In this week’s project, we 3D printed LEGO compatible bricks and stuffed em’ with two coin cell batteries and an Adafruit LED sequin. A tiny momentary push button is wired to little pieces of copper foil tape, which touch the positive and negative contacts on the coin cell batteries, effectively opening and closing the circuit. It sounds like a super easy project but is actually a little bit challenging. To fit everything inside the 2×3 brick, the wiring must be very short. This is one of those projects that require precision, with the aid of tweezers, you can manage to connect everything without any access wiring.
This was a fun project to make and actually got my brother and I into the whole LEGO’sphere. Having never really played with LEGO as kids, we really didn’t “get it” (oddly enough, being the creatives we are). It wasn’t until we checked out the LEGO store in Downtown Disney Springs that got lured us into getting a kit. We’ve had suggested before to make Adafruit Feather LEGO adapters and such, but just haven’t pursue it (yet). The idea to make DIY light bricks came after putting together our first kit (LEGO® Creator Robo Explorer 31062) which includes an “offical” LEGO light brick. Like any curious person would do, we took it apart to see how it works. Right away, we realized how simple it is and thought about 3D printing one. The major difference between ours and the official one from LEGO, is the whole brick glows. This is because the LED is pointing face down, so the brick effectively diffuses the LED.
There’s still some ideas we want to try and hopefully fill a need that folks are interested in. We hope you guys like the project and try it out for yourself (if of course you’re into LEGO :-).
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
