One of the great advances that the Internet has brought us is that it is so easy to access content and work carried out by the community, that it is possible to locate talent wherever we look. No matter how hard we try to imagine anything, there’s always someone on the other side of a computer with an even cooler idea which could well serve to improve our experience of using, for example, a LEGO set. Which? It does not matter, close your eyes and think of one that has computers, radars or similar things.
wonderful LEGO pieces
In those sets in which you have to recreate computer screens, or any other device, it is normal that we find cards that have a drawing or sticker on one of their faces that represents them. But one Twitter user, James Brown, has gone a bit further imagining what would that same component be like but with an appearance of reality practically complete. As you can see right here below.
Very happy about this. pic.twitter.com/1FofmKbqJP
— James Brown (@ancient_james) June 7, 2022
Indeed, Brown wanted to do without the sticker and has preferred that lines of computer code be written one by one on a tiny screen controlled by a board that stores a program inside. A marvel that, of course, would add life and realism to these LEGOs… although it is also true that it would make them a little more expensive.
As you can see from the thread that he has published on his Twitter account, he explains how to do it and it seems that he is going to share all the necessary instructions so that any crafty user is encouraged to build these pieces. Moreover, even from LEGO itself they could take note and start testing with a view to selling these pieces in the future in those sets where they are present. Not so much inside the boxes with thousands of pieces, but rather as an extra that we could purchase separately. Wouldn’t that be a bad idea?
The components used are a STM32F030F4P6 processor (Cortex M0, 16K flash, 4K RAM) and a 0.42-inch QT1306P82 OLED display. As you can see, it is a small computer that fits perfectly inside the card and that is only activated to work when we assemble it with another. It remains to be seen how the energy issue will be, how often we would have to change the battery, etc.
not just computers
James Brown’s idea is not just to turn the computer parts that until now LEGO sells with a drawing or a sticker into living things, but to his invention could be extended to other elements that appear within the sets of the Danes. A little further down, within the original tweet thread, you can see how well the piece looks like simulating the typical screen of an aerial or space radar, or that of one of those sonars that carry ships, submarines, etc.
I guess I’m just going to work my way through then. pic.twitter.com/zEwpI6ozyB
— James Brown (@ancient_james) June 7, 2022
By having a minicomputer inside the piece, the variants could well be endless and contain a multitude of different decorative elements that we could change depending on what we need. In this way it would be possible to take it from one set to another and animate our collection in a way never seen before in the world of LEGO pieces. EITHER wouldn’t you like to have one of these interactive worksheets right now? Well of course!
