talkmagic.co.uk

This is from the TED conference. Spatially aware blocks.

http://www.ted.com/talks/david_merrill_ ... locks.html

How cool is that?

Whowever thought of that concept is a genius - whoever actually made it happen is more than a genius .

dat8962 wrote:Whowever thought of that concept is a genius - whoever actually made it happen is more than a genius .

Good, aren't they. I love the idea of simply putting them together and them deciding collectively that you've spelt a word. They look expensive, though.

Amazing,

Someones going to very very rich,

There's no reason to be quite so high tech. I mean, for the display, these these 8x8 LED matricesare dirt cheap. Infra red LEDs are mere pence, as are tilt switches, and all Atmel microcontrollers, desipte their price, all have built-in UARTS (serial communications ports) that will operate perfectly over infrared. The really clever part, the real effort, is in the software

What I loved was the music sequence, just a small part of the overall idea already blew windows songsmith away.

They look expensive, though

Estimated at around $5K per cube so by Christmas they will be under a dollar at Toys R Us

Seriously though - I was impressed by it all but especially by the pouring of the colours from cube to cube and then 0pouring back again.

$5K is a lot for a single brick! Mind you, there's probably some hellish software running on it, and the build quality does look very high, as you'd expect from the Media Lab.

I guess battery lifetime will be an issue with those bricks... the LCD displays seem to turned on all the time.

OLED displays could be a feasible alternative... less power consumption, higher contrast.

Ooooh those are some cool gadgets, very original.

Love how the kid just decides to stack them though!