Lego's Smart Brick Gives the Iconic Analog Toy a New Digital Brain

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: At CES in Las Vegas today, Lego has unveiled its new Smart Play platform, aimed at taking its distinctly analog plastic blocks and figures into a new world of tech-powered interactive play -- but crucially one without any reliance on screens. Smart Play revolves around Lego's patented sensor- and tech-packed brick. It's the same size as a standard 2 x 4 Lego brick, but it is capable of connecting to compatible Smart Minifigures and Smart Tags and interacting with them in real time. By pairing these components, kids big and small can create context-appropriate sounds and light effects as they play with the Danish company's toys.

[...] Lego is claiming this Smart Play platform developed in house by the company's Creative Play Lab team in collaboration with Capgemini's Cambridge Consultants "features more than 20 patented world-firsts within its technology." The heart of the system is the Smart Brick's custom-made chip, measuring smaller than a standard Lego stud. Other elements crammed into the eight-stud brick are an LED light array, accelerometers, light sensors, and sound sensor, and even a miniature speaker. The internal battery will supposedly work even after years of inactivity, and to avoid any need for cable access to the Smart Brick once it's built into a beloved creation, Lego has also added wireless charging. Indeed, Lego has made a charging pad that will power up several Smart Bricks simultaneously.

That all-important brain chip is a 4.1-millimeter custom mixed-signal ASIC chip running a bespoke Play Engine, which interprets motion, orientation, and magnetic fields. A copper coil assembly enables the brick's tag recognition, while a proprietary "Brick-to-Brick position system" uses these coils to sense distance, direction, and orientation between multiple Smart Bricks. Moreover, Lego claims this use of multiple Smart Bricks creates a "self-organizing network" that requires no setup, no app, no central hub, nor external controllers -- and so no screens. A Bluetooth-based "BrickNet" protocol shares the data between the Smart Bricks.

Sounds are handled by a tiny analog synthesizer putting out real-time audio (thus minimizing memory load) via the brick's miniature speaker, which uses the brick's internal air spaces to amplify sound. As a result, the audio effects are apparently immediate and can be used to enhance play with real-time sound. Lego insists there are no prerecorded clips of lightsabers or other pieces of audio being used as a cheat. Just like the Smart Minifigs, the 2 x 2 studless tile tags trigger sounds, lights, or behaviors tied to where they are placed or how they are played with. They communicate with other components through near-field magnetic connections. Each tile has a unique digital ID, which is read by the brain brick, while the minifigures -- outwardly identical to standard minifigs -- carry their unique digital ID on an internal chip.

What about blocks for C code?

[JamesTRexx]

One block for every C keyword and data type to build a physical program.
That would make the Technics series awesome and me never leave the house again. Probably.

Re:

[Z80a]

That sounds more like a scratch thing

Re: What about blocks for C code?

[greytree]

Don't stop there - I want C++ blocks with templates and lambdas !

Re:

[SoCalChris]

I haven't seen them in years, but you might like the Capsela toys [wikipedia.org].

Re:

[ryen]

Gonna suck when you run out of semi-colon pieces

So this it

[jovius]

I have wondered about how an evil AI overlord can transcend into the physical world.

One day the Legos will step on us.

Re:

[Z80a]

Don't worry, we're not making an AI that has human like feelings, instead we will create one that grants your wishes and answer your questions, and japan probably will put it in several robotic catfox things that offer "contracts" for the wishes.

Will it be a spaceship? A helicopter? A toilet?

[drinkypoo]

Actual copy from the website.

Every lego brick can be a toilet with enough imagination

Lego 'tech'...?

[coofercat]

Is it just me, or has Lego always struggled with 'tech'? I mean, waaay back when they used to do Technic sets it looked like they might be on to something. Then they stopped making them.

Then they did Mindstorms, which also looked really promising... then they stopped that too.

The did another 'tech' option a couple of years back - was insanely expensive if I recall, I believe also has been canned.

Now this... how long before they kill this one too?

All of this is a real shame - it'd be great to be able to make

Re:

[stripes]

Yesh, the original mindstorms were discontinued, and they did a second round of mindstorms which were not compatible with the first round (I think the sensors and motors were, the actual CPU brick (which was like 15x60 & tall enough to fit) which was the expensive part was not.

I don’t think technics were ever discontinued, they certainly have a ton of technics parts in modern UCS kits, the whole substructure of the larger Star Wars legos are technics parts.

Right now the “good bet”

Re:

[Iamthecheese]

>the number of people who equate âoeprogrammingâ and âoefunâ are vanishingly small

Programming is an absolute blast. It conforms perfectly to the build/play that humans are built to enjoy. Programming with heavy constraints and the requirement to build a particular thing in a particular way is boring. Give a kid these bricks and watch him play and learn. Try to teach him with them and watch him start to hate the bricks.

Re:

[greytree]

I second that - simply stopping making a product and then making something similar - but different - pisses me off.

Yes Google, this Fuck Off is for you.

Re:

[jsepeta]

Lego had a programming language for K-12 called Lego Logo. Whatever happened to that?

Mindstorms could have been upgraded to use bricks with built in USB interfaces, but they lost interest just as I bought my first set.

Here's hoping Lego makes an SDK so that this project grows legs.

sigh

[bugs2squash]

dammit, it's bricked

This is more for the kids than adults...

[Supp0rtLinux]

My overall thought is this is going to be more for kids that actually play with Lego's than for adults who tend to build and collect them and put on shelves for viewing. My 5 year old would love something like this for his Lego T-rex or his Technic Grave Digger, but as an adult I doubt I'd care for this as a general rule. An exception may be something like the Soundwave Transformer (imagine sounds as the cassettes eject and transform), but still... even on my shelf I'm unlikely to have it make any more soun

Modulex

[Travelsonic]

I really wish they'd bring back the Modulex line of bricks (which was meant for architects and capable of making proper scale buildings due to the 5:5 width/length ratio (vs LEGO's 6.5:5 width/length). If I want to make scale models using LEGOs currently, I CAN, but there are some tricks I'd need to employ that would blow the size of my model up even more size-wise (and given the size of LEGOs some of the model ideas I want to make can get kinda hefty).

and the bright side

[Growlley]

they never need to brick it.

analog rant

[aRTeeNLCH]

I came here for an "analog" word abuse rant, since many real world things are now called something something analog, if it means you don't use your mobile phone, if it's without anything online, etcetera. But analog has a specific meaning, an analogue clock has hands that move in an analogy to the shadow of a sundial (and to the sun if course), a fuel gauge moves from up to down as the tank gets empty, etcetera, there is some analogy to the real world.

Then it dawned on me, Lego, real world, analogy, ... W