New Lego smart-play system | Hacker News Reader

New Lego smart-play system

lego.com

73 pointsacoye50 comments

I'm very confused by this one. I can't tell what it really does. With Mindstorms, We Do, and Spark, you can build things that interact because you have motors, sensors, remotes, a programmable hub. This... makes noise and flashes lights?

Looks like it has an IMU built in, so if it has wireless it could easily integrate with some kind of software system like those. Seems like right now it's just so your space ship can make vroom sounds

It’s a 2 x 4 Lego brick with a speaker/lightsand custom ASIC built-in, with light and sound sensors, reacting to IOT beacons that allow different sounds or light sequences. And it’s rechargeable like an electric toothbrush. It also has accelerometers that change the sounds as you twist and turn them around. The sounds themselves are generated, with the speaker driven by an onboard synthesiser.

And it's rechargable, like e-waste. >sigh<

The most concrete part I get is that it has a recognition and positioning system built-in, so it can recognize the IDs and relative positions of nearby beacons. Beacons are inside bricks, tags and minifigures. The bricks seem to also have some kind of color sensor to detect the color of nearby normal bricks.

Then it does ... something with that information.

From the promo it almost looked as if that data was fed to an LLM that could then generate an audio response that fits to the play scene. Something like "You are a <Lego Star Wars minifigure>. You are <sitting> in a <vehicle: air plane>. The vehicle is <turning along the Z axis>. What do you say?" (Where the stuff inside the brackets is inferred from the nearby beacons and the rest would be a fixed prompt template)

But that would require the bricks to have an internet connection, and I have no idea if that's the case.

Yep. The initial marketing video makes it seem like a "brain+motor" super-brick that can somehow turn minifigs into robots and autonomously drive vehicles. But no, it's just a speaker + couple LEDs and a proximity sensor.

It's still a neat toy, but way oversold.

As far as I can tell, it's Amiibo, but Lego. The 'smart brick' has a couple sensors, speakers, and lights, including an NFC-ish reader. The minifigs and 'smart cards' are your amiibos that tell the brick what to do.

It definitely doesn't look like it's aspiring to be the programmable environment that Mindstorms was. There may be a way for a tech enthusiast to make custom smart cards and logic, but I wouldn't count on it. Would be happy to be proven wrong.

Doesn't it have sensors too? I recall reading about proximity sensors to other smart bricks, as well as accelerometer and orientation sensors.

>Accelerometer detects movement, tilt, and gesture

>proprietary Neighbour Position Measurement (NPM) system uses precision copper coils to let LEGO SMART bricks sense distance, direction, and orientation between multiple LEGO SMART Bricks.

Until it can trigger motors it doesn't feel super exciting to me.

Just like the Light & Sound sets from the 80s.

https://www.les-archives-de-joe.net/article-108-lego-espace-...

Except now it has an accelerometer too, and the sounds are more than just a siren, so your spaceship can make a swoosh noise when you fly it around. This is what we wanted.

All of their replacements for Mindstorms just come across as pieces that should have been added to the line. It's really disappointing that the discontinued it with no real replacement.

It's disappointing that the company famous for making toys today that work with 50 year old bricks couldn't have kept things in the Mindstorms "ecosystem" even if replacing/new - so that those in the know could keep building on it.

Its not mindstorms but Edison is LEGO compatible and is a nice platform. https://meetedison.com/

More info from Lego: https://brickset.com/article/128822/smart-play-fact-sheet

Hoping there will be an alternative to using a phone app for:

>Firmware updates and diagnostics are handled via the LEGO SMART Assist app.

> Series of modular synthesisers produce real-time audio, minimising memory load. > Miniature speaker is acoustically tuned through internal air spacing to amplify and clarify sound within the LEGO SMART Brick’s enclosure. > Responsive audio effects are tied to live play actions; there are no pre-recorded clips.

Very interesting!

Programmable logic toys like this formed the way I see the world — a system of states, conditional flow between states and the chance to design, understand and debug the system.

I had Lego Mindstorms and Gen X had Logo/Turtle.

With AI perhaps programmable logic will go the way of toy steam engines and crystal radios, and with it the worldview of those who grew up seeing the world as logic flows

To be clear, the SMART brick is not much of a "programmable logic toy", topping out at "if near X, play U sound".

Your last paragraph is spot on though.

It looks like this works without a phone now I'm reading more into it, when I saw the announcement on social media I assumed it would just be a brick that can signal to or be tracked by a phone which is far less interesting.

Good to see a move away from trying to bring a tablet/phone into this kind of play.

Yes, they made this explicit in the "fact sheet"

>... LEGO SMART Bricks can talk to each other directly - no app, central hub, or external controller required.

The linked behind-the-scenes story gives a few more interesting insights https://www.lego.com/en-us/smart-play/article/innovation

BTS/Making Of article:

https://www.lego.com/en-us/smart-play/article/innovation

I wonder how it responds to being chewed.

This reads like an unbranded version of Lego Mario. Which is absolutely fine by me.

Yes, I thought the same thing.

My son loves Lego Mario and the app. He'll even go through the building instructions of kits he doesn't have just to see how they are built. The instructions in the app are super clear, animated, and the model can be rotated at any step to check whether the real-life model is correctly built.

Going back to paper instructions after using the app is a pain.

Is this going to be augmented reality?

Like physical bricks that can be moved IRL and then you have it synchronized with a virtual environment.

Lego used to have kits with electronics and motors but were always too expensive for me to afford…

+1 for the "why not extend the existing range" brigade

Also, another chance to post this old school version:

https://youtu.be/oPqRwCILbmU

I'm guessing this is post-patent expiration innovation happening at LEGO these days to counteract the growing number of generics.

Desperately lacking a sound elevator pitch, eh?

The whole Mario figures seem to provide the same level of interactivity. Not something new for the kids.

Someone watched Small Soldiers and mistook it for an instruction manual.

Watch this be like, $40 for a single brick thing.

I like this and can't wait to see what loopy things people will come up with.

Of all the ways "smart" could have been injected in to Lego these days, this is as robust as it gets.

I hate to be negative, but this just seems reminiscent of consumer video game hype in the 1990s; where things never lived up to the hype.

I don't have kids, but if I did, I would probably not go for Lego but for 3D-Printing.

It shouldn't be hard to print pieces that can snap together. In all kinds of colors and all kinds of forms.

I imagine the adventure of printing new pieces would be a fun thing for the kids and the parents. And when the kids are old enough, they can print pieces on their own. And a bit later design pieces on their own.

Would there be any downside to this approach?

> It shouldn't be hard to print pieces that can snap together

I have some news for you. Lego piece tolerance is nuts. I think it is down to 2 micrometers. You can't achieve that in consumer 3d printers.

Now, you can make something that kinda works like lego but it wont have the structural integrity for advanced builds.

You can easily print bricks that work. They will just require more force to assemble than normal because you have to make them slightly undersized to make up for the lower tolerance.

Just think of how many 3d prints you've seen that consist of multiple parts friction for together.

> Just think of how many 3d prints you've seen that consist of multiple parts friction for together.

I've seen probably 10s, ranging from amateur-who-just-unpacked-their-printer to acquaintance who runs a business doing 3D printed products, and none of them come close to the experience of lego bricks, so far I'm not sure I'd actually call it "work". Stack 10 of these "custom" lego bricks and place them next to another stack of 10, and they almost certainly won't be as aligned as proper lego bricks, not to mention the whole thing will fall apart a lot easier.

Also: try taking them apart a hundred times and sticking them together again. If the parts initially stuck together strongly, chances are one of the parts will break down.

This. Even resin printers only get you kind of in the neighborhood of tolerance. Lego primarily uses injection molding for their parts. Their molds are insanely tight and low tolerance. One of the key costs of Lego bricks is the lifecycle of the molds. They don't last forever and lose tolerance over the course of several hundred thousand injections. Managing these molds and the sheer variety of parts they produce borders on logistical insanity. It is one of the most impressive logistics operations on the planet. I can build a functional car with fewer discrete pieces than large modern lego sets.

Not only tolerance, but also the fact that fused deposition is just not as accurate/dense/strong as injection molding when it comes to the building-blocks application.

disclaimer: i'm not a materials scientist, just a tinkerer who 3D prints and wishes they had the capability to do injection molding.

What you _can_ do is add slots for magnets. You can totally make "snap on" toys like this but it's a different concept.

Printed pieces typically only have a single purpose, and lego-like snap together tolerances are hard to get working right with a 3d printer. Hell, they're hard to get right for the mass produced lego no-name duplicates. It can be fun to design shapes in tinkercad, but not as accessible for small children as just putting plastic bricks together.

3D printing would be good at making figurines and such, but you can't easily replicate the Lego system's modularity without their high tolerances.

That being said, it should be feasible to make something that allows easily programming Arduino and raspberry pi to interact with legos, similar to how their Mindstorms line worked. That would be the best of both worlds.

There are off-brand budget Lego blocks available and they're (in my experience) all awful. Legos are very precisely manufactured to fit together smoothly, if the off-brand ones made in a factory can't replicate that then I don't have much hope for small-scale 3D printing.

The gap is reducing significantly - I have collected and built Lego for a long time and had this opinion but have recently discovered Lumibricks (formerly Funwhole) - excellent designs, and around 1/2 the price of Lego (but they all include lighting elements) and having put them together I can say they feel exactly like Lego. I believe there are other brands of similar quality.

No sure what exactly you mean by "off-brand", but I have recently bought big sets from Mould King and Cada and they are perfectly fine. Not only are they cheap, I'd say the color consistency is even a bit better. The sets themselves are great, really creative, challenging to build even for older kids, something Lego stopped doing many years ago.

Not to discourage you, but it sounds like you'd be getting into a nerdy programmer dad hobby instead of just giving your kids toys. I doubt your children would be interested in watching you for hundreds of hours while you learn to use 3d modeling software and debug printer feed speeds. And once they were old enough (10-13+) to appreciate technical slogs, why wouldn't they do something cooler like make actual robots instead of reproducing a toy that you can buy a much better version of for $10?

I actually think what you suggest _would_ be brilliant if there was a printer that printed as nice and detailed parts as Lego does from ABS. The digital ecosystem for that would be crazy.

But.

Modern consumer printers are way better than decade ago but they still sort of suck if you want any fine details.

"It shouldn't be hard to print pieces that can snap together."

It's actually quite hard to print pieces that are functional and look nice.

Modern consumer 3D printers sort of suck for small details still. If all you print are Lego Dublo sized parts. And print them from ABS. You might succeed _sometimes_.

PLA the cheapest default plastic for filaments for extruders loses fit quite fast (I've tried). So ball joints etc will get loose pretty soon.

"Would there be any downside to this approach?"

Well, the adventure currently is the printing part and it's mostly not fun but one of those activities masochistic engineers (like myself) take up as a hobby.

The consumer 3D printers are improving! Maybe one day. But the material physics are not that comforting there.

Can confirm everything. PLA is completely unusable for this as it quickly deforms under constant pressure, so it is impossible to have a stable press fit with it. ABS would be the obvious choice (since Lego is ABS), but it's difficult to print. Generally, a press fit with ABS that can be handled by kids (so easy enough to create and remove), but still being sufficiently stable so that it can be handled, requires extremely tight tolerances which you will not be able to achieve with an FDM printer. Even very good FDM printers with small nozzles will have dozens of micrometers in tolerance, which is too large - pieces will either be almost impossible to fit, or they will just fall apart at the slightest movement. Resin printing is better, but again, the material is too soft and will not be able to withstand the pressures long-term. Even if you use special durable resin, it will deform quite quickly under constant pressure.

I would suggest PETG.

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