ryukoposting a day ago | next |

I participated in GBC at Brickworld Chicago in 2023! It was fun, but much more work than you'd expect. It's a full day's work keeping all the machines running, clearing jams, herding balls back into the chain when one mechanism goes out of wack. It was fun to meet the other folks there.

I should really get around to properly documenting my design, but here's a short video of the version I brought to Brickworld: https://youtu.be/wdP656HuY6M

eps a day ago | prev | next |

I have a couple of sets from Fischer Technik and can't recommend them enough if watching marbles roll in an infinite cycle is your thing :)

https://www.fischertechnik.de/en/toys/marble-runs

Really well-made, excellent instructions and a very Lego-like experience.

Eric_WVGG a day ago | prev | next |

I wish the Lego Technix line would expand to be more about weird machines like this.

I asked my brother-in-law if my nephew would like a more advanced Technix set as a gift, he said no, they were mostly cars and vehicles and he wasn’t interested in that kind of thing. I wouldn’t have been at that age either. A wicked Rube Goldberg machine though…

hajile 20 hours ago | root | parent | prev | next |

My kids are mostly uninterested in the cars, but they loved the recent 42197 Earth and Moon orbiting the Sun.

They also like using the sorted boxes of Technic pieces to build crazy contraptions and my oldest has gotten into Spike Prime programming (Scratch/Blockly or Python).

ja27 a day ago | prev | next |

I helped man one at a Brickworld. Lots of chasing down little plastic soccer balls all over the floor.

The whole thing just makes sense as a software dev. There's an input standard, output standard, and I guess a processing rate expectation (or not - that was probably the second biggest issue we faced was some slow contraptions that would back up). (The first biggest issue was a contraption that "pinged" the balls through the air to a landing container and would sometimes send them off randomly or kids would try to catch them.)

This is partly from LEGO fans previous work on railroad, town, space base, etc. modular builds where they have a spec for where each unit should connect and people bring in their own creations and link them all up.

I've always wanted to do something like the great ball contraption in general at makerfaires but open to all kinds of build materials, techniques, power, etc.

igjeff 20 hours ago | root | parent |

I think the spec is supposed to be one ball per second, but I guess that's not really adhered to.

Tangentially, I think it'd be interesting to use something like this to explain the networking concepts of throughout, latency, jitter, baud vs bits per second, symbol rate and bits per symbol.

You can find analogous examples in the main video to compare to all of those concepts.

nosrepa 5 days ago | prev | next |

I'd suggest looking through the videos on akiyuki's channel. It's a gold mine of novel Lego contraptions and isn't limited to GBCs, although it is majorly that.

pimlottc 2 days ago | root | parent | next |

The undisputed king of GBC. His modules are works of art. So many incredibly intricate and innovated mechanisms with lots of precisely coordinated parts, yet driven from a single standard Lego motor. And the videos are well-shot, clear and to the point.

Some favorites:

- Catch and spin robots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXF7mgZ9mzk

- Basketball shooter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yud9ukF5cV8

- Pole dancing quartet (SFW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s0a7Z70WxM

vander_elst a day ago | prev | next |

How do they get all the pieces? Are there programs like certified Lego professional or do they have to get every piece at consumer prices?

NeoTar a day ago | root | parent |

I can’t comment in the specific of this case, but in general adult LEGO builders will acquire pieces through a range of methods - the biggest being bricklink - a website where independent sellers sell individual pieces, often which they’ve ‘parted out’ retail sets to acquire.

LEGO has a similar service (‘pick-a-brick’), or in LEGO stores there is a ‘brick wall’ where you can pick up a small range of individual pieces (sold by volume - i.e. you fill up a box of pieces) and if you ever find yourself near Ulm, LEGO-land Deutschland has a physical location where you can buy pieces by mass.

But in summary, I don’t think there is a magic bullet - it’s an expensive hobby!

NeoTar a day ago | root | parent |

(Oh, and in case it’s unclear, in this case by LEGO pieces I mean all of LEGO/DUPLO/Technic).

paulkrush a day ago | prev | next |

This is a great way for some people to play in public but still keep a work play wall up by following one simple rule: Only Legos. If you want to break the rule, a maker faire is a better venue. I think GBC is really cool to see, but I would feel like I was wearing hand cuffs if I tried it.

dtjohnnymonkey a day ago | prev | next |

There was one at BrickCon in Bellevue, WA last week! It’s my favorite part of the show. Always reminds me of queueing theory and distributed systems.

zachrose 2 days ago | prev | next |

Reading that the GBC standard specifies 1 ball per second, it’s fun to imagine a module that puts 1,000 balls in slow moving storage, taking 15 minutes to warm up and cool down

jedberg 2 days ago | prev | next |

I just went to Brickfest in San Jose, and was so sad they didn't have a GBC! It was the number one thing I was looking forward to.

burnhamup a day ago | root | parent | next |

Brickfest is more of a traveling attraction. The local convention was Bricks by the Bay - they had the GBC in 2023, but the convention is on an indefinite hiatus. I wish it were easier to see where upcoming GBC's would be,

kleiba a day ago | prev | next |

OT: whenever I play Lego with my kids these days, I cannot help but to be slightly disappointed by the number of very specialized brick shapes there are today. Of course, this allows you to build a lot of things that weren't possible before. But I do appreciate the simplicity of the Lego box sets in my own youth. Limitation can also spark creativity.