The Lego Mindstorms sets are built to actively engage students and teach them about various fundamentals in the fields of science, technology, and engineering. The Lego sets come with digital workbooks, so teachers shouldn’t have a hard time learning about the new platform before handing them over the students.

We briefly got a look at the third-generation Mindstorms EV3 sets at CES 2013 back in January, and they essentially allow you to build different kinds of robots that you can control with an app on your iOS or Android device. The educational kits will come with software that will easily guide students through the process of building a Mindstorms robot.

Kits start at $340, and they’re available to pre-order right now. That may a bit on the expensive side, and to equip an entire classroom with these sets would be quite costly, but as with most other educational tools, they should be able to hold up for a few years and be able to go through hundreds of students hands.

The mug has a suitably blocky design perfect for fans of Lego bricks. It has an alternating arrangement of holes where you can poke various building blocks and the raised knobs where you can click your building blocks onto the cup. The mug is black in color and the building surface is compatible with most building block systems.

That means it will work with Lego, PixelBlocks, MegaBlocks, KRE-O, and K’NEX Bricks. However, the mug isn’t officially licensed by any of those manufacturers. The mug is constructed using BPA-free plastic and has a capacity of 12 ounces. The mug isn’t dishwasher safe so you have to hand wash.

This mug opens up the possibility of constructing all sorts of interesting coffee conveying contraptions using Lego technica and other building blocks. The coffee cup is available right now for $19.99. The best part of waking up is building your Lego cup.

[via ThinkGeek]

A main focus to the EV3 system is the central Intelligent Brick, which runs on Linux and an ARM9 processor, both of which make the system even faster and more easily hackable than its predecessor robotic systems. Aside from speed specs, the biggest change on the Brick is the addition of Bluetooth, which allows builders to control their robots via an Android or iOS app. There’s also a USB port and an SD card slot.

Another addition to the system is that the robots’ eyes are actually infrared sensors, which can detect motion, so whenever you wave your hand in front of the robot, it will detect it and either attack, flee, dance, whatever. One of the robots was a dragon, and whenever a person crosses its path, it will extend its body and open its fiery mouth to attack.

The EV3 robotic system from Lego will go on sale sometime this summer for a pretty penny — 35,000 of them, or $350. The Mindstorms EV3 will essentially replace the Mindstorms NXT 2.0 line, which came out in 2009. The programming software kit itself works on both Windows and Mac OS X.

Unfortunately, details are a bit sparse at this point. The set is so new, that Lego doesn’t even know what pricing will be like or when the set will be available to the public. However, it looks like we’ll be getting sets from all three Back to the Future films, and the Lego characters as well as the Delorean will reflect that.

The Back to the Future Cuusoo project started off as merely just an idea that was posted on the Cuusoo website, but it received enough votes (10,000) to be officially reviewed by Lego. Unlike a lot of other proposed models, the Back to the Future set was approved because of its high playability and popularity.

We’re not sure if Lego will release the Back to the Future Lego model all in one set, or if they’ll release three different sets for each movie. The option that makes the most sense is simply including it all in one set, and the extra pieces would be there to put together different Delorean versions based on the movies. In any case, we hope to find out more details soon.

[via Gizmodo]

If you’d like to go extra tiny, check out the MimoMicro MicroUSB card reader lineup including none other than Star Wars’ Chewbacca – they’ve been making super cute USB drives for many years now, most recently with giant brand-name collaborators such as Star Wars and The Dark Knight Rises. For anyone who owns a PlayStation 3 or simply loves to play hand-held games, there’s always the PS Vita – complete with wi-fi or AT&T connectivity to the web as well as full integration with PlayStation 3 consoles as a wireless controller – strange a fun!

If you’ve got a buddy looking to get out and get going with a hardcore camera, it may be time for a Dropcam HD. Another tiny gift that basically anyone may have a use for – and will be glad to use – is the Satechi Premium 4-port aluminum USB-hub – made to match your MacBook. The old-school vinyl record-playing hipster in your family can always do with another vinyl record player – have a peek at the nearly-mobile Pyle Audio Record Player for a lovely experience top-to-bottom – for hobbyists, only!

If you want to get extra unique for your gift this year, we recommend the Philips Hue network-connected lightbulb. You’ll be able to go wireless while you’re wired – and connect all those lights from a single panel! For your gift-getting pals who love to take notes, both on-paper and in-audio; you should have a peek at the LiveScribe Sky Wi-fi Smartpen – you’ll never scribble the same way again. Then there’s the rucksack in which you’ll have them carry it all in – for that we recommend a nice trip over to Powerbag where you’ll see the Business Class Pack – a unit we’ve been using for nearly a year straight!

The fun continues with the Iomega PX2 300D NAS, a piece of equipment that will blow the mind of any nerd you purchase it for – they’ll more than likely ask you how you even know what a NAS is, much less how you knew to buy as high quality a device as this!

NASA and the ESA said yesterday that DTN could one day allow “internet-like communications” with spacecrafts and help support infrastructure on other planets. The experiment took place late last month, and it involved remotely operating a small Lego rover-like robot from the International Space Station.

The Lego robot was located at the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany and it was being operated and driven by US astronaut Sunita Williams who used a laptop that was designed by NASA. A command sent from the laptop would start a script to control the Lego rover, which is also actually a prototype designed for use in the ESA’s future missions.

NASA space communications chief Badri Younes says that once the protocol gets past the experimental stage, DTN could be useful for controlling robots on Mars from either a manned orbiting spacecraft or from Earth using satellites as relay stations. DTN is slightly comparable to the Internet Protocol in terms of functionality. However, the big difference is that IP relies on a continuous connection, while DTN allows for more disconnections and errors.

[via ZDNet]

Once you fire up Build you’ll be able to see a zoomed out map of Australia. As you search the continent and zoom in to different spots, you’ll see different creations from netizens that you can interact with or simply observe. If you want to go about building your own creation, you can choose your own plot of land or have the map randomly select somewhere in Australia.

After you’re finished, your final build is submitted to Google for approval, just to make sure anything naughty doesn’t slip through. Build has launched in Australia first, with New Zealand next on the list. After that, Google will open it up to even more countries so that you can build on more familiar territories.

[via The Next Web]

Cummins has created a Lego version of its newest and highest horsepower diesel engine called the QSK95. Students and teachers from three different Chicago area schools and Cummins engineers will create a 4′ x 3′ x 2′ replica of the engine using 30,000 Lego bricks tomorrow at Brickworld in Chicago.

As you can see in the picture, the engine the teams construct is very detailed. I would assume the image you see here was a test version constructed by Cummins. The company will also have its own interactive play area at Brickworld where kids and families can make their own creations.

This set comes with 480 peices and will allow you to work in a couple shades of gray, brown, tan, red, blue, green, and transparent. Because there are at least a handful of colors that do not exist in this set, we must assume more Minecraft is on the way in the near or distant future. There are several pieces in this set with cross-shaped holes that are connected to one another with four poles. This allows you to create a set that you can separate into four bits, put together, and easily access again with a simple tug.

This way you’re able to tunnel underground if you wish and push in your loving double dose of character goodness: Steve and one little green creeper. Both of these characters come in the form of several tiny blocks – square of course! You’ll be able to combine this set with any and all Lego sets you’ve already got if you wish, but we recommend keeping every single piece completely separate. This is a collector’s item and should definitely be treated as such!

This set will be coming your way immediately if not soon for $34.99 – and I suggest you buy it where you can find it! It’s a perfect combination of nerd excellence in every way – and it’s just so much fun! Have a peek at our hands-on photos above and below and let us know if you’ve got any questions, as always!

The Minecraft set has been designed by none other than the folks at Mojang, the same people that make the Minecraft video game for mobile, desktop, and online. This game was originally inspired in part by Lego systems, so it’s only right that the whole program be turned around once again and turned into a fully official Lego set! This Lego set is the first big-name set to be release with CUUSOO and you can expect nothing less than amazing things from the project in the future.

Check the timeline below to have an eyes-on peek at the Minecraft first Lego set, then keep an eye out for our own hands-on review of the set as it’s released this summer! Pre-order the set right this second at JINX, note the Minecraft phenomenon in the timeline below, and stay tuned!

The executive is Thomas Langenbach. He was printing out his own barcodes, then going to Target stores and changing the real barcodes with his own barcodes. This scam allowed the man to purchase the Lego sets at significantly reduced prices. The man was caught when Target security cameras recorded him switching the store’s barcode for his barcode.

Langenbach was arrested on four felony counts of burglary, and a stash of his own special barcodes were discovered in his car. The police also discovered “hundreds and hundreds” of Lego boxes inside his home during the investigation. It appears the executive was buying expensive Lego sets at huge discounts and then selling them on eBay. The police believe the man sold as many as 2100 Lego items on the auction site for about $30,000. It’s unclear at this point how many of those sets he sold or purchased using his scam methods and how many were purchased legitimately.

[via NBC Bay Area]

The problem for many schools is funding because not only are the Lego robotics parts expensive, participating in the Lego FIRST robotics competitions aren’t cheap either. Lego has announced a new program that will make it more affordable for schools to get their kids interested in robotics and science. The Lego Foundation and Lego Education have announced a total of $250,000 in grants to fund new FIRST Tech Challenge FTC teams.

The grants from the Lego Foundation and Lego Education will provide $150,000 towards the cost of robotic parts and materials for eligible teams. FIRST will also provide $100,000 towards registration and additional costs for the newly formed teams. The grants are only available the US teams on a first-come first-served basis and are available right now.

Specifically, the toy packages show logos for Traveller’s Tales, which is the company that has developed most of the previous Lego movie video games. There is also a logo for Warner Bros, which is the franchise’s publisher. So there is probably little doubt that a Lego Lord of the Rings title is in the works – and of course that a beand new line of toys will accompany that release.

The game will likely be officially unveiled at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) trade show next month. The Lego video game series has proven to be one of the most successful ventures for both Warner Bros and Lego, which has in part used its success to rebrand itself into an exciting and up-to-date entertainment brand.

[via MCV]

Only about one-fifth of those downloads were for the premium version of the game, meaning a rough 20% of people who have installed Minecraft actually paid for it, while the others were content with the very limited free version. Nevertheless, building a brand is about growing a large fan base, and Minecraft has been able to do that in spades. Not bad for a little game and a small development team that just became a company last October.

Mojang managing director Carl Manneh was quoted as saying, “The core mechanic is very similar to Lego – the simplicity of placing and removing blocks and you can do whatever your imagination tells you to do. That’s the strength. The side effect is that when you build something, you have the urge to show it off to someone.” Minecraft is available on PC and smartphones. Its entry into the console world will happen later this year.

[via VentureBeat]

R2 can stand either on his two legs, or via his third which extends from the bottom of the unit. The designers have also added various touches and nods from R2’s exploits in the original trilogy, including his data jack (be careful not to put it in an electrical socket…), as well as a buzzsaw. Both can be extended and tuck neatly away inside R2’s body.

The head can be rotated a full 360 degrees, and the blue flaps on the upper half of the body can also be extended. R2 stands tall at around 30cm, and the designers say they had access to all sorts of Star Wars reference material, as well as the movies, in order to create the perfect R2 unit.

When it goes on sale in the UK in May, it will cost roughly £150 (~$237). If you can’t wait until then, feast your eyes on the video below for a more detailed look at the world’s favourite astromech droid.

[via Geekologie]

The launch took place in Germany, with the shuttle strapped to a 1,600g meteo balloon filled with helium. A GoPro Hero camera was used to capture the action, and Spot GPS used to track the progress. In the end, the shuttle made it up to 35,000m. To ensure that the Lego shuttle could survive the 200km/h winds, Raul and Sam had to superglue the model together.

The pair note the cheap cost of putting the project together, noting that even ten years ago, the budget would have been around much greater. Steve Sammartino said:

The rig was really cheap – less than $1,000. Which 10 years ago might have been$ 100,000 (Including GPS trackers, HD camera capable of surviving space conditions et al. Add to this that without the web (Skype, Paypal, Youtube, GoPro, cheap GPS) none of this could have happened, and it is a great story about the world coming together and technology being a bridge to democracy and collaboration. Like minds living worlds apart finding complementary skills – this is the kind of world I want to live in.

What’s next for the duo? They’re planning an even bigger project, but right now it’s shrouded in mystery. They’re currently hoping to raise $20,000 for the project, and while details are scarce, they promise that it will be a “world first” and “make the participants famous”.

[via Geeky Gadgets]

Since this set received more than its prerequisite number of votes needed to bring it into reality with Lego through Cuusoo, busting up the records with a massive 10,000 votes, production has begun. You’ll be able to pre-order this set right this second through a group called J!NX and the full general release will happen sometime this summer. This set is composed of a massive 480 pieces, most of them tiny squares, and includes two of the game’s most recognizable components: the characters Steve and a lovely little green creeper.

Both the creeper and Steve will come with the set as “Micro Mobs” and the whole set will be able to keep your Minecraft nerd self satisfied with the ability to place these little guys under the ground in the dark – right where you go when you play the game. Sound fun to you? Grab a set right now or you WILL miss this release — J!NX has the set, again, on pre-sale for a grand total of $34.99. The general release will be $19.99, but don’t expect to find it in stores since even though there is a “general” specification to the non-pre-release, there are going to be a limited number sold total. Good luck!

*This was mistaken information, folks, the price of the set will be $34.99 no matter when you buy it!

[via Joystiq]

People submitting to CUUSOO requires that you get an idea, create the project you dream of, post it up to the site, get 10,000 supporters, and whammo! You’ve got your own project. If your project passes the CUUSOO review here, it will be produced by LEGO and you the creator will receive 1% of total net sales throughout the project’s lifespan. Have a peek at the CUUSOO concept here in this fancy animated video:

Then know that the creator of this Minecraft project was none other than the developers of the game itself: mojang. To get the project going, mojang worked with a couple Minecraft fans to produce some awesome sets that would help to inspire CUUSOO users to bring them into the LEGO fold. It appears that the set above might be the one to be winning in this situation, but the ones below are magnificent as well, of course! Read this statement from mojang and jump with glee!

Minecraft is about placing blocks to build anything you can imagine in the virtual world. You can build anything you imagine with LEGO bricks in the physical world. Minecraft and LEGO were meant to be together.

We’ve invited a couple of the LEGO fans behind the earlier LEGO Minecraft projects, suparMacho and koalaexpert, to collaborate with us to shape the idea. We’re also interested in your ideas, and will select the best LEGO Minecraft models to also join our efforts.

As the official Mojang LEGO Minecraft project, we will work with the LEGO Group to secure a licensing agreement and donate the 1% royalty from LEGO CUUSOO to charity. Let’s make LEGO Minecraft happen together!! =D

Will you pick up the Minecraft lego set? It really truly is a match made in heaven – if you’ve played with both you’d have to agree!

[via CUUSOO blog]

This feat has brought fourth the attention of Lego themselves, who sent a congratulatory letter to the boys complimenting their ingenuity and thanking them for using Lego to do the deed. “We are always amazed by the creative ways in which Lego fans use our products, and humbled by how many unsuspecting places we appear, like attached to a helium balloon in … space,” said Lego’s brand relations director Michael McNally. At the moment just one video has been uploaded from the set of media the boys have collected, seen here:

The whole assembly consisted of a rip-stop nylon parachute that the boys tested by lobbing off their 40-story condominium unit, an $85 weather balloon, and $160 in helium from a party store. In addition there was a wide-angle video camera, a cell-phone with GPS (for locating the setup after it landed), and several more point-and-shoot cameras, all inside a styrofoam box which also held out the Lego man. The entire craft traveled to around 80,000 feed, that three times the average cruising altitude of a commercial aircraft, and fell to the earth payload intact.

We look forward to the rest of the photos and video from these two awesome scientists!

[via YouTube]

Mehlhase works at the Niels Bohr Institute. The LHC model built uses 9,500 Lego parts and cost the builder about 200 euros. The construction process was done on the weekends and is a 1:50 scale recreation. I wonder where the Lego Higgs boson particles are.

The build took about 30 hours. The limits of my Lego capability are helping my kids build things using the instructions. It’s always cool to me when people can Lego freestyle something that turns out this good. Have you ever built you own bit of Lego awesome?

[via PC World]

So wait, you could get this Xbox branded harddrive with 320GB for $130 USD OR you could head to Target and get a lovely looking Seagate 320GB harddrive for less than half that price at $60. What’s the big deal here, Microsoft gaming devision, are you trying to pull the wool over our eyes? No way, man, of course not, there’s something in there that’ll blow your socks off, that’s why the HD costs so much!

What is it? Do tell!

It’s Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars, of course!

A couple things to consider here: this game costs $20 USD on its own here in the USA, and the game is not available with the harddrive in Japan, Saudi Arabia, Slovakia and the UAE. So those countries are out the $20 USD value, and the rest of us get a great deal! Wait a second… math. Think this one through, ladies and gentlemen.

The tower is 10-feet tall as I said, and it has 65,000 pieces. One of the coolest touches on the building is that it has some colored brick on the side to make a pattern that looks like reflected skyline of the city. This mimics the shiny glass of the real building. The finished effect is really cool. I can only imagine how long it took the artist, Sean Kenney, to build this thing.

The building is on permanent display at the Chicago LEGO Store. You have to check out the artist’s website and see some of the things he has made from LEGO. The LEGO busts and photos are awesome. Apparently the build time was a full month at full-time, presumably 8-hours a day, along with two assistants.

[via Brothers Brick]

Researchers into new methods of networking have discovered a way to use LED lighting to distribute full HD films and other content to computers. The LED lights are used as a wireless networking solution that delivers up to 800 Mbit/s download speeds. Anonymous is apparently testing a new attack tool called #RefRef. The tool was apparently tested on Pastebin and a 17-second test shut down the website for 42 minutes.

Last week Britain signaled that it intended to make it legal to copy a CD or DVD by owners. The intent is to allow the moving of a digital copy of the music or film to computers or other digital devices. A rumor surfaced that the iPhone 5 was already sent to carriers for testing. The rumors are still pointing to a launch of the new smartphone in September or October.

Intel Ultrabooks were supposed to hit the market at under $1000. Insiders are saying that the new machines are being sabotaged by Intel greed with a bill of materials that forces the machines to sell for more than Intel says they should. Chris spent some hands on time with the Blackberry Torch 9810 and shot a video of the device for us to check out. He was concerned that there may not be enough different here to help Blackberry get back to where it once was in the market.

Android Ice Cream Sandwich will be tied up with Texas Instruments as the chipset reference platform .TI has offered up a photo that they will be using to promote the tie up and it’s cute. The interesting bit is that we expect to see some awesome chipsets form TI next year. MotoActive surfaced last week showing off a cool Android watch for the athletic folks out there. The little watch appears to have a 1-inch screen and offer all sorts of details on your run or workout along with media playing.

The FCC went out and measured the actual interent speeds around the country and offered the data this week. The survey found Verizon’s fiber connectivity the fastest and Cablevision was the slowest. ComScore’s latest numbers show that there are now 25 million Google+ users around the world. Google has only offered that it has 10 million registered users so far.

The Juno space probe that will head to Jupiter will take with it three different LEGO minifigs. The minifigs are likenesses of Galileo, the pagan god Jupiter, and Juno the sister of Jupiter. Microsoft announced that it had invited Google to bid with it Novel patents. Google denied the claim and then Microsoft offered up emails to show they did in fact invite Google.

A new study that surfaced recently claims that our moon may be the result of two moons that collided and formed one. The theory explains why the near and far sides of our moon are so vastly different. The Nyko Zoom for Kinect hit pre-order at Amazon and other retailers last week. This is the accessory for the Kinect that shortens the distance you need to be from the Kinect to play.

The Skype app for Android was updated last week. The update brought with it support for video calling on several new handsets. Rue reviewed the Motorola Droid 3 smartphone late in the week. She liked the phone and the main quibble was that the phone didn’t support 4G.

NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance orbiter has found evidence of liquid water on the surface of Mars. NASA says the black streaks it thinks to be water only show up in spring and summer. A hacker at the Black Hat conference has shown a way to hack the wireless connectivity for insulin pumps. The hack has the potential to do harm to the diabetic wearing the pump.

Google’s robot car that needs no driver got into an accident last week. The accident was blamed on the human though; the car was being driven manually when the accident occurred. An awesome old school sit down Outrun arcade game was hacked into a real driving game. The arcade game was put onto a chassis and can really take to the roads with eh driver watching the screen to see where he is going. Thanks for reading this week’s edition, see you next time!

Each of the figures are milled from aluminum and will be traveling with the Atlas V rocket through 2016 where the figs will be having quite the view of our galaxy’s largest planet Jupiter. It was NASA who approached Lego for this installation, and the folks at Lego, being the adventurous types they are, decided the idea of sending some of their most fantastically simple friends along for the ride would be an awesome idea. Both groups have stated that they’re seeing the project as a way to promote STEM programs and children’s education.

The cost of creating these one of a kind figures was $5,000 PER figure, each of them underwrote by Lego of course and thus far only made for the project itself. The manufacturing of each of these figures was a deliberate process ensuring no part of the project would be any bit of interference for NASA’s sensitive measurements for the mission. Each minifig attached to the space probe is essentially the same size as the average minifig you’ve got sitting on your desk at home.

Once the mission arrives in July of 2016, the space probe Juno will collect information on the planet Jupiter itself, its moons, and its atmosphere. Once the probe has orbited the planet for one year, that being right around 33 orbits, NASA will purposefully de-orbit the probe and crash it into the planet’s surface. Those who wish to follow the Lego mission can do so at LEGOspace.com, and be sure to let us know if they’ve gone to Pluto instead!

Just so you know, the launch of JUNO, aka the Lego mission, is 11:40 A.M. EDT on the 5th of August – that’s only two days from now!

[via Wired]

It’s made out of a bunch of different bricks and has all the little touches for the movie droid. It’s too bad it can’t project a tiny Leia on the ground too. Its remote controlled and has a middle tripod leg that comes out of the droids belly when it needs to motivate and it can then move forwards and backwards. The dome can also twist and turn.

This may be the coolest LEGO project in the Star Wars universe. It even has flashing lights on the dome. Pete constructed the robot for the LEGO Space event at the National Space Center UK. I hope he won a prize because the droid is epic.

[via Brothers-Brick]

I leave the key in the car locked in the garage, but I do take them out on occasion and promptly lose them. A dude has created a very simple and geeky way to keep up with all his keys using those green rectangles you plug your LEGO bricks onto, some eyehooks, and various LEGO bricks. The dude took the standard 2 x 4 LEGO bricks and screwed an eyehook into each brick.

The dude then took wire ties and hooked the keys to the eyehooks. The result looks like a cobbled together mess unless you are into that style, but I don’t see why you couldn’t just run those eyehooks through your normal key ring. The end result is that the dude can walk in the house, press the LEGO onto the green base plates, and hang his keys by the door.

[via Reddit]

The name of the item is Concrete Building Blocks and as the name suggests the blocks are made from concrete like a block you might use for a retaining wall in your backyard. The blocks look really cool and you buy them in sets of six. Each set will cost you $8.50. As you can imagine the blocks aren’t as uniform as the real LEGO bricks made from plastic and they don’t appear to fully snap together.

The concrete blocks are designed to look just like the 2 x 4 LEGO bricks you played with as a kid and might still play with today. Each brick measures 1 5/8″ x 3/4″ x 1/2″. The seller of the Concrete Building Blocks also notes that the bricks vary in color and texture. It appears some of them might be missing corners too.

[via Etsy]

When you combine LEGO-style building blocks with Transformers you really get my geek lust stoked and that is exactly what the first KRE-O building sets are offering. The construction sets are now in stores and the first series are Transformer sets that are tie-ins with the flick that hit theaters last week. There are a number of sets with prices running from $7.99 to $59.99 depending on the set.

Some are simple minifigs while others are larger and more complex Transformer bots. The sets are available in 16 different characters and styles and are for ages 6 and up. The transformation process from robot to vehicle requires the user to disassemble and reassemble.

[via Hasbro]

I’m trying to not have a nerd aneurism over the trifecta of geek perfection this thing embodies with LEGO, RC hardware, and Star Wars all in one device. The crane the Sandcrawler has is also remote controlled as is the conveyor belt. The interior of the crawler is fully detailed and looks like the set of the latest LEGO Star Wars video game.

There is so much to talk about and see on this project that worlds can’t do the thing justice. You have to check out the video below to see what the Sandcrawler has to offer. This is a good way to spend nine months of work for a geek with time on his hands.

[via Brothers-brick]

The Unimog kit is being produced by LEGO to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the truck and its kit has 2000 pieces and is the largest Technic set ever sold by LEGO. I would end up losing at least 500 of those parts during the build. The kit is a 1:12.5 scale, which considering the size of the real vehicle makes the Technica set gigantic as well. The features of the model are the same as the real vehicle.

The Unimog LEGO kit gets a winch on the front and a pneumatically operated crane on the rear than can move 360-degrees. A snowplow is optional as well. This is one of the kits that has pistons you have to install into the little LEGO motor. The kit will cost you about $250 when it lands in August. Go ahead and add this to your Christmas list now.

[via Jalopnik]

The instrument in question is a ukulele. This little thing looks like a shrunken guitar that I always think of people in Hawaii sitting around playing. The builder is Ross Crawford and the photos show an impressive design. He notes that the build had some challenges, namely getting the shape, strength, tuning, and intonation. I would imagine those were very big challenges with the instrument being made from LEGO.

He says that while a normal ukulele is tuned to G-C-E-A, his is tuned to C-F-A-D. I have no idea what that means other than it doesn’t sound exactly like a normal ukulele would. He even made a stand out of LEGO to place the instrument onto. The coolest part of the build and the one that seems to be complex is the head with the tuning parts.

[via Brothers-Brick]

The Nexus S 4G smartphone hit Sprint and Best Buy stores yesterday, looking very round, and running Gingerbread.

Some new HP notebooks are here, for both business and consumers, the HP ProBook 5330m and the EliteBook 2560p and 2570p, plus the HP Mini 210.

Moar tablets! That’s what we say. Here are two: The BeBook Live is an affordable Android option, coming this summer, and the Fujitsu Stylistic Q550 is running Windows and channeling a netbook.

The HTC Salsa and ChaCha Facebook phones dance in for pre-order.

That’s it for our Morning Wrap-Up, stay tuned as the day goes on for more news and analysis.

Designer Ben Caulkins took a big box of gray LEGO bricks and created what may be the crowning achievement in the world of LEGO design. Ben built himself a Halo Master Chief Spartan suit that he can wear, and that suit looks really, really good. Ben spent six moths building the suit and constructed it to fit his body. Ben says that he thought a lot about what part he would create first and settled on the helmet. That helmet also required the most planning he says.

The visor is from a motorcycle helmet and looks really good. The next part was the body armor. Some LEGO purists won’t like the next part. Some of the bricks had to be glued together to keep them from falling apart. I think we can forgive Ben for having to use glue. The suit is awesome, and I can see you being able to wear the thing without breaking it without some glue. You can read all about how Ben created the suit and some of the issues he worked through on The Brothers Brick.

[via Kotaku]

This giant white wall you see here isn’t the Great Wall of China or some military memorial, it’s a sculpture made completely out of white LEGO bricks the wall is circular and starts at a low level and then rises up to the full height like a ramp. The wall took 270,000 white LEGO bricks to make. The design of the thing is cool too. It has a checkerboard pattern with some bricks sticking out and some flat.

Apparently, it took six weeks for the artists to build. The work is titled “metaphorical Horizons”, and it is on display in the central hall at the World Trade Center in Amsterdam. The designer of the wall is Lene Rønsholt Wille. I wonder how many bricks he actually had to get to make this thing work. There were always some in my collection that just wouldn’t snap together. I also wonder how many times he had to reconfigure and work around issues on the fly.

[via Wired]

Well, perhaps not quite packed full: in actual fact there will be thirteen LEGO sets, on their way to the International Space Station. There, astronauts will build models and, from September, use video links with classrooms back on Earth to help kids explore science in an arguably more attention-grabbing way.

It’s all the work of LEGO Education, the company’s arm devoted to integrating LEGO’s various ranges into the classroom. There’s a list of the different projects the astronauts will be tackling here.

[via Wired]

Designer Jonathan Robson has designed something that is Lego, but is not made from Lego bricks, which is more than a bit strange sounding. I would bet anyone that played with Lego as a kid or an adult will recognize the helmet Robson made as being the same style that the little Lego minifigs in space and other environments would wear. Robson created this helmet complete with a gold flip down visor for kids to play pretend with, but the thing does more too.

The helmet has speakers inside that are use to read kids audio comics that are Lego themed. Once the helmet is purchased and the kid is subscribed to the audio comics, a new print issue will come in the mail with a code that allows the downloading of the audio file. The helmet has a USB port on the back that a Lego flash drive is plugged into and then the audio plays back inside the helmet. Controls on the side of the helmet operate the volume and allow the user to skip forward and backwards in the pages. This is so cool!

[via Jonathan Robson]

Both of these projects have videos demonstrating their articulated operation. We’ll start by looking at a short clip demoing bad pixel’s smartphone stand.

You see, it’s a relatively simple project. The levers and gears come together to make something workable so bad pixel could get his Wiimote-driven GameBoy emulation on in peace. It’s a decent solution to a specific problem using stuff he already had laying around. But here, check this out. He used this really awesome piece of software to design the whole thing. It’s called SR 3D Builder. Here’s a quick screenshot.

This piece of software lets you design LEGO projects in a slick little 3D interface. SR 3D Builder was designed by Sergio Reano out of Italy, and you can pick it up here. It’s free. Knock yourself out. It’s still under active development. Sergio released version 0.5.6.9 on the 8th of April. Oh yeah, bad pixel’s instructable.

Next, we have this bad boy. Watch this video of Shepherd’s Lego NXT robotic factory demonstration.

Shepherd here created this project because he has been fascinated with this style of Delta Robot for quite some time.

They are known for moving small objects very quickly, usually at two hundred or more moves per minute. Parallel robots (another name for Delta Robots) are often used in many industries such as the food industry where the payload is small and light and the production rates are very high. Many times a series of parallel robots are used to do things like assemble cookies, package small items, stack pancakes and much, much more.

The positions of the robotic arms are controlled by independent servo motors and the actuation of the gripping hands are controlled by a pneumatic system. There isn’t really much I can say about this with any air of authority. He explains the whole process on his blog, Tinkernology. He goes into significant detail on the design aspects of each aspect of this robotic system. It’s a good read.

[via Singularity Hub]
[via xda-developers]

The jug she used was just the right size for a bottle of pirate rum and to hold the Lego boat. She made her own building tools out of what appear to be wooden sticks with small Lego bricks glued to the tip. She could put one stick in to hold the ship steady and another stick with the parts attached to build the model up.

She says that the entire build process took her about three days to construct. She also notes that it took a week of planning and a large number of expletives to pull off. Check out the video below to see the build and the finished project.

[via Brothers Brick]

We haven’t found anything on the instrument that suggests it was used for astrology, which was suggested in the past,” he said. “I think the maker was showing off a huge amount of knowledge and skill. They demonstrated that you could take these theories about how astronomical bodies move, and make a machine that would calculate them. That was a completely revolutionary idea.
- Wired

Wright’s reconstruction in 2007 couldn’t have happened without Hewlett Packard. They got involved in the study of this ancient astronomical calculator by providing for it to be scanned using a technique called Reflectance imaging. This technique uses multiple photos of stationary objects with a moving light source. This technique allows the computer to construct a texture map of an object that would otherwise be difficult to photograph. You can check out HP’s scans of the Antikytheria here.

The first video is Wright’s live demonstration of the model via New Scientist. The second is a rendering animation that breaks the calculator down into it’s components and shows how they all fit together. Mogi Vicentini, a friend of Wright’s, rendered this video. It starts from an exploded view of the mechanism and collapses it together over the course of a few minutes into a rendering of the finished box. I reccommend pausing and then skipping around through the video to see the different still renderings. The final video is a Lego reconstruction of the predicting device by Andrew Carol, he builds complex lego devices and and posts them up on the Woz’s site.

[via Intel Free Press]

You probably won’t be able to take the self-loading LEGO dice tower into a casino in Vegas, or at least not take it to a table with you, but it couldn’t hurt to try, right? After all, if you’re a superstitious person, sometimes you just can’t roll your own die, and there might not be anyone around that you trust enough to win you a hundred thousand dollars, or lose it all in one swift throw of the dice.

The LEGO dice tower uses a lever to load the dice into its tower, and then it will roll them out the bottom for you. Simple enough of a design, but one that makes us want to be a kid again and start building crazy contraptions. Check out the video below to see the tower in action.

[via UberGizmo]