lego

339 Articles

Lego Minifig Multimeter Makes Resistor Sorting A Lot More Fun

March 17, 2011 by 21 Comments

lego_minifig_multimeter

While there’s typically not much room on our work bench for toys, [David] over at Robot Room has put together a pretty cool multimeter for which we would make an exception.

His Lego Minifig multimeter is constructed using mostly standard off-the-shelf Legos, and a pair of Minifigs he modified to suit his needs. Translucent Minifig heads were sourced online to allow the neck-mounted LEDs to shine through, and each of the bodies were drilled out in several places to accommodate the wires he uses to take measurements.

The multimeter will display the resistance of any item from 10 – 10,000,000 Ω, as well as measure the voltage of any battery you can manage to fit under the Minifig’s metal wrench. The multimeter takes measurements using an ATmega168, and relays that data through a serial to USB converter connected to a nearby computer. The computer is host to a .NET application he wrote which displays and speaks both the resistance and voltage values.

Keep reading to see a quick video walkthrough and a demonstration of the multimeter at work.

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LEGO Pendulum Clock

March 4, 2011 by 8 Comments

Put a case around it and it would be a grandfather clock but for now it’s a pendulum clock made from LEGO pieces. The video after the break shows a great overview of the build. You can see the workings at several different angles, as well as a clip that has been sped up to show the movement of the weights over time. One weight, made from dead AA batteries, drives the clock and the other weight switches the winding motor. That motor acts to automatically wind the clock when the drive weight reaches the end of its rope.

This is a nice departure from the majority of clock projects we see as it utilizes mechanical concepts instead of electronic. Most of [Pmroskelly’s] build details are shared as comments on the Picasa album found at the link above. There are also some other videos such as the one showing how the escapement works.

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Mystery Box Out Of Lego

February 23, 2011 by 8 Comments

[Todd] recently completed completed his biggest LEGO project, and its pretty wild. The Mystery Box is an 8 compartment LEGO brick puzzle box, covered in a psychedelic pattern of interconnecting question marks.

The question mark pattern was inspired by a few things, the book called “The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime” contained an illustration that looked sort of like a M.C. Escher painting, which with some looking around brought up tessellation. With the look in mind [Todd] sat down with a paint program, drew out a grid, and started flood filling blocks until the pattern was perfect.

In puzzle box tradition, to gain access to the contents you must remove each compartment in the specific mystery order, and to accomplish this was no easy task. Lego Digital Designer was used to prototype everything on the box and then once happy, [Todd] broke the model down for a parts count.

Nearly 8,000 parts, 35 brick orders, and some long waits, the box was finally completed and its definetly worth a look. If you’re not that extreme, they also make cool electronics enclosures.

LEGO Wah-wah Pedal

January 20, 2011 by 9 Comments

Here’s a guitar wah-wah pedal that [Christian Munk] built. Inside you’ll find a circuit board that he etched and populated based on this design but he chose to build the housing out of LEGO. The video after the break gives you an idea of what it sounds like, but for those who’ve stepped on a LEGO piece with bare feet, his pedal pounding might make you cringe!

To manipulate the sound the pedal rocks forward and backward on a center pivot shown above as a grey “nut” sticking out the side of the frame. Inside there’s a system of LEGO gears that turn a trimpot to alter the sound. This might go along nicely with that guitar amp you hacked together.

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Lego Pinhole Camera

December 30, 2010 by 8 Comments

[Bshikin] built a pinhole camera out of Lego pieces (translated). It is a fully automated unit thanks to the integration of the NXT pieces. It took a bit of careful calculation to get the film spacing adjusted to match the focal length, and quite a bit of tape was necessary to keep light out of the film chamber. But in the end, it’s an amazing build that takes decent pictures. The software has settings for film size and speed, and takes care of exposing and advancing the frame at the click of a button. See for yourself after the break.

If you hunger for some more camera building goodness check out this SLR hand crafted from scratch.

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Lego Machine Predicts Future Eclipses

December 9, 2010 by 23 Comments

Hidden behind the white face plates of this machine are racks of gears that make up a replica of one of the oldest known mechanical computers. This is a working model of the Antikythera mechanism made from Lego pieces. In the video, which you absolutely can’t miss after the break, The machine is disassembled into its various components. Each mechanical unit takes advantage of gear ratio combinations to perform numerous levels of mathematical functions in order to display the date and time that future celestial events will occur.

The background information on the original device reads like the script for a sequel to The Goonies. Believed to date back to 100-150 BC, the stone bronze mechanism was recovered from a shipwreck around the turn of the twentieth century. The use of x-ray analysis helped to unlock the functions and confirm the theories of its operation.

Part of what makes this so interesting is the historical connection. But the production quality of the video (which to be fair, seems to be an advertisement) really brings home how complicated this process is. Now it’s time for us to watch the video a few more times, sketching out the gearing to see that this works as they say it does.

Want more of the Antikythera mechanism? Check out the model built by [Tatyana van Vark].

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Pulito: The LEGO Roomba

November 14, 2010 by 12 Comments

When [Dave] installed hardwood flooring in his house, he needed a solution to help automate the monotonous task of routine sweeping. Rather than go out and buy one of the many existing automated sweep robots out there, he decided to use his passion for LEGO Robotics to design and build a NXT based Swifferbot he calls Pulito. His version implements all the important features such as object avoidance using bump sensors, an IR beacon used to automatically return to the charging station, and a photoresistor to monitor the charge of the battery. [Dave] also includes a nifty LEGO sensor multiplexor, allowing him to save on I/O ports, which is almost worth sharing by itself.

Videos after the break.

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