legos

BILLUND, Denmark--There are a lot of different Lego sets. There are pirate sets, Star Wars sets, city sets, space sets, and many more. But at the heart of it all, at the heart of a toy empire with many millions of passionate fans throughout the world, is the brick.

A single Lego brick is nothing special. But put two together and you can start to make things. Add another, and another, and the number of things you can make starts to go up exponentially. Let's say you had six standard four-by-two red bricks. With those pieces alone, there are … Read more

Not to be outdone by Boy Scouts who can now earn a robotics badge, a team of Girl Scouts from Iowa has created a prize-winning prosthetic device to help a 3-year-old girl born without fingers on her right hand.

The Flying Monkeys robotics team developed the BOB-1 tool as part of the FIRST Lego League (FLL) competition, an international kids' robotics program.

The Monkeys are 11 to 13 years old, including one who has a limb difference that provided inspiration for the invention. The girls consulted a prosthetics maker and an occupational therapist and came up with a design that has a platform strapped to the arm as well as a cylindrical holder for writing implements or other tools.

The device helped 3-year-old Danielle hold a pencil with her right arm and write for the first time. It also netted the Flying Monkeys an FLL Global Innovation award of up to $20,000 to patent the invention, which they have applied for (PDF).

Danielle's family has worked with the team to improve the device and would like another for a 5-year-old boy it adopted who also has a limb difference.

FLL is part of the Girl Scouts' focus on STEM skills. The FIRST Championship, which just wrapped up in St. Louis, featured the Girl Scout GENIUS team, which installed a rear-view camera and sensor system on a wheelchair to improve visibility and navigation.

I can't imagine what these girls will be inventing 10 years from now. … Read more

It's a throwback episode of Crave this week as we reminisce about Lego figurine space helmets, vintage Atari computer keyboards, and Disney's Star Tours merchandise. Also, Darth Vader puts his star power behind a new line of coffee and an adorable coin-operated robot brings panhandling into the 21st century.

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Built during World War II, the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Intrepid served with distinction in several conflicts, and performed other duties, before being decomissioned in 1974. After sailing thousands of miles around the world, the massive ship eventually became a sea, air, and space museum in New York.

Now, following all those decades of service, the Intrepid has been reimagined with Legos.

About 250,000 pieces were used to construct the 550-pound model, which is now viewable to the general public in the museum through September 2011. The ship was built by artist Ed Diment, a 39-year-old Lego … Read more

On the anniversary of Russia's triumphant manned space flight, Donald and Eric scheme to put America back on top by building a life-size, fully functioning Imperial AT-AT. Less ambitious projects are also covered, including a Lego Ghostbusters car, a 360 video capture lens for the iPhone, and a digital film roll to give analog cameras new life.

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Sure, you've built houses and perhaps even the Death Star with Lego bricks before, but how about a 4x5 large-format film camera that actually works?

It took Birmingham, Ala., photographer Cary Norton more than a year to achieve what seemed like an impossible task. He painstakingly assembled the Legotron, Mark I using a 127mm F4.7 lens that he bought on eBay for $40 and an unknown number of Lego bricks. The camera measures approximately 7 inches by 6.5 inches by 7 inches.

He says that the focal range is limited to roughly 3 feet from about 1.5 feet, which makes it ideal for portrait photography. He's now working on the Mark II, which he hopes will be able to focus to infinity and has plans for a pinhole version, too. Norton has already shot four dreamy-looking photos with this beauty, which can be viewed on his blog, alongside photos of the entire process.

Large-format cameras are typically used by professional photographers and landscape artists, some of whom include Ansel Adams and Russell Wong.

If a 4x5 film camera is too expensive, you know what to do.

(Source: Crave Asia) … Read more

With today's proliferation of tablets it can be hard to distinguish one device from the next. But here's something that sets the Kno Textbook Tablet apart (besides its big dual displays and focus on students): it's getting stress-tested by a Lego robot.

The Kno product development team needed a way to automate tests of the ambient light sensor and the note-taking stylus' interaction with the LCD touch screen. So they built a Lego robotic arm (they give it the far less sexy name of "accelerated life test apparatus") to shoulder the repetitive work.

In the behind-the-scenes video below, you'll see the arm directing the pen back and forth and up and down across a screen, while another robot makes the device itself go back and forth. The team has been testing the stylus for touch, sweep, and flick motions that mimic those of a non-robotic user taking handwritten notes. … Read more

Until today, I was unaware that engineers at Apple enjoyed spare time.

However, somehow Andrew Carol, one of Apple's software engineers, decided that it was about time he eased back from designing the computer of the future and thought a little about re-creating a computer of the past.

The Antikythera Mechanism, is, allegedly, the oldest version of a scientific computer. The Greeks, who used to be so clever that they never endured too much of a financial crisis, built it around 100 B.C.

Somehow, it disappeared into history's cracks, until it was unearthed from a shipwreck in … Read more

It's been a huge week for iOS gaming. Yesterday witnessed the arrival of a dazzling new Star Wars title, and today I've got quick takes on five more noteworthy new games--starting with a just-in-time movie tie-in.

Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4  A near-perfect replica of the outstanding console game, Lego Harry Potter (which I previewed last week) loses almost nothing in its transition to the small screen. (And for now, it's only for small screens: the game requires iOS 4.1 or later, which leaves iPads out.)

Alas, there's no option for cooperative play, and … Read more