Teardown Of A 2026 LEGO SMART Brick

March 18, 2026 by Maya Posch 31 Comments

LEGO SMART brick from its side. (Credit: EvilmonkeyzDesignz, YouTube)

At the beginning of March this year LEGO released their new SMART brick, which looks like a 2×4 stud brick and is filled to the brim with sensors, LEDs, NFC and Bluetooth functionality, as well as a purported custom ASIC. The central idea behind it appears to be to add a lot of interactivity to LEGO builds while allowing for mesh-style communication with other SMART bricks. Naturally, this makes it a great subject for a teardown, which is what [EvilmonkeyzDesignz] over on YouTube did in a recent video.

Normally the only way you can purchase one of these new bricks is by buying them as part of a ‘Smart Play’ set, but someone was selling singular bricks on EBay. As the brick is inductively recharged, it’s pretty well-sealed, requiring a fairly destructive opening method.

Directly below the transparent top is a speaker, with the opposing PCB on the main body containing a microphone as well as a number of RGB LEDs. On the opposite side of this PCB we find the photo sensor, but to get to this part of the PCB the copper wires that wrap around the entire main assembly have to be disconnected from the PCB’s side pads with some force as they’re apparently pressed in place without the use of solder.

Continue reading “Teardown Of A 2026 LEGO SMART Brick” →

LEGO Machine Plays Tic-Tac-Toe Without Electronics

March 16, 2026 by Lewin Day 10 Comments

Tic-Tac-Toe is a relatively simple game, and one of the few which has effectively been solved for perfect play. The nature of the game made it possible for [Joost van Velzen] to create a LEGO machine that can play the game properly in an entirely mechanical fashion.

The build features no electronics to speak of. Instead, it uses 52 mechanical logic gates and 204 bits of mechanical memory to understand and process the game state and respond with appropriate moves in turn. There are some limitations to the build, however—the game state always begins with the machine taking the center square. Furthermore, the initial move must always be played on one of two squares—given the nature of the game though, this doesn’t really make a difference.

It’s also worth heading over to the Flickr page for the project just to appreciate the aesthetics of the build. It’s styled in the fashion of an 18th-century automaton or similar. It’s also been shared on LEGO Ideas where it’s raised quite a profile.

If you’ve ever wanted to think about computing in a mechanical sense, this build is a great example of how it can be done. We often see some fun LEGO machines around these parts, from massive parts sorters to somewhat-functional typewriters.

Continue reading “LEGO Machine Plays Tic-Tac-Toe Without Electronics” →

Making A Bladeless Tesla Turbine Generator In LEGO

March 13, 2026 by Maya Posch 2 Comments

The Tesla turbine is a bladeless centripetal-flow turbine invented by Nikola Tesla in 1913, using the boundary-layer effect rather than having a stream of gases or a fluid impinge on blades. Recently [Jamie’s Brick Jams] constructed one using LEGO to demonstrate just how well these turbines work compared to their bladed brethren.

Since it uses the boundary-layer effect, the key is to have as much surface area as possible. This means having many smaller discs stacked side by side with some spacing between them.

Interestingly, the air that is directed against the turbine will travel inwards, towards the axle of the discs and thus requiring some way to vent the air. In the video a number of design prototypes are tested to see how they perform before settling on a design suitable for a functional generator.

The first discs are printed in PLA with an FDM printer, which are put on a shaft with 1 mm spacers. What becomes clear during testing is that these turbines can reach ridiculous speeds, but torque is really quite weak until you hit very high RPMs, well beyond 10,000 RPM. This is a bit of an issue if you want to drive any load with it, especially on start-up, but managed to propel a walker robot as a quick torque test.

Continue reading “Making A Bladeless Tesla Turbine Generator In LEGO” →

The LEGO-lookalike displaying [Paul]'s dashboard

LEGO Space Computer Made Full Size, 47 Years On

March 5, 2026 by Tyler August 10 Comments

There’s just something delightful about scaled items. Big things shrunk down, like LEGO’s teeny tiny terminal brick? Delightful. Taking that terminal brick and scaling it back to a full-sized computer? Even better. That’s what designer [Paul Staal] has done with his M2x2 project.

In spite of the name, it actually has a Mac Mini M4 as its powerful beating heart. An M2 might have been more on-brand, but it’s probably a case of wanting the most horsepower possible in what [Paul] apparently uses as his main workstation these days. The build itself is simple, but has some great design details. As you probably expected, the case is 3D printed. You may not have expected that he can use the left stud as a volume control, thanks to an IKEA Symfonisk remote hidden beneath. The right stud comes off to allow access to a wireless charger.

The minifigs aren’t required to charge those airpods, but they’re never out of place.

The 7″ screen can display anything, but [Paul] mostly uses it either for a custom home assistant dashboard, or to display an equalizer, both loosely styled after ‘screen’ on the original brick. We have to admit, as cool as it looked with the minifigs back in the day, that sharp angle to the screen isn’t exactly ergonomic for humans.

Perhaps the best detail was putting LEGO-compatible studs on top of the 10:1 scaled up studs, so the brick that inspired the project can sit securely atop its scion. [Paul] has provided a detailed build guide and the STLs necessary to print off a brick, should anyone want to put one of these nostalgic machines on their own desk.

We’ve covered the LEGO computer brick before, but going the other way–putting a microcontroller and display in the brick it to run DOOM. We’ve also seen it scaled up before, but that project was a bit more modest in size and computing power.

The History Of The View-Master

February 19, 2026 by Al Williams 27 Comments

We are going to bet that as a kid, you had a View-Master. This toy has been around for decades and is, more or less, a handheld stereoscope. We never thought much about the device’s invention until we saw a recent video from [View Master Travels and Peter Dibble]. It turns out that the principle of the whole thing was created by the well-known [Charles Wheatstone]. However, it was piano repairman [William Gruber] who invented what we think of as the View-Master.

[Gruber] didn’t just work on normal pianos, but complex player pianos and, in particular, the pianos used to record player piano rolls. He was also, as you might expect, a stereo photography enthusiast. Many of the ideas used in automating pianos would show up in the View-Master and the machines that made the reels, too. In the 1930s, stereoscopes were not particularly popular and were cumbersome to use. Color film was also a new technology.

Continue reading “The History Of The View-Master” →

LEGO Orrery Gets A Real-Time Drive Upgrade

February 17, 2026 by Lewin Day 4 Comments

An orrery is a beautiful type of mechanical contrivance, built to demonstrate the motion of heavenly objects. LEGO happens to offer just such a device, built using its Technic line of blocks, shafts, and gears. Only, it has a serious limitation—it has to be cranked manually to make it spin the Earth around the sun. [Görkem] set out to fix this glaring oversight with some good old-fashioned hardware.

The setup removes just five LEGO pieces from the original design, eliminating the hand crank from the mechanism. In its place, [Görkem] installed a NEMA 17 stepper motor, paired with a custom PCB mounted on the back. That carries an ESP32 microcontroller and a TMC2208 stepper motor driver set up for silent drive. Rigged up like so, the orrery can simulate the motion of the Earth and Moon around the Sun in real time. There’s also a knob to track back and forth in time, and a button to reset the system to the correct real-time position.

The final build looks great, combining the LEGO Technic parts with some chunky electronics and 7-segment displays that make it a wonderful techy desk decoration. Down the line, [Görkem] hopes to offer a plug-and-play kit to others who wish to duly animate their own LEGO orrery sets (set #42179).

We love a good LEGO build around these parts. We’ve featured everything from parts sorters to functional typewriters in the past.

Continue reading “LEGO Orrery Gets A Real-Time Drive Upgrade” →

The Complicated Legacy Of Mind Controlled Toys

February 17, 2026 by Tom Nardi 15 Comments

Imagine a line of affordable toys controlled by the player’s brainwaves. By interpreting biosignals picked up by the dry electroencephalogram (EEG) electrodes in an included headset, the game could infer the wearer’s level of concentration, through which it would be possible to move physical objects or interact with virtual characters. You might naturally assume such devices would be on the cutting-edge of modern technology, perhaps even a spin-off from one of the startups currently investigating brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).

But the toys in question weren’t the talk of 2025’s Consumer Electronics Show, nor 2024, or even 2020. In actual fact, the earliest model is now nearly as old as the original iPhone. Such is the fascinating story of a line of high-tech toys based on the neural sensor technology developed by a company called Neurosky, the first of which was released all the way back in 2009.

Yet despite considerable interest leading up to their release — fueled at least in part by the fact that one of the models featured Star Wars branding and gave players the illusion of Force powers — the devices failed to make any lasting impact, and have today largely fallen into obscurity. The last toy based on Neurosky’s technology was released in 2015, and disappeared from the market only a few years later.

I had all but forgotten about them myself, until I recently came across a complete Mattel Mindflex at a thrift store for $8.99. It seemed a perfect opportunity to not only examine the nearly 20 year old toy, but to take a look at the origins of the product, and find out what ultimately became of Neurosky’s EEG technology. Was the concept simply ahead of its time? In an era when most people still had flip phones, perhaps consumers simply weren’t ready for this type of BCI. Or was the real problem that the technology simply didn’t work as advertised?

Continue reading “The Complicated Legacy Of Mind Controlled Toys” →