in a mixture of phosphate and protein…hundreds and hundreds of times. Equipment that can automate the process is available but very cost prohibitive, so the scientists did what they do best and built a set of robots to do the work for them.

Their new bone manufacturing setup was constructed using Lego Mindstorm kits, which were a perfect solution to their problem in several ways. The kits are relatively cheap, easy to construct, easy to program, and able to perform the same function precisely for days on end.

Now instead of burning time manually creating synthetic bone samples, the group can focus on the more important facets of their research.

Continue reading to see a video presented at the 2012 Google Science Fair, showing how everything came together for the crew at Cambridge.

[via Make]

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Barrel Organ Made From Lego Plays The Star Wars Theme

April 15, 2012 by 36 Comments

lego-starwars-barrel-organ

Whether or not you are a fan of the first installment of the Star Wars prequels, you have to see what [Lorenz Lnggrtnr] and [Renee Hoffmeister] have put together for the movie’s 3D debut.

In an attempt to capture the essence of Star Wars in a new fashion, they constructed a large barrel organ from Lego bricks that plays the movie’s legendary opening theme when turned. The barrel is separated into four parts, each representing one of the series’ iconic settings in plastic block form.

Hoth, the Death Star, Tatooine, and Endor are all featured on the organ, with each environment’s structures playing specific notes from the song. As the barrel turns each Lego structure toggles a note to be played on the attached organ, via a “reading” mechanism built from metal arms and Lego tires.

It looks fantastic, and sounds pretty decent too. Be sure to stick around for a short video that shows off the barrel organ in action.

[via Wired]

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Water Strider Robot Does It With Lego Parts

April 10, 2012 by 12 Comments

This Lego watercraft uses drinking bottles as pontoons arranged in a pattern that make it look very much like a Water Strider, the insects that dance on the surface of a lake.

After the break you can see a video of the rig gracefully navigating a local pond, along with a raft of ducks. It’s quiet enough not to startle them, which is nice. We don’t get a good look at the propulsion system, but [Vimal Patel] calls the floats “hockey bottles” in his Flickr comments. They appear to be Lego themed and we’re wondering if they are some type of packaging for a small set that doubles as a sports drinking bottle once the pieces are removed? The rig includes a camera which provides a great persepcive very near the water level.

This isn’t his only floating creation. He’s got a second rig that was used to film some of the footage of this one.

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IP Over LEGO Train Carrier

December 26, 2011 by 16 Comments

[Maximilien] sent in a networking protocol built out of a LEGO train set. Unlike IP over Avian Carrier this system won’t be killed by plate-glass windows or birds of prey, but we’d hate to step on [Max]’s work in bare feet.

The system uses a USB flash drive to carry data around to different nodes. At each node, [Max] removed the power from the tracks and added a relay to start the train up again. A mechanical switch detects the presence of the train, and an Arduino makes the link to the Linux boxes via serial-over-USB.

The physical connection of the flash drive is with four wires and aluminum foil contacts. To send data, the system waits for the train to arrive at the ‘station’, mounts the drive, checks if there is data for it, and sends what needs to be sent. After unmounting the drive, power is applied to the local rail and the train continues on its journey.

[Max] admits that the latency on his network is terrible, but the bandwidth should be fairly good. As the old saying goes, ‘Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes.’ We’re not quite sure how that applies to LEGO trains, but there you go. Check out the gallery of [Max]’s work after the break.

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Retrofitting Modern LEGO Train Tracks For Use With Older Version

December 19, 2011 by 28 Comments

So you’re really looking for that [Norman Rockwell] Christmas and want to set up your train to encircle the Christmas tree this year. The problem is that all you’ve got is an old LEGO train set and not enough track for it. You can’t just buy some more, because the technology has changed; or can you?

[Chris] was dismayed to find that newer LEGO train sets have gone to battery operation rather than drawing power through metal tracks. The new tracks are plastic, and buying extra segments of the older version is cost prohibitive. He figured out a way to add power conductors to the new track pieces.

It turns out the design of the new tracks matches the old, except they’re all in plastic instead of having metal rails. He bought a plastic add-on set, then picked up some copper foil from the hobby store which is meant for stained-glass work. It’s adhesive backed, and after working out the best way to apply it, he coated the rails with the stuff. As you can see above, the new mates perfectly with the old, and keeps that locomotive chugging along.

If you’ve got copper foil left over after this hack, there’s tons of other uses for it. Perhaps building your own flex sensors is worth a try.

Lego NXT Creations Are Even Cooler With WiFi On Board

November 12, 2011 by 2 Comments

nxt-wifi

The folks at Dexter Industries have just wrapped up a week of Lego NXT projects, most of which centered on the use of their NXT WiFi sensor. Developed over the last few months, the group has been hard at work refining their design and getting some of the kinks worked out, so now you too can control your NXT creations sans wires.

The demonstrations have covered various topics throughout the week, starting out with a short tutorial on how to use a computer to communicate with the NXT device using the TCP protocol. After taking a look at WiFi power-saving capabilities, they touched on pinging other networked machines as well as querying DNS records from an NXT device. An NXT-based webserver was the next project on the list, as was remote robot control over the Internet. Finally, they wrapped the week up by configuring their Lego robot to send a tweet.

If getting your NXT creations on the move with full-fledged network access is something that sounds interesting, be sure to check out their site for downloads, a WiFi manual, and more.