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Lego Microscope
- boringg 6y agoGreat project, next one can you make an electron microscope?
- Invictus0 6y agoI met a guy at PennApps several years ago that built an STM microscope. Pretty neat project, I went and found the link [0]. [0] https://devpost.com/software/angstroms-matter-imaging-atoms https://devpost.com/software/angstroms-matter-imaging-atoms
- IIAOPSW 6y agoyes, but the 'electrons' are actually those 1x1 lego disks and the output image is also rendered in lego.
- exar0815 6y agoRisky. They will most probably be hit with a cease and desist by Lego because it is Lego, and by Apple for unauthorized use of Apple parts. On a more serious notez absolutely great project!
- jayfk 6y agoIt wouldn’t surprise me if they get sued by lego: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6623789/Lego-sues-YouTube-blogger-criticised-quality-320-Bugatti-Chiron-set.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6623789/Lego-sues-Y...
- OldTimeCoffee 6y agoYou've linked a Daily Mail story with a baseless assertion and LEGO themselves said it was because of the logo of the store. The story has the owner of the store holding up a t-shirt of the logo such that it's somewhat obscured and the remaining focus is on the store itself.
- em-bee 6y agothis guy unfortunately did make some mistakes. he did change his logo though, but he later got in trouble again for not clearly distinguishing between lego and compatible brands. however lego has been very heavy handed in dealing with him and others, causing him to choose to stop selling any lego in his store, focusing on alternative brands only. lego is trying to prevent competing brands to sell their models at all costs. currently they are fighting bluebrixx and johnny's world, who are both large german importers of alternative brands on the basis of the similarity of their minifigures, while those minifigures are not similar at all (except for the fact that they have the expected body parts and are compatible with lego bricks)
- pantalaimon 6y agoWell he stopped selling LEGO after that and is now promoting LEGO alternatives which do have a better price / quality ratio. That LEGO tries to push any competition out of the market with shady legal tactics (e.g. claiming minifigures appear too similar even though they clearly feature different proportions and characteristics) while at the same time hiking prices leaves a bad taste.
- em-bee 6y agoindeed. fortunately bluebrixx is now attempting to get the lego 3d design mark of their minifigures invalidated. not because bluebrix wants to sell minifigure clones, but because lego is using their 3d mark as basis for their claim that any other minifigures even dissimilar ones would violate that mark. bluebrix believes that they have a good chance to be successful.
- offtop5 6y agoWhy though. You need to physically buy Legos for this project. It's not like their showing how to print Legos
- em-bee 6y agothe patents for lego bricks have long expired, so anyone can copy them, which is why we are now seeing many alternative lego compatible brands, because they are in fact legal. what is not legal is to clone the exact models that lego produces, and to pretend that a clone is lego, which it isn't. but as long as the alternative brands come up with their own models they are perfectly legitimate. as for this microscope, it's not even a product, just a design, there are websites where these designs are shared, and even sold (without the bricks which you have to acquire separately). you can even upload your own designs to a lego ideas site where you can promote it and ask lego to sell it as a model.
- lostgame 6y agoNot to be that person, but it's 'LEGO', whether singular or plural. I used to work for LEGO and they would take this really seriously. Similar to 'deer', one LEGO brick is one LEGO brick. A pile of LEGO bricks is still a pile of LEGO bricks. :) https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912 https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912
- InitialLastName 6y agoLEGO (the company)has to take it seriously because they have to defend their trademark. Likewise, the manufacturer of hook-and-loop fabric closures has to be very clear [0] when a hook-and-loop fabric closure is their product or not, but lay-people are happy to call them all Velcro. [0] https://www.velcro.com/about-us/trademark-guidelines/ https://www.velcro.com/about-us/trademark-guidelines/ Edit: pronouns not my game
- detaro 6y agoHow is that relevant to the plural case?
- blackoil 6y agoSued for making things with Lego!! That would be ironic.
- rozab 6y agoThere is a huge market for unofficial sets (MOCs) which Lego has always allowed to exist. Distributing instructions is definitely fine. https://buildamoc.com/ https://buildamoc.com/
- cbsudux 6y agoThis is a great project!
- jimmySixDOF 6y agoBack in 2017 I supported a Kickstarter for Foldscope - The Origami-inspired Paper Microscope. I got a classroom package and they are still in use for all I know. Foldscope is analog and priced to fit low income countries STEM needs but this Lego hack is nice too. [1] https://www.foldscope.com/ https://www.foldscope.com/
- kuu 6y agoInteresting. It's a pity that shipment costs to my country multiply the price by 5 :\
- snypher 6y agoYes, even $10 for the paper microscope is too much. It was designed to be cheap to increase access to instruments and make them more likely to be used. Selling them in this way really makes me wonder where the profit goes. For comparison I have a Carson Microbrite 60x-120x and it was $12. Edit: as an aside, how do they have discontinued items in their store that are for 'international' orders only?
- whoisburbansky 6y agoI was under the impression that the individual kits are sold for much more in order to be able to fund subsidized kits for classrooms.
- LetThereBeLight 6y agoThis is correct [1]. > Why the difference in price between Deluxe Individual Kits and Classroom Kits? >Our mission is to bring bring affordable scientific tools to everyone (not just communities who have the resources - but everyone). For any of this to be possible, our business model balances our cost of operations with offering extremely low-cost (low-profit) products. >We find this balance through a pricing structure that operates on a 2-tier system: high price point kits for individual Foldscopes (Deluxe Individual Kits), and low price point kits for bulk Foldscopes (Classroom Kits). >We arrived at this pricing structure for many reasons, but primarily because the reality of fulfillment and shipping means we cannot ship a single Foldscope that costs roughly $1 in parts to produce at a $1 dollar price while being sustainable. Overall, we make a profit only from our high price point kits, this profit allows for us to exist and produce any microscopes at all, and this profit also subsidizes our low price point kits (which we do not profit off of), in which offer Foldscopes for as inexpensive as $1.75 each! [1] https://www.foldscope.com/faq https://www.foldscope.com/faq
- Tabular-Iceberg 6y agoI wonder if it would hold any weight in the dispute if he claimed the brick was not actually a Lego brick, but one of the numerous perfectly legal stud-compatible knock-offs.
- busyant 6y agoI know a chem prof who built a Lego spectrometer. https://publiclab.org/wiki/lego-spectrometer https://publiclab.org/wiki/lego-spectrometer Legos are just wonderful. edit: I know nothing about woodworking or crafting any building materials, but I always wish I could perform those types of projects. And whenever some potential project comes up, I think to myself, "but I could build it with Legos."
- Dachande663 6y agoPlease note, the plural form of LEGO is LEGO, not Legos. As per LEGO themselves[0]. [0] https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912?lang=en https://twitter.com/lego_group/status/842115345280294912?lan...
- fnord77 6y agoI don't think we should allow corporations to dictate how we use language.
- jerf 6y agoThe Lego corporation is welcome to care about that for trademark reasons, but the rest of us don't really have a need to do so. "Legos" is clearly in common usage, failure to YELL ABOUT LEGO IN ALL CAPS and all.
- em-bee 6y agoyou are of course right, and people have been trying to get the word lego to be used as a common term for all lego compatible bricks, but that's dangerous as for now lego can stop anyone from publishing anything about alternative brands using the term lego. so they have to avoid doing that or will get in trouble. better to avoid the term lego altogether and just call them bricks.
- dividedbyzero 6y agoI use "bricks" (or the very neat tearm "Klemmbausteine" in German) in any context where Lego legal might want to interfere, and stick to Lego/Legos otherwise. It's a common term beyond any reasonable doubt by now, and corporations really shouldn't pry their greedy tentacles that deeply into everyday life.
- foreigner 6y agoPity you still need non-lego lenses though. Can anybody come up with a way to avoid that? Perhaps something based on the principles of a Camera Obscura?
- pachico 6y agoWhy a pity? Why the obsession of putting the money in only one pocket even at the great cost of losing the concept of hacking you way through it? I think it's great that you can use piece of all sorts and I'd encourage everyone to follow the same principle.
- em-bee 6y agotry this: https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-4627/Nico71/lego-microscope-which-works/ https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-4627/Nico71/lego-microscope... it uses a water drop as a lens.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- bombcar 6y agoFrom another comment: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/fcce15cd-27e0-405b-990b-681b7787fbc6 https://ideas.lego.com/projects/fcce15cd-27e0-405b-990b-681b...
- seesawtron 6y agoHow about a paper based microscope developed by Manu Prakash at MIT? [0] Its supposed to cost 50 Cent. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldscope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldscope
- etrautmann 6y agoThis was developed at Stanford right? That’s where Manu Prakash works and that link says Stanford as well.
- seesawtron 6y agoStudied at MIT, opened his lab at Stanford. I am unsure about where the intellectual property lies.
- mhb 6y agowhere the intellectual property lies Leeuwenhoek?
- napolux 6y agowhat's the magnification of this? I see 100u from the video, but is there any measurement?
- notanote 6y agoFrom the paper: For the high-magnification objective we find M = 254×. For the low-magnification objective we find M = 27×.
- evanb 6y agoHere’s a functional all-Lego microscope: https://ideas.lego.com/projects/fcce15cd-27e0-405b-990b-681b7787fbc6 https://ideas.lego.com/projects/fcce15cd-27e0-405b-990b-681b... No non-Lego pieces; even the lenses are Lego minifig-scale magnifying glasses. Unfortunately, it didn’t get enough backers in time to advance to production.
- jonplackett 6y agoThe downside being that the 'through microscope' image just looks like a badly enlarged version of what you can see on the slide...
- jayceedenton 6y agoThis is fantastic. There are some incredible ideas on that site and this microscope is a good example of an expert model maker using their creativity to work with the constraints of the Lego. Lego seems to provide just the right amount creative control whilst still imposing its own rules and limitations. You see tiny models that express the character of the subject so well, often by using blocks in unexpected ways to create the subtlest hint of a form. The end result has so much charm but requires great skill. That site led me to this working piano: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM7kj5XI_HY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM7kj5XI_HY Well, I guess it's silent, but it has the mechanics. Wow.
- MarkusWandel 6y agoNote how this is built in the "stacked" method, i.e. old school Lego. Even with technical parts, this was uniquely accessible. My proudest achievement was a smooth running, jamproof pump for elevating marbles; you can see it from about 0:27 in this old camcorder video: https://youtu.be/Mw3dUbRfMSw?t=24 https://youtu.be/Mw3dUbRfMSw?t=24 These Legos encouraged engineering thinking all the way and were the defining toy of my childhood. Modern Legos are stunning. Look, for example, for the Rubik's cube solve machine that can twist a (lubricated) cube to completion in a few seconds. However they're no longer stacked from bottom to top; they're built "inside out" and the best tool to come up with a design for them is probably a CAD program. Stunning results for those who have put in the time, but not so encouraging for tinkerers just starting out. So it's nice to still see "old school" stuff being built.
- app4soft 6y agoJFTR, There are few other projects on Lego-based microscope design on GitHub[0], for example IBM's MiscroscoPy[1]. [0] https://github.com/search/?o=desc&q=lego+microscope&s=updated&type=Repositories https://github.com/search/?o=desc&q=lego+microscope&s=update... [1] https://github.com/IBM/MicroscoPy https://github.com/IBM/MicroscoPy
- bombcar 6y agoThe bottom up vs inside out has always been present - and the robotics Lego build on Technic which always had a bit of the inside-out build going on. I think a big part of learning to build well with Lego is realizing the refactoring that’s built in - like Minecraft you build a prototype and then continually refine it until the final product looks amazing.
- kazinator 6y agohttps://i.imgur.com/Kfc8XIW.png https://i.imgur.com/Kfc8XIW.png Sorry, couldn't resist.
- tkahnoski 6y agoAnyone know of an alternative site to buy bare lenses? Trying to find something where I wouldn't fork over the international shipping fees.
- skeletonjelly 6y agoAs an Australian I share your issues! Interested to see if there's any responses
- bombcar 6y agoCould you retrieve lenses from otherwise junk hardware? If the lenses are different you’d likely have to calibrate it differently but it still should work. Sources: phones, webcams, scopes, cameras, etc.
- robochat 6y agoThis reminds me of the Lego seismometer: https://mindsetsonline.co.uk/shop/lego-seismometer-kit/ https://mindsetsonline.co.uk/shop/lego-seismometer-kit/
- LetThereBeLight 6y agoIn the event people are interested in a higher budget microscope, the openFrame is a very nice modular system [1]. [1] https://www.imperial.ac.uk/photonics/research/biophotonics/instruments--software/fluorescence-microscopy/openframe/ https://www.imperial.ac.uk/photonics/research/biophotonics/i...
- mdturnerphys 6y agoIf you're insterested in other scientific instruments built (mostly) from Legos, take a look at the watt/Kibble balance designed by former colleague of mine and his team at NIST: https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1.4929898 https://aapt.scitation.org/doi/abs/10.1119/1.4929898 and https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/kilogram/nist-do-it-yourself-kibble-balance https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/kilogram/nist-do-it-you...
- huachimingo 6y agoDont forget that previously, Mekano pieces were used to build differential analyzers because they were cheaper.