Gadgets  

Designed by young Chase Freedman, the Brick Sound Kit is fun right out of the box and it works as a standalone toy, as well as a Lego® compatible toy that snaps easily to your bricks, letting you add recorded sounds through an iOS or Android app.

When eight-year old Chase Freedman was playing with his Lego® bricks one day about a year ago, he was having fun making sounds for his creations, and an idea struck him — "What if there was a way to record our sounds and play them back whenever we flew our spaceship." The question sparked a project, which has developed into a viable new startup enterprise.

"What if there was a way to record our sounds and play them back whenever we flew our spaceship."

After over a year in development, professional design and thorough planning, Chase, his dad and a team of developers are ready to go into production. The Brick Sound Kit (BSK) is a new attachable device that allows kids to record or download sounds to their toys, enhancing their playing experience.

Since it was designed extensively with Chase's input, the design is simple and intuitive to use. The BSK offers endless possibilities of creating motion-activated interaction for makers and developers and it opens up a world of sound, programming, and imagination.

The BSK is built around a custom Arduino board equipped with a gyroscope that connects with Bluetooth. It includes light-up buttons and LEDs, all protected with a highly durable and fun enclosure that works alone or can easily snap to anything you build with Lego®, MegaBloks®, Kre-o™ and other compatible brick building sets.

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The BSK is fun right out of the box and it works as a standalone toy, as well. It is a Lego® compatible toy that snaps easily to your bricks, and the iOS and Android app lets you record and playback sounds. It’s also a fully open platform where kids, collectors, makers, inventors, parents, and teachers can easily program and share new apps and games, taking active play to new heights.

For those who want to explore endless possibilities, the BSK can include a FTDI USB Adapter and Cable to reprogram the device functionality using free Arduino tools. Open source SDKs allow anyone to build their own apps and games controlled by the BSK. All programming will be easy to learn for any age and supported by the team through an inventor portal.

The project is currently running a Kickstarter campaign to help push it through to launch. Here's hoping this young inventor has a successful campaign, and continues to learn and explore!

SOURCE  Brick Sound Kit

By 33rd Square

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 Gaming  

For gamers, the Xbox One is one of the best choices for game quality and selection.  Here are a few of the best titles available.

Xbox One, Microsoft’s latest game console, is arguably the best console available, although the PS4 may give it a run for its money. The gaming device has a host of new features to enhance the game playing experience, but which games currently on the market are the best? Below are just a few of the most recommended:

Watch Dogs

Watch Dogs is a recently released action/adventure game. The player takes on the role of Aiden Pearce, a highly skilled hacker who is out for revenge after his niece was accidentally killed. The game is set in Chicago, and thanks to the open world design, you are able to freely roam the city – by foot or in a vehicle. There are a multitude of different missions to accomplish and the online mode allows competitive or cooperative play for up to eight players.

Need For Speed: Rivals

Unlimited street racing, cops and racers are against each other, racing at a huge variety of venues in Need For Speed: Rivals. Every race gains you speed points, but get caught by the cops and you lose them all. Alternatively drive the police car and try to catch the racers – either side is fraught with danger and a myriad of obstacles. The speed points enable you to follow a career progression and increases the challenges when racing. Open world play and online multi player options allow additional competitions or even cooperative play.

Plant vs. Zombie: Garden Warfare

Unlike most first person shooters, this game has a humorous approach. It may be full of bright colors and cartoon graphics but it is just as good as any shooting game available. Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare is full of challenges players must struggle to complete; successful completion of these allows you to move up the levels, gain clothing, weapons and new characters. 

Dragon Age: Inquisition

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Inquisition is an action, role-playing game set in the fantasy world of Thedas. In this latest Dragon Age sequel, there’s much more geographical territory than in the previous versions, which means the gameplay is a lot more interactive, and fun for avid Xbox One fans. The story line leads the player through many battles, the ultimate aim being to destroy Corypheus and seal the breach to save the planet.

Alien: Isolation

Based on the very successful films, in Alien Isolation players play the part of Amanda Ripley, and you must investigate the disappearance of your mother. On your journey, you discover an alien has killed most of the crew, and that you’re on your own in this fight. With complex programming the developers have made the alien appear to learn from each of your encounters, getting stronger and more intelligent as the game progresses. Normal weapons cannot be used against the alien and creative ways must be discovered to rid the space station of it. Isolation continues with an android problem and a secondary alien – excellent graphics add to the experience.

Lego Marvel Super Hero’s

If you haven’t yet experienced the Marvel uUniverse, this could be an excellent way to meet the main characters. In Lego Marvel Super Hero’s you can control 150 characters, each with their own special abilities. The agents of shield need to retrieve cosmic blocks, which have fallen to Earth, before the team of villains gets their hands on them. If the villains get the bricks they will be able to control Earth! 

As for Xbox One games you should avoid, on first place we have Lococycle, a disappointing racer with terrible characters, scenes that were cut, and a compromised gameplay that only looks futuristic. In reality, it’s just a bad arcade racer that you should steer clear of. Another sub-standard game that didn’t live up to our expectations was Fighter Within, which seemed to rigid and unpolished.

SOURCE  Parking Games 365

By Fredrick Cameron

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 Microscopy  

The world’s first low-cost Atomic Force Microscope (AFM) has been developed by multinational teams of students in Beijing using LEGO as the machine's building blocks.

F
irst introduced into commercial markets back in 1989, Atomic Force Microscopes (AFMs) were rather pricy, ranging from $10,000 all the way up to $1,000,0000, according to which features and capabilities a machine might include.

But now, students created a microscope capable of imaging a single atom out of LEGO Mindstorms, 3D printed parts and other off-the shelf components.

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During the LEGO2NANO project at Tsinghua University in Beijing, a group of Chinese and English students made a Lego-based AFM in five days – and at a cost of less than $500.

You might even call this an example of Moore's Law of Microscopy.

Professor Gabriel Aeppli, director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology at University College London, said: “Low-cost scientific instrumentation is not just useful in high schools, it can be a huge enabler for hospitals and clinics in developing countries. That’s why novel initiatives like LEGO2NANO are so important.”

LEGO2NANO, the third in a series of China-UK Summer Schools held at Tsinghua University, put teams to work designing a version of the atomic force microscope which will ultimately be used by Chinese high school students.

The students hit the mark with the winning team taking just five days to finish a microscope capable of producing a scanned image – in nanoscale detail – on a sample surface.

Mounted on a metal plate for stability, the inexpensive AFM features housings and compartments built from LEGO blocks and 3D printed parts. The student's ARM scanning stage was 3D printed and based on a design created by researchers at Bristol University.

Motion is controlled by piezoelectric actuators using Arduino processors. The stage moves one micron for each 10 volts applied. These tiny movements give the ARM a resolution of little more than a few nanometers.

The Institute of Making at UCL and the Open Wisdom Laboratory at Tsinghua University plan to continue to host student sessions aimed at developing the concept. Next target: building a fully-functioning AFM for $100.

SOURCE  Lego2Nano

By 33rd Square

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 Robotics

Toymaker LEGO is set to announce that a new, $350 Mindstorms EV3 kit will have the ability to talk to Android and iOs devices through Bluetooth wireless connections. That means LEGO bot builders can use the devices as remote controls for their creations, or even make simple programs that are then sent to the robots to control their actions.

LEGO is set to announce today that a new, LEGO Mindstorms EV3 kit will have the ability to talk to Android and iOs devices through Bluetooth wireless connections. This means LEGO builders will soon be able to use mobile devices as remote controls for their robots, or create simple programs that are then sent to the robots to control their actions.

LEGO says the kit will go on sale in the second half of the year. It was announced as the International CES gadget show begins in Las Vegas this week.

Mindstorms EV3 will run on new Linux firmware that's ready for Android and iOS control out of the box, creates an overall more hacker-friendly platform and allows further programming on the core Intelligent Brick itself.

As such there will also be an SD card slot for local storage. A built-in infrared sensor expands the possibilities for a more autonomous design too.

Also new in the Mindstorms EV3 kit is a "two-eyed" infrared sensor that can pick up signals from a small infrared remote and locate it. In the kit, Lego includes the blueprints for a snake robot that uses its eyes to sense if someone is close to its head, in which case it strikes.

LEGO suggests that EV3 bots will be able to follow other moving gadgets, or even their creators, around the room. It should also be the first LEGO bundle with its own 3D construction guide, as a new app built with Autodesk lets builders see the process from every angle. The EV3 line does not ship until the second half of the year, but the company already expects the core unit to sell for $350.


SOURCE  Engadget

By 33rd Square

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According to YouTube user sumthinelse5790 Max Shepherd,

This is a model prosthetic arm made entirely of Legos.

• hand movements and wrist abduction/adduction are Lego pneumatics
• wrist pronation/supination, wrist flexion/extension, and elbow flexion/extension are Lego motors (Power Functions)

The main purpose of this project was to accurately mimic the full range of motion of a normal human arm and hand. The secondary goal was to maximize speed and power, yet maintain a consistent ratio between the two for demonstration purposes. It is important to note that it was designed as an above elbow prosthesis, and the yellow shoulder is only meant to act as a static model. 

The amount of weight it can lift is limited to the shape of the object and orientation of the wrist and elbow, but it can't do much with more than a couple pounds. 

The controller is a rudimentary cluster of switches and joysticks. A 4-motor air compressor with pressure-regulation was made of Legos, but for the demonstration I simply used hand pumps.

Forget your old alphabet blocks, Modular Robotics Cubelets are magnetic blocks that can be snapped together to make an endless variety of robots with no programming and no wires. Combining sensor, logic and actuator blocks, young kids (and adults) can create simple modular robots that can exhibit surprisingly complex behaviour.

You can build robots that drive around on a tabletop, respond to light, sound, and temperature, and have surprisingly lifelike behavior. But instead of programming that behavior, you snap the cubelets together and watch the behavior emerge like with a flock of birds or a swarm of bees.

There are 15 different Cubelets available now, and the company has got a more configurations in the pipeline. They plan to release new models through their website.  Who knows, maybe there will soon be Cubelet competitions too.






Cubelets are now available for pre-order.