The new Lego Mindstorms Robot Inventor kit includes instructions for four robots, and supports both Scratch and Python programming.

https://marian42.de/article/partdesigner/

Lego’s simple block design lends itself to some awesome designs, but even though Lego bricks are easy to assemble, some people have taken creations to the extreme. In this video are 10 of the most complex and sophisticated Lego creations by master-builders from around the world.

Maybe it’s the upbeat music, or the views of a placid lake at sunset, or perhaps it’s just seeing those little plastic rods pumping away with all their might. Whatever the reason may be, the video [Vimal Patel] posted of his little remote controlled LEGO row boat cruising around on the open water is sure to put a smile on the face of even the most jaded hacker.

Mechanical rowing boat
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdaziKxyl5E

Lego has a new set that originated by a member of its Lego Ideas fan-sourced creation platform: The Women of NASA, a package that includes NASA pioneers Nancy Grace Roman, Margeret Hamilton, Sally Ride and Mae Jamison, as well as a space shuttle model, the Hubble telescope and display stands for all.

Have you ever taken an interest in something, and then found it’s got a little out of hand as your acquisitions spiral into a tidal wave of bags and boxes? [Jacques Mattheij] found himself in just that position with Lego. His online purchases had run away with him, and he had a garage packed with “two metric tonnes” of the little coloured bricks.

Disposing of Lego is fairly straightforward, there is a lively second-hand market. But to maximise the return it is important to be in control of what you have, to avoid packaging up fake, discoloured, damaged, or dirty parts. This can become a huge job if you do it by hand, so he built a Lego sorting machine to do the job for him.

Sorting 2 Metric Tons of Lego
https://jacquesmattheij.com/sorting-two-metric-tons-of-lego

After a trip to lego land in Denmark I noticed how even adults buy lego in vast quantities, and at prices that were considerably higher than what you might expect for what is essentially bulk ABS. Even second hand lego isn’t cheap at all, it is sold by the part on specialized websites, and by the set, the kilo or the tub on ebay.

After doing some minimal research I noticed that sets do roughly 40 euros / Kg and that bulk lego is about 10, rare parts and lego technic go for 100’s of euros per kg. So, there exists a cottage industry of people that buy lego in bulk, buy new sets and then part this all out or sort it (manually) into more desirable and thus more valuable groupings.

fake parts needed to be filtered out

There is a lot of fake lego out there. The problem is that fake lego is worth next to nothing and if a fake part is found in a lot it devalues that lot tremendously because you now have to check each and every part to make sure you don’t accidentally pass on fake lego to a customer.

discolored parts

Lego is often assembled as a set and then put on display. That’s nice, but if the display location is in the sun then the parts will slowly discolor over time. White becomes yellow, blue becomes greenish, red and yellow fade and so on.

Scanning parts seems to be a trivial optical exercise, but there are all kinds of gotchas here.

Once you can reliably feed your parts past the camera you have to make sense of what you’re looking at. There are 38000+ shapes and there are 100+ possible shades of color

Lego’s launched a “safe” social network for under-13s on a new app, called Lego Life.

Basically it’s a child-friendly Lego-themed Instagram.

It’ll let children post photos of their creations and comment on other people’s but with strict restrictions on what they can say.

Text comments aren’t allowed but users can either use prewritten responses or custom Lego emoji and stickers.

Although it’s aimed at children, who have to use a parent’s details to sign up, there is no restriction on adults also joining the network.

https://www.lego.com/en-gb/life

The LEGO® Millyard Project is the largest permanent LEGO® installation at minifigure scale in the world. The installation is in the SEE Science Center. The project represents Manchester’s Amoskeag Millyard as it might have looked circa 1900.

This project marked the first time the LEGO® Company worked on a creative display of this scale with outside partners.

FAST FACTS

The project was built at a scale of approximately 55:1, called minifigure scale, which means to match the proportions of the LEGO® minifigure people.
This project was built with approximately three million LEGO® bricks. By comparison, the Jefferson Mill, built in 1886, was built with an estimated five million bricks.
The project has approximately 8,000 minifigures. Amoskeag once employed as many as 17,000 people.
This project was built in phases between October 2004 and November 2006. It took more than 10,000 ‘person’ hours to complete the project. The Amoskeag Company built all of the mill buildings between 1838 and 1915.
All of the LEGO® bricks used here were once in sets available to the public. No pieces were custom made.

[Jason]’s at it again. This time the LEGO maestro is working on a LEGO BB-8 droid. As a first step he’s made a motorized monowheel that not only races along hallways and through living rooms at the peril of any passing people, but turns as well.

To drive it forward there’s an axle that runs across the center of the wheel and a motor that rotates that axle. He’s also included some weight bricks. Without the mass of those bricks for the rotation to work against, the motor and axle would just spin in place while the friction of the floor keeps the wheel from rotating. If you’ve seen the DIYer’s guide to making BB-8 drive systems, you’ll know that this is classified as an axle drive system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIADzTanDo8