lego

334 Articles

Working Tachikoma Brings The Manga To Life

April 3, 2012 by 19 Comments

This Lego Tachikoma drives and walks just like in the TV program. You simply must take a peek at the video after the break. We’ve watched it several times and don’t think there’s any editing magic going on. But the movements are so intriguing part of us thinks there’s something fishy about it.

Each leg has a wheel that is connected to a motor via chain drive. But the little guy isn’t constrained to smooth hard surfaces. When the going gets rough, he struts his stuff like an eight-year-old crossing the lawn in roller skates.

This is not just for show and you can build it yourself if you like. The link at the top has assembly instructions. You will need several specialized parts though, not the lest of which is the cement mixer drum halves that make up the rounded blue chassis pieces.

Not sure what the heck this thing is? Don’t feel bad, you’d need to be a fan of Ghost in the Shell to recognize it.

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Connecting Toy Blocks With A Universal Construction Set

March 20, 2012 by 25 Comments

We were all children at one time, and surely some of us remember the pain of trying to make one type of building block work with another type of block. The folks at the Free Art and Technology Lab have an answer for your inner child: adapters that connect any type of building block to any other type of building block.

The project is called the Free Universal Construction Kit. This  “gee, I wish I thought of that ideas” is a set of 79 play set adapter that allow any child to mix up their Duplo, Fischertechnik, Gears! Gears! Gears, K’Nex, Krinkles, Lego, Lincoln Logs, Tinkertoy, ZomeTool, and Zoob building sets in any way imaginable. Most of these adapters are up on Thingiverse, ready to be printed out with a 3D printer or sent to Shapeways.

An interesting aspect of the work of the F.A.T. Lab is the legal and intellectual property aspect; since this is the product of reverse-engineering several building sets,  it’s entirely possible the manufactures of these toys wouldn’t want adapters out in the wild. The team really covered their bases, though. Of the ten toy systems included, eight are no longer patent protected, much to the chagrin of the company behind MEGA Bloks. Adapters for the  two remaining systems – Zoob and ZomeTool – won’t be released until the patents run out in 2016 and 2022, respectively.

Check out the video after the break for the wonderful ‘a-ha moment’ one of the inventors had when watching his 4-year-old son playing with Tinker Toys and K’Nex.

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Hackaday Links: January 5, 2012

January 5, 2012 by 23 Comments

Now make it life size

Here’s a scale model of the classic Playstation game Wipeout. It uses quantum levitation, superconductors, liquid nitrogen, and incredibly detailed models of the cars in Wipeout. They’re able control the speed and direction of the cars electronically. Somebody get on making one of these I can drive. Never mind, it’s totally fake, but here’s a choo-choo that does the same thing. Thanks for the link, [Ben].

Found a use for eight copies of Deep Impact

Where do you keep all your wire? [Paul] keeps his inside VHS tapes. It’s one of the most efficient ways of storing wire we’ve seen, just don’t touch those VHS copies of the original Star Wars trilogy.

There’s MAME machines for pinball?

MAME arcade machines are old hat, but we’ve never seen something to emulate pinball. The build uses two LCD monitors, a small computer and PinMAME. There’s videos in the build log; tell us if we’re stupid for wanting to build one. Thanks go to [Adrian] for sending this one in.

LEGO binary to decimal conversion

[Carl] is doing a few experiments to see if it’s possible to build a calculating machine out of LEGO. He managed to convert four bits of binary into decimal. We’ve seen a LEGO Antikythera mechanism but nothing on the order of an Analytical Engine or some Diamond Age rod logic. Keep it up, [Carl].

Lubs and Dubs that aren’t for dubstep

The folks at Toymaker Television posted a neat demo of heart rhythms emulated with a microprocessor. It cycles through normal sinus rhythm, atrial fibrillation, atrial flutter, and everything else that can go wrong with your heart. We know some nurses that would have loved this in school.

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.

Hackaday Links: December 3, 2011

December 3, 2011 by 35 Comments

Honey, would you like some cheese? WHIRRRRRRRRR

[The Timmy] broke his manual cheese grater. It would be a waste to throw away a perfectly functional tool that’s only missing a handle, so he kicked it up a notch with a cordless drill. Now [Tim], “can grate with incredible speed and power for even the toughest of cheeses.” Anyone have a broken pepper mill?

The most adorable oscilloscope

We’re not much for plugging products, but this scope is really cool. It’s designed to fit on a breadboard and is smaller than some ICs we’ve seen (68000, so yes, it is). We’re wondering why there hasn’t been a homebrew version of this yet.

Now do an R/C castle

Here’s a minifig-sized R/C LEGO car made by [brickmodder]. It has a custom drive train and steering mechanism that uses the smallest servos [brickmodder] could find. How about an R/C pirate ship next?

It’s probably an ad for something

Here’s some sort of code thing that asks the question, “Can you crack it?” Apparently, it’s for UK cryptanalyst recruiting. You won’t get a 00-designation, but woo Bletchley Park.

Inverting an inverter

[Manfred] is putting an alternative energy setup on his land. Of course he needed an inverter to charge his batteries, so he went with a highly regarded (high price) box. What he got was anything but. You’re going to need at least ten minutes to go through this hilariously sad teardown of a high quality Taiwanese inverter. Oh, [Manfred] is awesome. Just look at his microhydro plant.

Hackaday Links: November 24, 2011

November 24, 2011 by 9 Comments

Finally an Arduino shield that does nothing

The folks at Evil Mad Scientist labs have finally created the Googly Eye Shield for Arduinos. With it’s pass-through .100 headers, it adds googly eyes to your Arduino projects. Of course, instead of in addition to the googly eyes you could add a breadboard, making it somewhat useful. A million fake internet points goes to the first person to implement Xeyes on this thing.

Phat beats from kids toys

[Ville] couldn’t afford an Akai MPC for laying down some beats. Wanting a real tactile interface, he hacked this kid’s toy. It’s just an RCA cable attached to the tiny chip inside the toy. The new line out goes to his mixers where he does some pretty impressive stuff.

Mona Lisa is Vigo the Carpathian

What did we just say about real-life Xeyes? [Geert] just made a print of the Mona Lisa follow you around the room with her eyes (Dutch, translation). The build is a pair of servos and a DIY motion capture app running on a laptop. Now we need to find a print of Vigo…

Quantifying heat sink efficiencies

[Mike] is an experimenter at heart. He was wondering about the efficiency of small, clip-on heat sinks versus the ones we use to defrost frozen food. The results are exactly as you would expect, but he did find something interesting – his experimental technique didn’t find much of a difference between thermal paste/grease/pads and no thermally conductive material.

Mini-fig sized R/C LEGO car

The guys at Brickmodder.net took a car from a LEGO set and made it remote control. The drive train and steering both use servos controlled by the smallest 3-channel receiver they could find.