[spankalee]

I'm very confused by this one. I can't tell what it really does. With Mindstorms, We Do, and Spark, you can build things that interact because you have motors, sensors, remotes, a programmable hub. This... makes noise and flashes lights?

[redkoala]

It’s a 2 x 4 Lego brick with a speaker/lightsand custom ASIC built-in, with light and sound sensors, reacting to IOT beacons that allow different sounds or light sequences. And it’s rechargeable like an electric toothbrush. It also has accelerometers that change the sounds as you twist and turn them around. The sounds themselves are generated, with the speaker driven by an onboard synthesiser.

[xg15]

The most concrete part I get is that it has a recognition and positioning system built-in, so it can recognize the IDs and relative positions of nearby beacons. Beacons are inside bricks, tags and minifigures. The bricks seem to also have some kind of color sensor to detect the color of nearby normal bricks.

Then it does ... something with that information.

From the promo it almost looked as if that data was fed to an LLM that could then generate an audio response that fits to the play scene. Something like "You are a <Lego Star Wars minifigure>. You are <sitting> in a <vehicle: air plane>. The vehicle is <turning along the Z axis>. What do you say?" (Where the stuff inside the brackets is inferred from the nearby beacons and the rest would be a fixed prompt template)

But that would require the bricks to have an internet connection, and I have no idea if that's the case.

[pphysch]

Yep. The initial marketing video makes it seem like a "brain+motor" super-brick that can somehow turn minifigs into robots and autonomously drive vehicles. But no, it's just a speaker + couple LEDs and a proximity sensor.

It's still a neat toy, but way oversold.

[EvanAnderson]

And it's rechargable, like e-waste. >sigh<

[card_zero]

Just like the Light & Sound sets from the 80s.

https://www.les-archives-de-joe.net/article-108-lego-espace-...

Except now it has an accelerometer too, and the sounds are more than just a siren, so your spaceship can make a swoosh noise when you fly it around. This is what we wanted.

[fwip]

As far as I can tell, it's Amiibo, but Lego. The 'smart brick' has a couple sensors, speakers, and lights, including an NFC-ish reader. The minifigs and 'smart cards' are your amiibos that tell the brick what to do.

It definitely doesn't look like it's aspiring to be the programmable environment that Mindstorms was. There may be a way for a tech enthusiast to make custom smart cards and logic, but I wouldn't count on it. Would be happy to be proven wrong.

[dmonitor]

Looks like it has an IMU built in, so if it has wireless it could easily integrate with some kind of software system like those. Seems like right now it's just so your space ship can make vroom sounds

[j2kun]

Doesn't it have sensors too? I recall reading about proximity sensors to other smart bricks, as well as accelerometer and orientation sensors.

[crtasm]

>Accelerometer detects movement, tilt, and gesture

>proprietary Neighbour Position Measurement (NPM) system uses precision copper coils to let LEGO SMART bricks sense distance, direction, and orientation between multiple LEGO SMART Bricks.

Until it can trigger motors it doesn't feel super exciting to me.