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Would it be legal to make compatible bricks which are called differently? If so, why is nobody doing it? If not, there is your answer why LEGO is expensive; to
by neumann_alfred 14y ago
Would it be legal to make compatible bricks which are called differently? If so, why is nobody doing it? If not, there is your answer why LEGO is expensive; to quote the dude from Idiocracy, "ohhh, I like money".
- danielweber 14y agoYes. See the link to Lego_clones elsewhere on this page.
- femto 14y agoYes, and they are doing it. For example, "Mega bloks" [1]. We have both at home, and in my experience, Mega blocks are interchangeable with Lego. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Brands#Lego_lawsuits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_Brands#Lego_lawsuits
- bcl 14y agoIn my experience Mega Bloks fit, but don't hold together as well as LEGO.
- eloisant 14y agoYes, because if you can't make it as precise as LEGO, you can make it a bit loose so it fits anyway.
- rsheridan6 14y agoThey're also made of a different kind of plastic - they don't look or feel as smooth and shiny. There are a number of Lego knockoff brands, but I don't think any of them measure up to Lego.
- neumann_alfred 14y agoNice! But note Lego tried their best to fight them.. instead of welcoming friends and competition in this huge undertaking of measuring bricks correctly. Those Lego guys must really have figured out some hi-tech stuff there, so much is obvious; and it must weigh hard on their shoulders to not be able to share that with the world through a medium other than selling colored plastic blocks :(
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- femto 14y agoThe thing I'd like to know is whether there are third parties producing components that Lego doesn't. For example: * A Lego compatible case, that can accept an Arduino board. * A range of Lego compatible sensors and actuators * Other components following the theme of integrating open-source with Lego. * and so on... --- Edit: formatting
- mistermann 14y agoThis is a really fantastic idea.
- callmeed 14y agoI don't know about your specific examples but see http://www.brickarms.com http://www.brickarms.com for one. Lego doesn't make guns so they filled that void. I believe it was originally just a guy in his home/garage.
- jack-r-abbit 14y agoThose are awesome! Thanks for that link.
- cdcarter 14y agoLEGO allows the BrickCase, with is a compatible iPhone case, so I would imagine at least an Arduino case that accepts LEGO would be fine.
- hugs 14y agoI'm working on something very similar. I'm making a 3D-printable LEGO-Technic compatible version called "Bitbeam". http://bitbeam.org/arduino-mounting-plate http://bitbeam.org/arduino-mounting-plate I started the Bitbeam project because I was prototyping some things in LEGO, but when it came time to figure out how to make many of them, I wasn't too excited about the cost of LEGO... but I was happy with my LEGO design. So I decided to port LEGO dimensions to materials that are easier and cheapier to source myself.