lego technic
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Using a Lego robot to defeat freemium game roadblocks
If current trends are any indication, freemium gaming isn't going anywhere, leaving players to make some personal choices in their gaming. Do you bite the bullet and pay premiums for in-game currency that's usually necessary to play the game properly? Do you grind for hours to scrape together the tiny bits of money you can earn through normal play? Or do you learn to build a Lego robot to do the grinding for you? Yes, build a robot. That delightful science solution is exactly what one addicted player of Jurassic Park Builder did. Much like Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff and Simpsons Tapped Out, Jurassic Park Builder requires players to either buy in-game currency or check in randomly throughout the day to tap on dinosaurs to earn money without paying. Uli Kilian loved the game, but didn't want to deal with the freemium roadblocks of the iPad title. So he built a robot out of a Lego Technic kit to tap on the dinosaurs for him. You can see a video of the iPad-playing robot below. The folks over at Wired have a gallery of photos of Kilian's robot which you can find right here. Perhaps we should be happy that Lego Technic kits aren't in every home. We can only imagine the sort of anti-robot DRM that would eventually pop up to stop players from using their Lego bot as a digital gold mining tool.
Lego motorized wheelchair joins Mindstorms NXT alumni (video)
It's been a while since we've come across a Lego project that's on par with a certain Pixar hero or the Rubiks solving robots, but Simon Burfield's brick-based motorized wheelchair definitely ranks close. He's cobbled together seven Mindstorm NXT micro-computers (programmed in RobotC), 14 motors, 16 touch sensors and a Technic frame to build a chair capable of carting around 200 pounds of Lego obsessed humanity. As functional as it is, the creator aims to improve the build with wireless control via Android, a task he says should be "very straightforward" over Bluetooth. If you'd like to see the demo in all its noisy glory, check out the video after the break.
Fully working Super8 film projector built totally out of Lego, well almost (video)
Projecting Super8 film is a largely unnecessary hassle these days, but those words are clearly meaningless to camera nut Friedemann Wachsmuth. His painstakingly constructed Lego projector runs at a rickety 24fps without mangling celluloid, and with only the most minor use of non-Lego components (lens, lamp, spindles, bah who's counting?). The contraption serves no purpose other than to hurl photons of pure geek passion at white-ish walls, and previous Lego viewfinders and shutter releases are mere pecks on the cheek by comparison. Turn up your volume before you hit the video because the rattliness of this thing is all part of the love.
Lego bot built to test Kno's tablet textbook, human overlords watch gleefully (video)
Just because the first few tablet textbooks have shipped doesn't mean that members of Kno's development team are resting on their laurels. Product testing on the Kno tablet continues -- and it looks like Lego is doing the heavy lifting. They've put our favorite plastic building blocks to work by constructing a Kno stress tester out of Lego Technic parts. The robot checks both the Kno's ambient light sensor and the ability of its touchscreen to accurately track the system's pen swipes and flicks. Though not as intricate as a Lego replica of a 2000+ year old mechanical computer, the robot -- with its hypnotic pendulum-like motion -- is still a sight to behold. Check the video after the break.
Apple engineer uses Lego to rebuild ancient Greek mechanism, will surely try to patent it (video)
The Antikythera Mechanism is what you call truly old school technology. Argued to be the world's oldest known computer, this ancient Greek invention was used some time circa 100BC to calculate and "predict celestial events and eclipses with unprecedented accuracy." Skipping past the two millennia in which it lay lost on a sea floor somewhere, the Mechanism has now been recreated by an Apple software engineer by the name of Andrew Carol, who has lovingly pieced 1,500 Lego Technic blocks together, creating 110 gears and four gearboxes in total. Each box is responsible for performing one piece of arithmetic, and when the resulting machine is fed with appropriate calendar data, it spits out a (hopefully accurate) prediction for the next time a solar eclipse should occur. All well and good, but we're really just amazed by the beauty of those gears working. Check them out after the break.
Steam powered USB charger keeps your iPod alive with Victorian sensibility
We love this steam powered USB charging device. It's well built, useful, loud, and totally anachronistic -- the same could be said of many of our editors here. According to the inventor, the thing is based on a Jensen #75 steam engine, which is used to drive a Lego Technic motor. The motor, in turn, feeds into a voltage regulator circuit, providing a continuous 5V charge to which ever USB device you might connect to it. This prompts us to ask a few obvious questions, including: "when is someone going to build us an appropriate steampunk PMP to go with the thing?" And, of course, "aren't Legos awesome?" Video after the break.
Robot crab prototype boasts Technics today, terror tomorrow
It may look like something that emerged from a DIY enthusiast's basement, but a post-graduate student at the University of Bath says the robot crab pictured above could one day change the way underwater exploration is conducted. As with so many other robots, that feat is done in no small part by mimicking the behavior of an animal, in this case a crab, which obviously lends itself particularly well to traveling both on land and underwater. Of course, it is just a Lego Technic-built prototype at the moment, so that latter bit is a tad lacking, but the man behind the bot says that a future model will boast full amphibious capabilities, along with better stability under a variety of different conditions.[Via Daily Mail]