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Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with instructions
- ks2048 4y agoI’d like to see some quantitative review of how well the scan works. Their demo almost looks too good to be true - it seems they even have overlapping pieces, etc. A quick search showed a YouTube review where they said there were quite a few false positives.
- dQw4w9WgXcQ 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27693560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27693560
- parhamn 4y agoI waited way too long for that animation to show me some results and then it looped.
- vanous 4y agoNext: scan a pile of cash and propose what to do with the calculated amount...?
- nsajko 4y agoLEGO bricks, not the building materials.
- gwill 4y agoi saw the title and was thinking of pizza ovens ive seen made with loose bricks and started wondering what else could be made.
- randerson 4y agoIt must be intentional that the word Lego appears nowhere on this site, surely?
- parhamn 4y agoOr worried about Lego suing them?
- cube00 4y agoLego are very protective of their brand as they have every right to be. There's a store near me that sells Lego-like sets of their own distinctive building and the box states "Quality Blocks - Compatible with other brands" Other trading websites for Lego sets and parts use the words "bricks" or "blocks" in their names instead.
- charcircuit 4y ago>as they have every right to be. I don't care if they technically have a right to do so, but they try and remove the usage of LEGO even when its usage falls under fair use. Using LEGO in the examples you gave would fall under fair use.
- silisili 4y agoRats, I have a large pile of 10 to 60lb stones in my yard and was slightly excited by the headline.
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- prakis 4y agoThis is one of the most ingenious use of modren technology. This is how technology should be helping us. Goodluck.
- gnicholas 4y agoIs there any free functionality aside from the time-based trial? It looks like this is $45/year (or $84/year if paid monthly!), which seems pretty steep.
- ehzy 4y agoI mean, I'm not into Lego, but considering what this app does this seems like a pretty fair price. It's doubtless fairly involved to create something like this. It even gives you stylized step by step instruction on how to build then thing it invents for you!
- gnicholas 4y agoAccording to others, it does not invent the items — these are submitted by users. Seems like they could run a CourseHero-style business model, where you get access for X months in return for uploading Y creations. Some people would submit junk, but you would get enough good stuff that it would be worth it. Also, you could make the default value for submissions low, but give big bonuses for submissions that reach a certain level of popularity.
- spoonjim 4y agoIt’s a drop in the bucket for LEGO enthusiasts who spend hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars a year on legos.
- gnicholas 4y agoUndoubtedly true! It would be great if there were feature gating so that kids could use this app even if their willingness/ability to pay is much lower.
- sumedh 4y agoThey can have different plans, a cheap kids plans which shows simple models which can be built and a pro plan which shows simple and complex models which can be built.
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- vnchr 4y agoThis seems like a fun way I can share my big tubs of lego with my kiddo. He stills thrives on instructions. Thanks for sharing.
- corwinstephen 4y agoAt first I thought we were building things with "bricked" iphones.
- xyzzy_plugh 4y agoWhat's next? Finding a needle in a haystack? This is pretty neat and I would definitely play with it, but I'm not willing to front that kind of cash on something that might be terrible. It seems like the ideas are all user submitted -- I was expecting something ML here, like imaginary builds of cars. Cool nonetheless but there's a lot of untapped opportunity. My first thought was that this would be very useful for part co-mingling or something not-Lego related.
- memco 4y ago> What's next? Finding a needle in a haystack? I’m working on a jigsaw puzzle and hit a bit of a dry spell and was hoping there might be an app that could help find the pieces in a pile and where they go. Nothing exists yet that I could see. I imagine with a completed picture and a view of a piece it would be possible to show where in the picture the piece goes to reduce the burden. Extra pints if you can give it a view of the current progress and it could show you where the pieces should go.
- space_fountain 4y agoI’ve had the same thought. I think the tough bit is getting a clean image of all the pieces. Without controlling the background and lighting it would be quite tough
- thaunatos 4y agoKind of similar, a guy making a robot to solve jigsaw puzzles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu_1S77XkiM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu_1S77XkiM
- justinlloyd 4y agoCombined downloads for my Scrabble game solver (take a picture of the scrabble board, take a picture of your rack of tiles, play the optimal word) and my jigsaw puzzle solver (finding a needle in a haystack) totalled up to less than the fingers on the hands of a bad Youtube woodworker practicing every unsafe operation with a table saw whilst being inanttentive. After two years, back in 2013-ish, I removed the apps from the app store.
- jonas-w 4y agoThe fact that it talks about "itunes" in the google play store app description is just...
- logifail 4y agoJust yesterday my 9 year-old proudly revealed his latest flying creation, created - as almost all our children's Lego builds are - entirely out of his own imagination and from the multiple tubs of bricks that sit next to his bed. Each new Lego boxed set gets built from the instructions exactly once. Admired for a while (days to months), then duly ripped to bits and the pieces are used to build much better things that then can - and do - change on an hourly basis. I'm not about to interrupt my kids' creativity by even telling them about this app. They need less screen time, not more.
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- spookthesunset 4y agoTotally agree. All though in modern times they’ll just watch ten YouTube / Netflix / paramount+ videos where some dude builds Lego shit. Look at all the Minecraft videos out there. I kinda wonder if it’s us who needs to catch up. I mean I watch city skylines videos, FPV videos, and gun videos. All those are inspiration for my hobbies. What’s the difference between that and a Lego or “LOL surprise” video my kid watches? Dunno dude. Kinda think we are the old geezers in this one.
- exit 4y agothe externalisation of human abilities into machines is going to be a major theme in your offsprings life and encountering this app could inspire interest in how automation is achieved.
- idiocrat 4y agoGood, looks like outsourcing the core creativity and imagination. Next make a robot, which pointless builds those objects. Your child now can go consume corporate video streaming content.
- spullara 4y agoLol. No, they buy new builds with microtransactions and then watch it build them.
- dotcoma 4y agoYou forgot: They pay to have pics of what the app built for them stored on the magic blockchain…
- makeitdouble 4y agoThis takes the same position as the building instructions you get with a Lego set. To me the interesting part is you can buy brick buckets and still allow unexperienced kids to build something cool following instructions. They’ll still do modifications and evolutions from there, the important part being that they know how it was built and can break it and rebuild again.
- tamrix 4y agoWhen you were a kid wasn't the funniest part modifying the design or building your own? Isn't that kind of the point of Lego? It's in small blocks so you can create something with your imagination?
- yojo 4y agoI have a 5 yo that is very enthusiastic about Legos. It turns out that both directed and free play are good. He gets new kits and starts by following the instructions. He learns techniques along the way. How to interlock to make things that are strong and won’t fall apart. Patterns for building subassemblies like body panels or spoilers. As soon as he’s done following the instructions he takes the whole thing apart, and starts building his own creation with the pieces, applying the concepts he learned. It’s kind of like music. You don’t learn to play piano by composing songs, you start by playing other people’s music to learn the fundamentals. Then you can start riffing on it.
- homonculus1 4y agoWhy not just... play with the LEGO?
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- bismuthcrystal 4y agoBecause more tech is always the correct solution, right? The world will be a better place once we outsource everything to our machine overlords, can't you see? Why waste precious time thinking when you can get your answers right now? Thinking don't lead you nowhere, the machines will do it better than you anyway.
- swayvil 4y agoTech is a way of controlling things without ever leaving the comforts of the inside of your own head. For every circumstance, a map. For every need, a button. Touching actual reality with your own meaty paws and wet eyeballs is just upsetting.
- aaron695 4y ago
- swayvil 4y agoI have an app that scans my paper and tells me what to draw. It's pretty great.
- dustractor 4y agoI've been wishing there was an app where you could point your phone at a pile of scrap lumber and it would tell you things you could make with them. This is a step in that direction even if it's just for lego bricks right now.
- tanelpoder 4y agoIn the spirit of the Yo app, does anyone want to invest in bonfire.app?
- TomK32 4y agocutting boards...
- neilpa 4y agoI have a literal pile of bricks in my backyard. I thought this was going to be an app that I could scan them with and tell me how to build a pizza oven.
- Severian 4y agoIt would be helpful in Argentina... sorry.. couldn't help it. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794597 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794597
- curlftpfs 4y agoSame! There isn't one standard "red brick" size (like I thought lol), but there are a lot of different sizes. I'd pay for an app like that.
- dustractor 4y agoUse the bricks for your base https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBEqsAqBsHc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBEqsAqBsHc
- andersonmvd 4y agoFor kids I guess it kills creativity, but using the same idea for (house?) decoration would be very neat. Scan your messy things and suggest how you can rearrange them to make it beautiful.
- mongol 4y agoWhat I remember from childhood was that you were often looking for a particular piece you knew you had, but could not find it. This app could be useful for that.
- bartvk 4y agoIt's gotten worse, too. There used to be a limited amount of colors. My daughter now has a lot of of the Lego Friends series. It's very difficult, because there's pink, light pink, purple, light purple, and some sort of lilac. So if you want to perfectly build a piece, it takes a whole lot of searching. But then again, it's kinda fun too because you're forced to substitute.
- NeoTar 4y agoIf you keep your LEGO sorted then many builders suggest sorting by part rather than by colour - its a lot easier to identify a pink vs. hot pink 1x4 brick, rather than to find the 1x4 brick in your hot pink box. However, sorting by part can be frustrating. Imagine only 1x1 tiles/plates (i.e. the pieces which are 1/3 the height of a regular brick), to my knowledge there are: * 1x1 square plates (i.e. with a stud on top), * 1x1 circular plates, * 1x1 circular plates, with a hole running through, * 1x1 square tiles (i.e. with a flat top), * 1x1 circular tiles, * 1x1 arch-shaped tiles, * 1x1 quarter-circle tiles, * 1x1 circular tiles with a nubbin on top
- PebblesRox 4y agoYeah, sorting by color is a lot quicker than by part, though once you have things sorted by part (even roughly) it's easier to find placeholders that might not be the perfect color but still perform the same function. All those 1x1s could go in the same place and it would still help a lot with locating them, just knowing there's a place that only has 1x1s. If you're sorting to make it easier to build from instructions, sort by color. Otherwise sort by shape/size.
- regularfry 4y agoHaving recently done some moderately frustrating builds for the first time since my age was in single digits, I discovered that a small amount of pre-sorting radically improved this situation. And it doesn't seem to matter what parameter you index on: colour, size, type - anything to reduce the search space seems to work. Nor does the sort need to be complete. Just reducing the size of the unsorted pile also helps.
- nbzso 4y agoI have already accepted the notion that we as a workforce and creativity input will become irrelevant for corporate overlords in the next decade. I have already moved to the mountains, stopped practicing UX/UI design, stopped digital drawing and painting, minimized smartphone usage and use internet only for work and casual browsing. Already archived a lot of media, movies, books and OSS software, just in case. Moved all the work focus towards frontend implementation with clear understanding that the window of opportunity will close in the next 5 years. Suddenly I understand, completely, the Amish position towards technology.
- toxicFork 4y agoYes, what's the point of learning to play the piano when someone has autotune?
- nbzso 4y agoThe context is in the part "corporate overlords". The popular music uses autotune ad nauseam.
- kaeruct 4y agoHow did you get to this conclusion from an app that helps you figure out what you can build with your Lego bricks?
- nbzso 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth
- daedalus_f 4y agoThis app counts your bricks and then matches that count with user submitted builds you have the correct bricks to build. It has no magic AI creativity.
- rpigab 4y agoMerry Christmas from Chiron Beta Prime!
- robbrown451 4y agoVery cool. Now what I want is something that will scan a pile of rocks and tell me how to put them together to build a wall with minimal space between them. https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/stone-wall-texture-picture-id154416206?k=20&m=154416206&s=170667a&w=0&h=Cg1QjtTxKhJXhamTsNrugwzj396lJRHm8v7WwTvqanc= https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/stone-wall-texture-pict... Or better yet, tell my robot how to do it.
- ezconnect 4y agoThere's lots of papers about that algorithm used on warehouse box stocking.
- vidarh 4y agoMore generalised, the act of putting them together is a subset of bin packing, which is certainly one of the more studied problems of computer science, though NP-hard, and having a pile of rocks of different size complicates things substantially. Getting a decent approximation once you know the dimensions of the rocks is probably doable, but minimising the labour necessary to get the scans you need of each rock is also a huge challenge.
- weinzierl 4y agoVery cool idea, but what I'd need way more often: Now what I want is something that will scan a pile of socks and tell me how to put them together to have a perfect match. https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/socks-pile-texture-picture-picture-id1069111848?k=20&m=154416206&s=170667a https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/socks-pile-texture-pict... Or better yet, tell my robot how to do it.
- samingrassia 4y agoI had a similar idea, but swapped the Legos for the ikea replacement parts catalog. What’s the cheapest standing desk you can build with these cheap and easily available parts?
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThey have a replacement parts catalogue?
- eesmith 4y agohttps://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/spare-parts/ https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/spare-parts/ > Missing a leg for your sofa? Need an extra hinge? Spare parts big or small, we’ve got you covered. Repairing rather than replacing your furniture is great for the environment and great for your wallet! > You can order smaller spare parts such as screws, knobs or hinges at no cost using our self-service tool. Small spare parts will be delivered directly to your address in approximately 7 to 10 business days. > To purchase spare parts for your appliance, contact the authorized service center as listed in the user manual provided with the product.
- cobbaut 4y agoWould be awesome if this app contained all Lego sets ever (including the Rebrickable ones) so you know which sets you can build when you just bought bulk Lego at a flee market. But it seems it only contains their own designs and some user submitted content. Yes, it also finds pieces in a stack, but I'd rather do that part myself. Sorting Lego manually is fun!
- usgroup 4y agoScan the inside of your fridge — list all the dishes you could make.
- chrischen 4y agoCan be done by breaking into two easier problems. First is identifying the ingredient, and second is taking a list of ingredients and amounts and matching with recipe sites that never have their data in a normalized format.
- mklein994 4y agoNot quite there with the scanning part, but https://supercook.com https://supercook.com comes close.
- dymk 4y agoJokes on the app - we store leftover spaghetti in reused yogurt containers.
- kajecounterhack 4y agoWow really surprising how many folks here don't understand that lego typically comes in kits with instructions. By building a lot of sets using instructions, you can learn patterns that help you be more creative in free play. This app is not creativity inhibiting any more than coloring books or sketching instructionals inhibit kids from drawing their own things. It's just a different and also valuable activity.
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- anoncow 4y agoWon't the amount of variations possible in the bricks be very limited? A full size brick, a half brick, a 3/4 brick and sizes in between. Isn't the app then going to give the same set of recommendations for almost every brick pile? In that case is it even a brick scanning app anymore? Post read edit: Facepalm. This is about Lego bricks!
- elAhmo 4y agoA prime example of how comments made without reading the article look like.
- Kaibeezy 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27693560 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27693560 Barely a year ago. I thought it was maybe 5 years ago. Time itself must be accelerating. I need an app that can scan my hard drives, connectome and biochemistry > bleep bloop > tell me what I can still do with my life.
- fouronnes3 4y agoScan hydrogen atoms and tell me how to built a type III civilization.
- Kaibeezy 4y agoScan quantum resonances and tell me how to bring back my cat.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- fnordpiglet 4y agoThat’s not hard. Metabolize sugars until cellular and genetic damage is so severe you stop metabolizing sugars and decompose.
- Kaibeezy 4y agoDid I need an app for that?
- petee 4y agoThis is neat, but I feel it really detracts from the creativity you are supposed to be exercising by using Legos in the first place. I'd hope no one lets their kids use this, or they'll just get good at assembling IKEA furniture instead of designing the furniture.
- np_tedious 4y agoYou can use this without exclusively using this
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- rsgrafx 4y agoI agree, my 5 year old loves coming with random "inventions". He's proud of his random designs loves showing them off. He owns the whole of process coming up with idea to building it. It builds his confidence. I would not use this app.
- spapas82 4y agoI just tested it on my kids lego clone bricks; there are like 800 of them but they are almost exclusively basic shapes (1x1, 1x2, 2x2, 2x3, 2x4 and 1x4) in red/black/blue/green/yellow/gray. This is a picture of the box: https://static-v3.e-jumbo.gr/uploads/resources/137879/2016110417209-enlarge.jpg?lm=1F886D428C96838F582A5A472CF4E9D9 https://static-v3.e-jumbo.gr/uploads/resources/137879/201611... ; you'll see they are exactly like legos. The app identified 400 pieces (of the 800) and unfortunately the resulting ideas were not possible to be constructed because it required pieces we don't have. Of the 50 ideas I was only able to construct 1 or 2 that had very few pieces. I tried it a couple of times with diferent layout in pieces or lights, nothing really changed. Sorry but it doesn't work, at least with my kind of bricks.
- sandworm101 4y agoSo are they trying to upsell you by showing what could be built if you just bought a couple rare pieces?
- spapas82 4y agoNo, not really, my understanding is that they are not related with Lego. The problem is that the app mis-identifies a lot of my pieces.
- soared 4y agoWild to comment that someone’s app for identifying legos doesn’t identify not legos.
- silviot 4y agoI subscribed to the free trial for the Play store app, tried it a bit, and now I'd like to cancel my subscription. I found a "Manage subscriptions" link in the app, and it points to the Play Store app. I can't find an "unsubscribe" button there. If I try o uninstall the app I'm explicitly told "Your active subscriptions will not be canceled". I spent ten minutes looking for this, and I'm a web developer. How on earth will regular Joe be able to unsubscribe this? Also, can anyone point me in the right direction?
- lozenge 4y agoDid you try the Google Wallet and Google Pay apps? Could be in either of those. Edit: for me it's Play Store, round profile button/account switcher in top right, Payments and Subscriptions.
- aetherane 4y agoClick on your image in the corner, there is a payments and subscriptions button. Click unsubscribe.
- silviot 4y agoFound it, Thanks!
- drexlspivey 4y agoThat’s one thing that Apple got right, you can cancel any subscription from settings so you don’t have to deal with that crap.
- criley2 4y agoApple and Google both have all subscriptions in a single place that are easy to manage, this user just doesn't know how to access them. This is normal. My parents do not understand the iOS settings app at all, and it confuses them that they have to leave their app to manage their apps in a different app. I don't think Apple (or Google) got this right, there is definitely room for improvement for average user UX
- Kaibeezy 4y agoI’ll just put this here… Brrrap! A tree shredder! Ahead of him, everything was empty bookcases, skeletons. Robert went to the end of the aisle and walked toward the noise. The air was a fog of floating paper dust. In the fourth aisle, the space between the bookcases was filled with a pulsing fabric tube. The monster worm was brightly lit from within. At the other end, almost twenty feet away, was the worm's maw -- the source of the noise. Indistinct in the swirling haze, Robert could see two white-suited figures, their jackets labeled "Huertas Data Rescue". The two wore filter masks and head protectors. They might have been construction workers. In fact, this business was the ultimate in deconstruction: first one and then the other would pull books off the racks and toss them into the shredder's maw. The maintenance labels made calm phrases of the horror: The raging maw was a "NaviCloud custom debinder". The fabric tunnel that stretched out behind it was a "camera tunnel". Robert flinched from the sight -- and Epiphany [smartglasses] randomly rewarded his gesture with imagery from within the monster: The shredded fragments of books and magazines flew down the tunnel like leaves in tornado, twisting and tumbling. The inside of the fabric was stitched with thousands of tiny cameras. The shreds were being photographed again and again, from every angle and orientation, till finally the torn leaves dropped into a bin just in front of Robert. Rescued data. - Rainbows End, V. Vinge, 2006
- dukes82 4y agothis is similar to how dna used to be sequenced :)
- c7b 4y agoPretty amazing what AI can do already. It's one of those ideas that sound logical when you explain it, and hard when you think about how to build it.
- ttcbj 4y agoTo be honest, what I love about legos is the free play aspect. When I play with my kids, (now 8 and 10), I find that the key thing is not what pieces we have (admittedly, we have a lot of pieces), or instructions, but developing some theme or challenge. The theme could be ‘space’ or ‘under water’ or ‘I’m going to build the taller possible leg structure’ or ‘I’m going to build a vehicle that can be blown across the floor with a fan.’ Once they have a theme, they will do amazing stuff. Also, I believe it’s important to have a big slush pile of pieces. It’s amazing how much builds change when your are scrounging for piece X, and you see piece Y and think, actually… I see that this app is technologically interesting for the developer, but it doesn’t address my core problem: inspiring kids to get started on free creativity. For that, I’d more like a Lego theme of the day app, maybe slightly inspired or guided by the kids ages or genders. If I did that, I’d have the kids submit pictures of their results, and use those over time to assess and improve the quality of my suggested themes at different ages and Lego piles sizes (there is your AI, if you must). The pitch would be ‘inspire your kids to new creativity.”
- adv0r 4y agoagree on everything you said. Father of 2 (2 and 4 y/o) here, trying to introduce them to lego. I find the app fantastic for learning and inspiration, because I suck at lego and building with blocks myself. It can be turned into a super supa parenting tool, for lame parents like myself.
- worldsayshi 4y agoI think that the best way to learn is to combine free play with trying out other designs. That's the best way to learn how to achieve the designs you want to make.
- yreg 4y agoWhen I was younger I would build a set, play with it for a while while modifying it. And after that it would be never built again, because it would disintegrate into the giant collection of bricks I had, used to build custom cities. Perhaps with the exception of trains, which I used to rebuilt close to the blueprints. Now that I'm old, I'm not in the mood to build custom LEGO structures anymore, and I have some builds (e.g. ISS) that are exactly by the manual and just sitting, looking pretty on furniture. I think my younger self would be disgusted. :)
- rvba 4y agoI need something like this for a section of puzzles rhat I got (all one color...).
- zanmat0 4y ago
- interroboink 4y agoI have this giant pile of old recycled bricks in my back yard and I was thinking "wow, this is oddly specific and useful to me..." Oh it's _Lego_ bricks (:
- xrd 4y agoTaxi drivers enlarge their hippocampus by navigating around and learning routes. I definitely feel like Google Maps has affected my ability in certain somehow tangentially related areas to my detriment. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/677048.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/677048.stm This kind of thing is cool, but seems like it robs us of an opportunity to practice something important. Maybe we will replace it with some other skill? I would be very curious to know how many AI/ML researchers played with Legos and whether this free play was vital in their development. I would assume it is.
- lupire 4y agoFor the folks asking about non-LEGO https://www.countthings.com/ https://www.countthings.com/
- xani_ 4y agoI want that for my tools and parts Snap picks of every shelf and drawer then just allow me to ask where is it and get a pic with circled in tool.
- stakkur 4y agoThereby defeating the fundamental benefit of playing with Legos. So much software tries so hard to replace what never needed replacing.
- basicplus2 4y agoPerhaps the app should have a paperclip that pops up...