Adding work lights is a fun way to take a Lego creation to the next level, and the company even includes lighting capabilities on some of its sets. including a glowing Christmas tree. But this clever hack makes integrating lighting into a build incredibly easy, thanks to the same technology that powers wireless charging.
Lego’s approach to lighting elements involves a battery-powered brick with an LED inside that’s bright enough to shine through other transparent elements. In the last Santa’s Visit holiday set., the LED brick sits inside a Christmas tree, but its glow can be seen from the outside through transparent tiles that act as Christmas lights. There are After-market lighting solutions also for Lego, but they use transparent elements upgraded with tiny LEDs connected to a power source by very thin wires. With the right planning, these wires can be mostly hidden, but not completely, and they can be fragile, so turning a Lego Batmobile with working headlights might not be the best idea.
YouTuber Cultural gutural has come up with a potentially better way to light up a Lego build that minimizes wires and building constraints, and the hardware is cheap and easily available online. Inside a cell phone charger is a coil of wire that when powered can induce a current in a nearby coil without touching it. This allows smartphones and wireless earphones to be charged wirelessly, which is why the technology is also often referred to as inductive charging. It doesn’t provide enough energy to power a device like a smartphone without a battery, but it can easily power smaller electronics like low-power LEDs.
this $US20 ($28) kit on AliExpress Contains wirelessly powered LEDs small enough to be inserted into transparent lego bricks (not flat plates), and when placed near a thin electric coil they glow by themselves. As a cultural gutural demonstrated in this video, the glowing bricks can be mixed with other bricks and even stacked eight bricks high while still glowing. The farther the tiny LEDs are from the included power coil, the lower their intensity becomes, but multiple coils could be incorporated into a display base or even into a larger model itself, extending wireless power range.
Unfortunately, while the idea was submitted to the Lego Ideas platform – where builders can share their custom creations with the potential that the company will turn them into real sets if there is enough fan support – Lego ultimately rejected the submission, citing the strictness Rules of the platform prohibiting non-existent lego bricks and pieces. It could very well inspire Lego to one day create their own version of LEDO (as this manufacturer calls them), but until then thankfully it’s a fairly simple and straightforward upgrade that’s cheaper than most Lego sets.
This article was reposted from Kotaku Australia. Read the original articlee.
