Toy Hacks

1019 Articles

The Giant LEGO You Always Wanted To Play With

January 20, 2024 by 18 Comments

The interlocking LEGO bricks are probably one of the most versatile toys to come out of the 20th century, but aside from the Duplo larger-sized version for smaller kids, they don’t come in what you might term grown-up sizes. This has not deterred [Veranda Vikings] though, who have come up with the fantastic idea of giant LEGO bricks made from snow.

Making them is simplicity itself given enough depth of the white stuff, simply press the lid of one of those plastic LEGO storage bins into some fresh snowfall hard enough to compact  your brick, and then lift clear a perfect icy 2 by 2 brick. Most of the post is devoted to the building escapades of some very happy kids, and we can’t help envying them the opportunity. It appears that like the LEGO fries in the cafe at Legoland in Bilund, these bricks don’t quite interlock. We think that it would be possible to press the LEGO storage lid into the bottom of them though, perhaps some readers would like to experiment.

Either way, this is a hack to warm the hearts of readers worldwide, whether they live in a country with snow or not. We’re surprised Lego themselves haven’t caught on to the idea, and sold giant snow-brick moulds.

Countdown To A Spaceship Simulator

January 16, 2024 by 4 Comments

[Jon Petter Skagmo] claims that the spaceship simulator he’s working on is for his daughter, but we think there’s an excellent chance he’s looking to fulfill a few childhood dreams of his own. But no matter what generation ends up getting the most enjoyment out of it, there’s no question it’s an impressive build so far, complete with a very realistic-looking instrument display and joystick.

This is only the first in a series of builds, but our inner child is already intensely jealous. So far, [Jon] has built the instrument panel and controller that lights all buttons and runs the displays, which shows telemetry from a Falcon 9 launch. The video below goes into a lot of detail about how he built this SPI-driven instrument panel and why he made the whole thing modular, so it can be easily expanded without turning into a spaghetti-like mess.

It’s a great intro to thinking before you build, showing how he planned and built the system for maximum expandability and flexibility. Before the end, we wouldn’t surprised if he’s got quite a Kerbal Space Program controller on his hands for when the kid goes to bed.

Continue reading “Countdown To A Spaceship Simulator” →

Sound-Reactive Light Saber Flips Allegiance Via Vowel Sounds

December 29, 2023 by 4 Comments

Students [Berk Gokmen] and [Justin Green] developed an RP2040-based LED-illuminated lightsaber as a final project with a bit of a twist. It has two unusual sound-reactive modes: disco mode, and vowel detection mode.

Switching allegiances (or saber color, at least) is only a sound away.

Disco mode alters the color of the saber dynamically in response to incoming sounds. Color and brightness are altered in response to incoming frequencies picked up by the on-board microphone, making a dynamic light show that responds particularly well to music.

The second mode is vowel detection, and changes the lightsaber’s color depending on spoken sounds. The “ee” sound makes the saber red, and the “ah” sound turns it blue. This method requires a lot of processing and filtering, and in the end it works, but is quite dependent on individual speakers for calibration.

The sound functionality centers around FFTs (Fast Fourier Transforms) which are fundamental to processing signals like audio in a meaningful way, and is a method accessible to embedded devices like microcontrollers with ADCs.

The lightsaber is battery-powered and wireless, and there are loads of details about the finer points of the design (including challenges and tradeoffs) on the project page, and the source code is available on GitHub. A video demonstration and walkthrough is embedded below.

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Building A Rad Super Capacitor RC Plane

December 25, 2023 by 16 Comments

[Tom Stanton] is a fan of things like rubber band planes, and has built many of his own air-powered models over the years. Now, he’s built a model powered by a supercapacitor for a thoroughly modern twist on stored-energy flying toys.

It’s not a wholly original idea; [Tom] was inspired by a toy he bought off-the-shelf. His idea, though, was to make one that could be hand-cranked to charge it to make it more like the rubber-band planes of old. He thus built his own geared generator for the job using a big pile of magnets and 3D printed components. It’s capable of putting out around 17 volts when cranked at a reasonable speed. Hooked up to the toy plane, his hand-crank generator was able to fully charge the plane in just a few turns.

His generator was really overkill for the small toy, though. Thus, he elected to build himself a much larger supercapacitor-powered model. He wired up a pack of six supercapacitors in series, designed for roughly 18 volts. The pack was given balance leads to ensure that no individual capacitor was charged beyond its 3.0 V rating. The pack was placed inside a nice aerodynamic printed fuselage. The plane was then given a brushless motor and prop, speed controller, servos, and an RC receiver. Indeed, far from a simple throwable model, it’s a fully flyable RC plane.

The plane is quite a capable flyer with plenty of power, but a fairly short run time of just under two minutes. Though, with that said, it can be recharged in just about that same amount of time thanks to its supercapacitor power supply. [Tom] reckons it should be capable of a 1:1 crank time to flight time ratio in ideal conditions.

Supercapacitors are super cool, but we don’t see enough of them. They’ve popped up here and there, and obviously have many important applications, but we’re not sure they’ve had a real killer app in the consumer space. XV Racers were killer fun, though. Continue reading “Building A Rad Super Capacitor RC Plane” →

A hand holds a LEGO replica of a Polaroid camera. The back of the "camera" has been removed to show the sereies of Technic pieces inside that allow the camera shutter to work.

How A LEGO Set Is Born

December 19, 2023 by 11 Comments

LEGOs are the first window into making something in your head become real for many makers. The Verge dug into how a LEGO set itself goes from idea to the shelves.

While most sets come from the minds of LEGO designers, since 2008, fans can submit their own sets to LEGO Ideas for the chance to become a real product. In this case, we follow the journey of [Marc Corfmat]’s Polaroid OneStep Camera from his initial attempts at LEGO stardom with his brother [Nick] to the current set that took off.

While the initial idea and build are the seed for a new set, once the project is in the hands of LEGO, designers meticulously make revision after revision to ensure the set is enjoyable to build and any moving parts continue to function for thousands of cycles. This is all weighed against the total cost of the BOM as well as any licensing required for intellectual property. One particularly interesting part of the article is how designers at LEGO are afforded a certain number of “frames” for custom bricks which leads to some interesting hacks and collaboration as all good constraints do.

For more LEGO hacks, checkout LEGO’s long lost cousin, testing LEGO-compatible axle materials, or these giant LEGO-like pieces.

Another OmniBot 2000 Upgrade

December 4, 2023 by No comments

There were many toy robots back in the 80s that were — frankly — underwhelming by today’s standards. Back then, any old thing that rolled around with some blinking lights would impress, but the bar is higher today. Then again, some of the basic components won’t really change. You still need wheels, motors, batteries, and all that. But the computers we can bring to bear today are much better. Maybe that’s why so many people, including [mcvella], decide to give these venerable toys like the OmniBot 2000 a facelift or, maybe a better analogy, a brain transplant.

In this particular case, the brain in question is a Raspberry Pi. The robot will also sport new sensors, motor controllers, and a webcam. There is also a new battery pack in play. The project doesn’t cover working with the single powered gripper arm. The left arm isn’t motorized. There is also a cassette tape deck you could probably make do something interesting. Of course, with a Raspberry Pi, you get wireless control, and the project uses Viam to define and control the robot’s motion.

There is some retro cool factor to using a robot like Ominbot. However, we might be more tempted to just build our own. With a 3D printer, a laser cutter, and a few motors, you could make something that would be about equivalent or better with little effort.

We have seen OmniBot conversions before, particularly over on Hackaday.io. Maybe someone will convert one over to steam power.

Is Microsoft BASIC Hidden In This Educational Child’s Toy?

November 30, 2023 by 24 Comments

The VTech PreComputer 1000 is a rather ancient toy computer that was available in the distant misty past of 1988. It featured a keyboard and a variety of simple learning games, but does it also feature Microsoft BASIC? [Robin] of 8-Bit Show and Tell dove in to find out.

Officially, the PreComputer was programmable in a form of BASIC, referred to by VTech as PRE-BASIC V1.0. Given that the system has a Z80 CPU and there’s little information in the manual about this programming language, [Robin] was suspicious as to whether it was based on Microsoft BASIC-80. Thus, an examination was in order to figure out just how this BASIC implementation worked, and whether it shared anything with Microsoft’s own effort.

We won’t spoil the conclusions, but there are some strong commonalities between VTech’s BASIC and Microsoft’s version from this era. The variable names in particular are a strong hint as to what’s going on under the hood. The video is worth a watch for anyone that’s a fan of early microcomputer history, BASIC, or just the weird computer-like devices of yesteryear. We also love the idea that the PreComputer 1000 was actually quite a capable machine hiding behind a single-line LCD display.

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