Synergy LEGO Mindstorms – Arduino: Taking advantage of both platforms

Moreno, Emilio Fernández; Mendoza, Julio Pastor

doi:10.1109/taee.2018.8476011

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Some researcher used Lego bricks for a bendable handheld controller to let children animate a flying drone swarm and learn to interact with programmable matter [44]. Others did not only use Lego products but merged Lego Mindstorms and Arduino to take advantage of both platforms and to circumvent the high prices of Lego components to comparably cheaper ones for Arduino [26]. Another example is BRIX, which are hollowed out and modified bricks to put electronics inside [39] or the more recent BRIX2 that uses 3D-printed cases instead of original Lego bricks [38].…”

Section: B Electrified and Interactive Bricksmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, we even removed the original Lego sensor and the Bluetooth battery box from the model's inside because they had no use anymore. Using these electronic Lego elements in combination with an Arduino might be possible [26], but we would have needed more than one sensor for each of the 25 keys and the pedal anyway. The only real argument for using sensors for the keys would be an increased expressivity, which we will reflect on later from the musical perspective.…”

Section: B Engineering and Fabrication Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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An Electronic Engineering Approach for Turning a Lego Brick Piano into a Musical Instrument

Hödl

2024

IEEE Access

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We demonstrate and reflect on a rebuilding and electronic engineering approach to augment and electrify a Lego brick model. Concretely, we turn the not musically playable Lego Grand Piano into a functioning musical instrument as a MIDI keyboard with 25 keys and a sustain pedal. Our proposed solution is unobtrusive, flexible, and reversible. We only use off-the-shelf components and instead of soldering we take advantage of the bricks' interlocking mechanism together with wires and self-adhesive copper tape, which also keeps the costs and required skills for our approach low. Two live performances evidenced by videos showed the practical and musical applicability. We created and reflected on an extensive step-by-step documentation of the whole transformation process which we offer for potential reuse purposes. Overall, our approach to electrify a brick-built model and turning it into an interactive musical interface was successful, insightful and has the potential to be expanded, but needs further elaboration with other brick-built models and for different application purposes than musical instruments. Thus, we explicitly invite researchers, designers, engineers, tinkerers, and makers who engage themselves in electrified and interactive brick-built models to get inspired by our approach, replicate, and advance it.

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Section: B Electrified and Interactive Bricksmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: B Engineering and Fabrication Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%