Restrictive homeowners' association preventing you from building your entire house out of LEGO? To help convince them of the importance of the brick, why not start by building a LEGO kitchen, like this one from designers Simon Pillard and Philippe Rosett. While not made entirely of lego (there is a fiberboard counter underneath the brick), it should be sure to earn you the respect of your neighbors. [via inhabitat]

More:

• LEGO Kitchen crafts
• Toilet paper folder & dispenser prototype

Stretta managed to build a fully functional (and apparently quite fun) foosball table from LEGO parts -

My son is really attracted to foosball tables, and, if I'm honest, I'd have to say I am too. I considered the idea of buying a small, tabletop unit, but I was unsure how much use it'd see. I was afraid it might become one of those things you play with for a bit, then collect dust. Once again, I see a solution in the form of Lego.
[…]
I personally prefer the design and building stage, and my son enjoyed that too, but he REALLY enjoys playing with it and now insists we play a couple matches every night.

Seems he's not exxaggerating about that urge to solve problems with plastic bricks. See exhibit A: When a new synth module didn't quite fit rackmount specs, Lego made it all better -

Yaknow, that actually makes for a pretty nice aesthetic!

OK, Jay, this clip takes a bit of set-up. Basically, it's a model of a factory-floor machine for moving pallets around a square assembly line. You put a pushing arm at each corner of the square and trigger them alternately in caddy-corner pairs. Some bright bulb figured out, however, that if you join two square tracks at one corner, you can do twice the work with only two more arms. Watch the intersection for a minute to confirm that the contents of the two square tracks are not mixed, which to me is counterintuitive. Here's a video of the simple, single-square case that apparently started the trend. [via The Automata / Automaton Blog]

It's like a pop-up book, kind of, except way more complicated and expensive and made of Lego elements by YouTube user talapz. Words fail me, too. [via The Brothers Brick]

By Eric Chu, engineering intern

Let's admit it. We've all had thoughts of building our own robot of mass destruction. Well, I was able to do just that for my college class Engineering 102: Robotics Design Challenge ... sort of.

Last spring my class used the Lego NXT robotics platform to solve two engineering challenges. The first was to build a robot that can cross a pit filled with ping-pong balls, racquetballs, and mini whiffle balls. The second was to build a robot that navigates through a maze, distinguishes between orange and blue balloons, and pops all the orange balloons. Both challenges had a time limit of 2 minutes.

Meet Poke-e, my team's balloon-popping, maze-navigating robot:

Poke-e is made completely out of Lego Mindstorms NXT parts, except for the straight pins that are attached with green duct tape (generously donated by my friend, Dan). I felt horrible putting the non-Lego parts on, but at least it looked pretty killer afterward!

There's almost nothing that makes me as happy as a little Lego entrepreneurship. Remember BrickArms? Well, now there's ChromeBricks, which will custom electroplate Lego elements of your choice, in your choice of gold, chrome, or copper. [via The Brothers Brick]

LEGO artist Nathan Sawaya built this awesome functional cello out of LEGO bricks.

Watching his build progress reminded me of how the 3d printing process looks. I hadn't really made the connection before, but if home printing really does become ubiquitous, will it obsolete our coveted LEGOs and erector sets? I can almost imagine some distant future where I explain to my grandchildren about these archaic pieces that we used to have to snap together in order to make our inventions. Strange.

Update: It seems pretty clear that this cello doesn't actually work. Thanks to Phil and tiorbinist for the in-depth analysis.

[via neatorama]

If you are clinging to Lego as the last uncorrupted innocence of your childhood, look away! This is creepy stuff, and at any other time of the year would be totally inappropriate content. Ain't Halloween great?

Ty over at ThinkGeek hipped us to their latest custom product, which is a T-shirt with a Lego-compatible baseplate attached to the front so you can build stuff on it--murals, spaceships, chunky boobs, whatever floats your boat.

Check out this awesome Lego bowling game by Flickr user Nxtguy. After a ball is rolled, a sound sensor detects when the ball hits the pins and uses a light sensor to check how many pins have been knocked down. After the frame completes, a NXT servo connected to a pair of linear actuators resets the pins. A work in progress, it is currently impossible to get a strike, though you can get a spare.

See the Flickr set.

Stephen "Doc" Combs of Bricks in my Pocket fame pieced together this fully functional LEGO rotating dock for an iPod/iPod touch. Besides watching video in landscape mode it's perfect for use with an alarm clock app.

As I began to create this little contraption I said to myself, "How could this be a bit cooler and more functional?" The answer was to make it a rotating dock so I could watch movies and apps in landscape mode.

[via hackaday]

Hollywood, CA Lego fan Brandon Griffith created this fantastic chess set out of Lego elements. I love how he broke free of the chess paradigm of one figure per piece. For instance, the king shows Luke and Leia together, while the queen has Han and Chewie. Some of the pieces are tiny vignettes--take the king's bishop, which shows Ben Kenobi turning off the Death Star's tractor beam.

Since 1999, Lego has released over 100 different Star Wars Mini figures. To give Star Wars Lego justice, I decided to build three different Chess sets, one for each original episode. This is the first of the series. Star Wars: A New Hope Lego Chess.

My goals with the individual chess pieces is to:
1. Is durable enough to play the game with.
2. Present a piece that closely represents a scene form the movie. My favorites are "Obi-wan and the tractor beam" & "Greedo"

The chess board:
1. Built strong enough to carry with out breaking
2. The playing area easily removes from the rest of the board to reveal compartments to store the pieces.
3. The detailing on the side on the board utilizes a lot of SNOT (Studs Not On Tops) techniques. This a technique that came out of the Adult Lego community.

Other Facts:
1. The chess board is built on a base of layered Lego plates.
2. Weighs 25lbs.
3. the Minifigs were the most expensive part on the chess set.

See Griffith's Flickr set with more views of the project, or click on the image above to see a bigger shot.

Cleveland math teacher Arthur Gugick recreated Johannes Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring in a mosaic comprised of pre-printed Lego tiles.

As far as I know I'm the only one currently producing these types of Lego mosaics. (My next one is Jimi Hendrix) There's been only one other person who's ever made this type of mosaic. He did a portrait of a girl in 2005/2006. He never attempted another such mosaic. I'd like to think that I came up with the idea independently (my first decorated tile mosaic was of Jerry Garcia and seen at BrickFest 2006).

See Guckick's Flickr page for more projects like this.

UK toy fanatic James May is having a real house built from millions of LEGO bricks. While running new wires through the walls and plumbing fixes should be a snap, I'd hate to be anywhere near the place in case of fire. GeekSugar has a gallery of pictures of the place as it's being built.

Rachel @ CRAFT found this LEGO automated yarn ball winder, which resides at Twisted yarn shop in Portland, OR. Now that's the kind of MAKE/CRAFT synergy I like to see!

The ball winder was born out of boredom and concern. A good friend of Emily's is an out-of-work engineer, and he was in the shop, visiting us one day. We were winding a ball of yarn for a customer the old-fashioned way, and he was appalled - why were we expending so much energy to wind a ball of yarn!? So, he took an old winder home with him, and a month or so later, came into the shop with Mr. Roboto, version 1.0. We have since had an upgrade, and we absolutely love it!

He sent some technical info about the ball winder:

The Lego apparatus serves to electrically crank a Royal brand manual winder. Two 9V Lego motors, fed by an AC/DC power supply, drive the crank. On/Off and winding speed are controlled through a power button and potentiometer housed in an electronics project box. The entire assembly is mounted to an acrylic cutting board via zip-ties.

Our customers, as you can imagine, absolutely love it.

Even if you're not a Lego enthusiast, you have to give it up for Will Chapman's BrickArms business as a brilliant little bit of entrepreneurship. Although there have been notable recent policy changes, the Lego company has traditionally refused to produce guns for the mini-figures packaged with its playsets. Personally I think that's a laudable policy, but my opinion does nothing to diminish the very real demand for realistic mini-fig firearms among Lego enthusiasts, particularly in the US, and particularly among adults. Chapman recognized that demand, and went into the injection molding business himself to produce "Lego-esque" guns, grenades, and other weapons that are carefully dimensioned to be compatible with authentic Lego products. Because the parts he produces are very small, the tooling cost is relatively low, and because they're just bits of plastic, the per-unit production and shipping costs are very, very low. His catalog now includes more than 40 items, each of which sells for at least $1 per unit. He also sells custom, armed-to-the-teeth mini-figs that are avidly sought after by collectors.

Legohaulic figured out a "coin method" to attach LEGOs in a new way.

This isn't a card you'd want to hand out like club fliers at a bus stop, but for a very select few recipients, it'd certainly make a statement. For this week's EMS Labs project, Lenore shows you how she made these attention-getting cards.

Lego business cards for the rest of us

A microtome is a laboratory machine normally used to slice extremely thin samples of soft specimens for optical microscopy. If you're one of those folks who could care less about optical microscopy, it also has culinary applications. I quote from the sacred text of GoodFellas:

In prison, dinner was always a big thing. We had a pasta course, then we had a meat or a fish. Paulie was doing a year for contempt and had a wonderful system for garlic. He used a razor and sliced it so thin it would liquefy in the pan with a little oil. It's a very good system.

Poor Paulie had to do it by hand, but of course he had lots of time on his hands. Those of us who are busier might consider this tutorial by Instructables user lemonie, who built a hand-crank microtome capable of spitting out a 250-micron slice of garlic every second or so, out of Lego elements and a razor blade.

More:

• Lego combination safe
• The Lego sequencer
• Lego NXT 3D scanner

Like tiny pixel synths made real, Beem Music shares pics of these super cute Lego synthstruments inspired by the previous paper versions. More to enjoy in the Flickr photoset.

It turns out the same dyes that work on computer parts also work on Lego bricks, which are also, in my experience, seemingly never available in the color you need. Lego purists generally frown on paints and adhesives, but frankly being an active builder can get pretty expensive pretty fast, and a lot of that is due to having to order elements you may already have in abundance, but in the wrong color. And sometimes the element you want may not even be manufactured in the color you need at all.

These pictures come from SaveTheAggie's post over on Classic-Castle.com, and show his own results in dying the armor on one of his Lego knights. His report also includes some abrasion tests of the dye's fastness.

dayammerkid writes...

This is a project that me and my friends built for school (UC Berkeley). Its made of lego mindstorms, scissors, and some scrap metal. With all things considered, I think it turned out alright. Not only does it fold your paper for you, it also cuts it. It would be the perfect accessory for a fancy, high-tech, Japanese bathroom! This video shows two test runs; the first run works well, while the second one could have gone a little smoother...

Inspied by the BeatBearing project, Damien Kee built a musical sequencer using the Lego NXT system -

Each coloured ball represents a different note. As the colour sensor passes over the top, the note assigned is played. Different rhythms are capable by placing the balls in different places on the holder.

From the pages of MAKE:

The BeatBearing  Volume 17, Page 122

Wow, a LEGO combination safe!

There's so much amazing work coming out of the AFOL* community these days that it can be hard to single out any particular work as outstanding. Nonetheless, mad_a0's mini-fig scale tank, with full interior detail, is, well... outstanding. Bravo! Via The Brothers Brick.

*That's "Adult Fans of LEGO" for you non-blockheads out there.

In this Ignite rap, Hillel Cooperman talks about his, and other adults', Lego obsession. Caution: Mild adult themes and the ol' F-word is dropped halfway through.

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Last night, a bunch of the MAKE team went to San Francisco to put on a little Maker Faire preview for attendees of the Google I/O conference at the Mascone Center. Besides MAKE/Make: Online, and Maker Shed, there were folks there from adafruit industries, Instructables, Evil Mad Scientist Labs, Sternlabs, Cyclcide, and more. We had a good time, met some interesting people, and convinced (hopefully) a bunch of them to join us for the Faire this weekend.

Here is one of the cool devices demoed at the Google I/O Conference Sandbox, It's a dynamic Lego Bar Chart built using the Lego Mindstorms NXT System.

Lego Bar Chart

BattleBricks posted awesome building instructions on how to get your own iPhone controlled LEGO robot working!

This is a demonstration of iPhone to Lego NXT Robot communication via the Safari browser and Lego's Light Sensor. To build this, you'll need a laptop, two iPhones, and a Lego NXT Robotics Kit. First, build your robot. Second write some Java LeJOS Robot code. Third write some Google Web Toolkit web application code. Fourth, plug in your iPhone into the robot, and use either a browser or another iPhone to drive the Lego Robot!