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12 gifts for tireless tinkerers
They say the best gifts are the ones you make yourself. But that doesn't necessarily mean you, the gifter, needs to be doing the assembly. Sometimes the giftee will enjoy building their own present. Over the last several years the maker movement has really taken off. And whether you're shopping for an accomplished builder or someone just looking to get their toes wet, we've got a few suggestions. If there's someone in your life that's super into making everything themselves (and you love them enough to drop $1,000 on a gift for them) consider a 3D printer like the Replicator Mini+ from MakerBot. If a grand is a little extreme for you, consider a simple driver set, like 64-piece one from iFixIt. They'll be able to open up and (hopefully) put anything back together with it. If the creator in your life is more into coding than building, consider a tool like RPG Maker, or for the wee one in your life Ozobot's Evo is an excellent place to start teaching programming skills. For our full list of recommendations in all categories, don't forget to stop by our main Holiday Gift Guide hub.
Lego's 'Minecraft' clone arrives February 21st (updated)
The overlap between Minecraft's brick-building fun and Lego's actual plastic blocks was bound to happen sooner or later. Last summer, Warner Brothers rolled out an early version of Lego Worlds on Steam Early Access in order to gather feedback from players before launching the final version. Today, the company announced that official launch will happen early next year. Lego's take on Minecraft's construction techniques is set to arrive on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Steam on February 21st.
'LEGO Dimensions' makes me like things I hate
2016 has been a rough year for Ghostbusters fans. After more than a decade of rumors and false starts, the franchise finally got a new film -- but the reboot's cast of leading ladies turned a spotlight on a misogynistic minority within the fandom's community of cosplayers and prop-builders. When the dust settled, we were left with a movie too mediocre to extinguish the hate surrounding it, yet not nearly bad enough to warrant the outrage. For me, this became a personal problem: How was I to reconcile a lackluster film that I just didn't like with my weirdly fervent love of Ghostbusters? The answer, it turns out, was LEGO Dimensions.
Engadget giveaway: Win a DIY Lego drone kit courtesy of Flybrix!
One of the caveats for buying a drone is that you may only enjoy a few minutes of flight before ham-handedly smashing it into a constellation of bits and pieces. Usually, those fragments mean the end of your amateur pilot career, but with a Flybrix drone, it's a momentary setback. Just head back to the drawing board, snap a few Lego bricks together and you'll be back in business. There's a pre-programmed, Arduino capable control board for brains, along with an assortment of Lego bricks and components that should take less then 15 minutes to assemble. Download the flight control app for iOS or Android and the sky's the limit. The Lego framework also makes it easy for you your kids to mess around with customized designs. This week, three lucky readers will take home their own kit to assemble, while others can take advantage of special $20 off launch deal for basic and deluxe kits. Just head to the Rafflecopter widget below for up to three chances at winning this Flybrix drone kit. Winners: Congratulations to Kelly D. of Elmhurst Twp, PA, Jeff M. of Georgetown, TX and Brandon P. of Baton Rouge, LA!
Build your own Lego drone with these affordable kits
Lego bricks have been the foundation of so many awesome and elaborate creations, it's no wonder people have already had the idea to send them skyward in drone form. But while there are plenty of DIY tutorials around, as well as the odd prebuilt model, we haven't seen anything quite as accessible and affordable as these new Lego UAV kits from Flybrix.
ICYMI: The amazing 9-year-old 3D printer
UPDATE: This video has been removed at the request of Wareness. Today on In Case You Missed It: 9-year-old Calramon Mabalot could probably teach a STEM course, since he just 3D printed a prosthetic arm for a teacher. The whole story only touches on the charm that is this kid's YouTube channel. If he's the future, we'll be alright. We also briefly played Lego Donald Trump and followed that with a palate cleanser of a video: A dog who is afraid of a windshield wiper. As always, please share any interesting tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
Six gadgets made from LEGO bricks
By Cat DiStasio When kids play with LEGO bricks, their creations are limited only by their imaginations. A few colorful blocks can become a spacecraft, a bulldozer or a skyscraper with just a few moves. Although the LEGO builds from you childhood may not do much on their own, those colorful bricks lend themselves to amazing works of ingenuity when combined with other simple items. To showcase the vast potential of these cherished toys, we've rounded up a series of awesome gadgets made from LEGOs. Read on to learn about a working LEGO printer built by a teenager, a prosthetic arm that makes kids the star of any crowd and even a working LEGO camera that shows how it's possible to create almost anything if you want it badly enough.
ICYMI: Underwater robot snake, Earth's ocean saving and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-54715{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-54715, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-54715{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-54715").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: Princeton researchers discovered ocean currents can move most anything around the globe within 10 years; which could help replenish dying ecosystems... and also spread around pollution. Norwegian engineers came up with a mechanical snake for underwater sea inspection and simple repair jobs near oil drills. And Harvard wants to encourage kid programming with a new robot that can be used by kindergartners to high schoolers. Once that's conquered, the answer is clearly to make the MIT open-source duckcar. As always, please share any great tech or science videos you find by using the #ICYMI hashtag on Twitter for @mskerryd.
The new 'Ghostbusters' is getting its own LEGO set
The Ghostbusters reboot might be a geek's dream in more ways than one. LEGO has offered a peek at a new Ghostbusters set that recreates all the main characters and their gear in glorious detail, including the signature ECTO-1 car and an ECTO-2 motorbike. The new box of plastic bricks doesn't spoil too much of what's coming in the new movie, although there's a Red Daemon character (the new nemesis?) and hints that the assistant, Kevin, gets possessed.
'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' is getting a LEGO video game
Frustrated that The Force Awakens won't feature in any Star Wars: Battlefront DLC? No matter. While the graphics won't be quite the same, LEGO and developer TT Games will soon have you covered with a button-mashing adventure inspired by Episode VII. The upcoming title was spotted on the Xbox Games Store and through a trailer leaked on YouTube, revealing yet another brawler-platformer that's chock-full of gags and family-friendly fun. Whether it's Poe Dameron using a windscreen wiper on his X-Wing, or Rey driving a speeder with a "BB on Board" sticker, there should be plenty to keep both children and adults chuckling.
LEGO's little bot teaches kids about science and coding
Earlier today, LEGO revealed WeDo 2.0, a new robotics kit that's designed for elementary school kids. The 280-piece set enables the creation of motorized forms, okay, robots, that will help students learn the basics of engineering, science and coding. For instance, you can build Milo, the adorable one-eyed bot that's pictured, which can follow along strings of simple commands that are crafted in an accompanying app. Every time it follows a task, the corresponding icon flashes on screen so that children can see how programs are executed -- removing bugs when conflicts arise. It seems fascinating that a child in second grade could program the machine to move in a certain direction, but that's only the tip of LEGO's educational iceberg.
Lego's WeDo 2.0 gives kids a crash-course in robotics
You may not have been able to play with Lego in school, but your kids can. Lego Education has revealed the WeDo 2.0 robotics kit aimed at elementary school students, over eight years after launching the original WeDo. As before, it's designed to teach kids the basics of robotics, thanks to the Mindstorm-like sets. The new kit also replaces the old USB cables with a Bluetooth LE hub that connects to the motors and tilt sensors. The whole thing is driven by a tablet-based drag-and-drop interface that helps kids code basic robotics apps.
Researchers 3D print 'Lego bricks' of functional stem cells
A team of scientists from Beijing's Tsinghua University have reportedly devised a means of producing uniform embryonic stem cells with a 3D printer. These cells stack like organic Lego bricks and could form the structural basis for future lab-grown organs. "It was really exciting to see that we could grow embryoid body in such a controlled manner," lead author Wei Sun said in a statement. "The grown embryoid body is uniform and homogenous, and serves as a much better starting point for further tissue growth." The study published yesterday in the journal Biofabrication.
Playdate: Kart racing with Disney Princesses and stepping on LEGOs
Just when you think you're done with this whole "toys-to-life" genre of video games, nostalgia is there to pull you back in. Did you play with LEGOs as a kid? Do you like Walt Disney? Have you ever played Mario Kart? Then there's still plenty of expensive, RFID-powered toys to exploit childhood. Today, Tim Seppalla and I are looking at LEGO Dimensions' multi-franchise romp through your toy-chest and Disney Infinity's Toy Box Speedway. Is your wallet ready? Join us at 6PM Eastern / 3PM Pacific right here, on the Engadget Gaming homepage or at Twitch.tv/joystiq to find out.
ICYMI: Bro-saving weight bench, 4-gram robot and more
#fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-891327{display:none;} .cke_show_borders #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-891327, #postcontentcontainer #fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-891327{width:570px;display:block;} try{document.getElementById("fivemin-widget-blogsmith-image-891327").style.display="none";}catch(e){}Today on In Case You Missed It: A weight bench designed for people who want to lift alone has a hydraulic foot lever to save yourself from injury. A 4-gram robot can move two different ways: As an inchworm, or by flicking itself in the air with flippers that get a charge from a mild electric current. And an art project made of a 3D-printed top uses eye tracking sensors and software to let the wearer know when he or she is being stared at by responding with movement.
'Lego Dimensions' reunites the original 'Back to the Future' cast
We already knew that the upcoming Lego Dimensions video game would be a universe-bending mashup of characters from franchises including Back to the Future, Jurassic World, Ghostbusters, Lord of the Rings and, of course, The Lego Movie. Today, we found out a lot more about the voice actors behind the game, and it's a veritable treasure trove of big-name actors and some of the best video game voice talent you can find. Perhaps most notably, both Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd will reprise their roles as Marty McFly and Doc Brown. It's no surprise Lloyd is involved -- he voiced Doc in Telltale Games' Back to the Future series a few years ago and was featured in advertisements for Lego Dimensions. But Fox hasn't performed as McFly in any official capacity in years.
Lego is developing eco-friendly plastic bricks
Lego's iconic plastic bricks aren't very kind to the planet since they're made from oil-based ABS plastic, but the toy maker is planning to mend its ways. It's paying $150 million to build a sustainable materials center that will develop oil-free plastic, whether it's made from recycled plastics or an organic material. It's still early going, but the plan is to completely ditch ABS by 2030. This won't have as much of an environmental impact as getting gas-powered cars off the roads. However, Lego makes a whopping 60 billion bricks a year, and estimates that it'd cut three quarters of its carbon dioxide emissions with the switch -- this would still represent a noticeable improvement. [Image credit: Steve Ruark/AP Images for LEGO]
Bricasso 'printer' makes mosaic art out of Lego tiles
If you fancy playing with Lego blocks and you're not familiar with Jason Allemann, take a few minutes to browse his work. He's one set of hands behind JK Brickworks, a site that posts rather unique builds with the plastic bits, including gravity-powered walking animals. For his latest project, Allemann built Bricasso: a device that scans an image and then "prints" a mosaic of it using 1x1 tiles. What's more, it's constructed entirely out of Lego parts. Bricasso uses a Mindstorms EV3 color sensor to scan the source photo -- which has to be pixelated from the jump -- and saves the data needed to complete the finished piece.
Inhabitat's Week in Green: hoverboards and a 3D-printed car
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. A working hoverboard has been the elusive dream of Back to the Future fans and transportation nerds for decades. Now, Lexus claims that it has built a prototype. The company's SLIDE hoverboard uses magnetic levitation technology, similar to high-speed bullet trains, and it is cooled by liquid nitrogen. In other transportation news, the US Department of Defense is working with Malloy Aeronautics to develop a hoverbike for the Army. Getting stuck behind a big truck isn't just annoying -- it can be very dangerous. So tech giant Samsung has designed "see-through" trucks with rear-mounted video panels that display the road ahead.
JXE Streams: Exploring 'Lego Jurassic World' brick by brick
In just under two weeks, Jurassic World has absolutely demolished box office records around the globe and has raked in over $1 billion to date according to Box Office Mojo. The film series is a natural fit for video-game (and virtual reality) tie-ins and since you gals and guys enjoyed us streaming a pair of those not too long ago, we figured it'd only be fitting that we'd go back to the island with Lego Jurassic World. Join me at 7 p.m. Eastern / 4 p.m. Pacific as I wade through the muddy jungles of Isla Nublar completely blind on PlayStation 4.
