6 ms·

Lego Calendar

204 points by greenburger 12y ago

zheshishei 12y ago
Can the synchronizer differentiate between single block and double block heights? Also, another cool level of granularity (if needed) could be using 1x2 or 1x1 lego blocks to add more information that's easily seen in the photo. Not only do you have different colors of 1x2 and 1x1 blocks, you can also place them in different positions (left/right vertically, top/bottom horizontally). All in all, great idea. I'd like to set one of these up myself in the future.
- pasiaj 12y ago
  I've been playing around with this same kind of idea. In my case I was using a cheap Android phone as a camera. Color recognition of 1x1 size Legos start to become problematic from more than 2 meters away, even in good lighting conditions.
  - zheshishei 12y ago
    Couldn't it be solved by only taking a picture of the changed columns of the calendar instead of the entire three months? I'm not familiar with how you're processing the picture, but it might be possible to identify the columns by utilizing the empty row at the top of each column. I count 7 positions/bits. You can use 2 bits to mark the month and the remaining 5 bits to mark the day of the month. Using this encoding, you could even add a fourth month without any problems.
knes 12y ago
FYI, This was posted 11 months ago too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6475285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6475285
jpetersonmn 12y ago
Looks pretty cool. Few questions. 1) Do you have to give your calendar login to a 3rd party? 2) What happens I add something to my calendar on my computer, is there some alert sent to someone that they need to add a lego to the board? 3) What I schedule something on the calendar online, but the lego doesn't get added to the board. When someone takes a picture and syncs it, what will happen to my appointment? Will it think it's gone and erase it? Notify of the descrepency, etc.... I'm envisioning in my head some arduino powered lego calendar that automatically puts the blocks in place as appointments are added/moved/deleted from the cloud.
- jthacker 12y ago
  Speculation: It appears they are using this for the overarching structure of projects. Rather than managing individual appointments it manages overall time, e.g. on this day BobbySue should be spending 50% of her time on project A and 50% on project B. Then you can make the calendar read only from the digital side. That being said, I would still like to see a pick-n-place managed version of this that stays in sync with google calendar.
gurvinder 12y ago
You will soon get a cease and desist letter from Lawyers of Lego for using their trademark. I am telling from my experience.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  Can you tell us about your experience?
  - gurvinder 12y ago
    few years ago, I started a site which had "lego" in its name. Even though it was actually promoting Lego and not at all commercial ( no Ads no fees ). I got a cease and desist letter from Lego Group, and they demanded that I hand over the domain to them. I didn't want the trouble for a site which was not even making money for me, so I just transferred the domain to them.
    - FullyFunctional 12y ago
      FWIW, no need to be angry with them. The reason everyone with a trademark would react exactly the same way is because they have to, by law. If they don't, the court will argue that they haven't protected their trademark and they will loose it. Yes, this happens in real life.
      - matt_kantor 12y ago
        > Yes, this happens in real life. Do you have any examples of companies losing their trademark because of things similar to gurvinder's case?
        privong 12y ago
        It is still a registered trademark, but "Kleenex" has been genericized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleenex#Kleenex_Trademark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleenex#Kleenex_Trademark I do not know if that is due to their not defending the trademark or what the precise legal status is, though.
00bemccurrachp 12y ago
Love the idea, especially it's accessibility. This feels like it would be fast to manage physically, except for the take-photo-and-email component, which could be replaced by a webcam pointed at the board. Then there's also no technical friction fiddling on your phone.
corbett3000 12y ago
This is so 2012.
yzzxy 12y ago
Although the image recognition software is cool, it's almost surely cheaper to just set up Mechanical Turk HITs, compared to however many programmer-hours were spent on the image recognition.
- davtbaum 12y ago
  I'm not sure i agree, I can't imagine it taking more than a solid day of work prototyping this in OpenCV.
  - yzzxy 12y ago
    Well, I'm not an expert by an means but I think the plumbing would take far more time than the vision itself - hooking up to a calender api, etc. Maybe MT would run into the same issues. But HITs are super cheap, and a single programmer-day in many countries would still buy a ton of HITs at a few cents a pop.
jacquesm 12y ago
For a while LEGO had 'modulex' and 'plancopy', at least one segment of which was targeted at lego based planning boards. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1NgBBDpSJ34/SNm7FhCVdNI/AAAAAAAADXU/unm9aB4gGMQ/s400/6e5f_1.JPG http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1NgBBDpSJ34/SNm7FhCVdNI/AAAAAAAADX...
- Zikes 12y ago
  Custom pieces could probably also be 3D printed.
  - isaacdl 12y ago
    From what I've heard, the tolerances on Lego pieces are very tight. Most commercially available 3D printers can't yet reach those tolerances, so the pieces don't fit together very well. Although I guess having a perfect fit might not matter as much for a project like this vs. a 2 foot wide model of the Death Star!
sygma 12y ago
I posted this two months ago [0] glad to see it gained traction this time :) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7914768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7914768
teamonkey 12y ago
Can anyone explain what hiding blocks in a drawer achieves? I can't work it out.
- mholt 12y ago
  I could imagine that it keeps resorting to overtime out of sight and out of mind.
- PeterisP 12y ago
  If you remove a blue block of "Blue project" from some day because for some reason you're doing something else, or are sick or whatever, then you need to place it somewhere else on the planning calendar, as the expected amount of work doesn't shrink. Hiding it in a drawer means that a block of neccesary work has not been scheduled anywhere and will bite you back later (or you'll do it sometime of regular hours).

204 points by greenburger 12y ago

Can the synchronizer differentiate between single block and double block heights? Also, another cool level of granularity (if needed) could be using 1x2 or 1x1 lego blocks to add more information that's easily seen in the photo. Not only do you have different colors of 1x2 and 1x1 blocks, you can also place them in different positions (left/right vertically, top/bottom horizontally). All in all, great idea. I'd like to set one of these up myself in the future.

pasiaj 12y ago
I've been playing around with this same kind of idea. In my case I was using a cheap Android phone as a camera. Color recognition of 1x1 size Legos start to become problematic from more than 2 meters away, even in good lighting conditions.
- zheshishei 12y ago
  Couldn't it be solved by only taking a picture of the changed columns of the calendar instead of the entire three months? I'm not familiar with how you're processing the picture, but it might be possible to identify the columns by utilizing the empty row at the top of each column. I count 7 positions/bits. You can use 2 bits to mark the month and the remaining 5 bits to mark the day of the month. Using this encoding, you could even add a fourth month without any problems.

knes 12y ago

FYI, This was posted 11 months ago too. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6475285 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6475285

jpetersonmn 12y ago

Looks pretty cool. Few questions. 1) Do you have to give your calendar login to a 3rd party? 2) What happens I add something to my calendar on my computer, is there some alert sent to someone that they need to add a lego to the board? 3) What I schedule something on the calendar online, but the lego doesn't get added to the board. When someone takes a picture and syncs it, what will happen to my appointment? Will it think it's gone and erase it? Notify of the descrepency, etc.... I'm envisioning in my head some arduino powered lego calendar that automatically puts the blocks in place as appointments are added/moved/deleted from the cloud.

jthacker 12y ago
Speculation: It appears they are using this for the overarching structure of projects. Rather than managing individual appointments it manages overall time, e.g. on this day BobbySue should be spending 50% of her time on project A and 50% on project B. Then you can make the calendar read only from the digital side. That being said, I would still like to see a pick-n-place managed version of this that stays in sync with google calendar.

gurvinder 12y ago

You will soon get a cease and desist letter from Lawyers of Lego for using their trademark. I am telling from my experience.

pavel_lishin 12y ago
Can you tell us about your experience?
- gurvinder 12y ago
  few years ago, I started a site which had "lego" in its name. Even though it was actually promoting Lego and not at all commercial ( no Ads no fees ). I got a cease and desist letter from Lego Group, and they demanded that I hand over the domain to them. I didn't want the trouble for a site which was not even making money for me, so I just transferred the domain to them.
  - FullyFunctional 12y ago
    FWIW, no need to be angry with them. The reason everyone with a trademark would react exactly the same way is because they have to, by law. If they don't, the court will argue that they haven't protected their trademark and they will loose it. Yes, this happens in real life.
    - matt_kantor 12y ago
      > Yes, this happens in real life. Do you have any examples of companies losing their trademark because of things similar to gurvinder's case?
      - privong 12y ago
        It is still a registered trademark, but "Kleenex" has been genericized: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleenex#Kleenex_Trademark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleenex#Kleenex_Trademark I do not know if that is due to their not defending the trademark or what the precise legal status is, though.

00bemccurrachp 12y ago

Love the idea, especially it's accessibility. This feels like it would be fast to manage physically, except for the take-photo-and-email component, which could be replaced by a webcam pointed at the board. Then there's also no technical friction fiddling on your phone.

corbett3000 12y ago

This is so 2012.

yzzxy 12y ago

Although the image recognition software is cool, it's almost surely cheaper to just set up Mechanical Turk HITs, compared to however many programmer-hours were spent on the image recognition.

davtbaum 12y ago
I'm not sure i agree, I can't imagine it taking more than a solid day of work prototyping this in OpenCV.
- yzzxy 12y ago
  Well, I'm not an expert by an means but I think the plumbing would take far more time than the vision itself - hooking up to a calender api, etc. Maybe MT would run into the same issues. But HITs are super cheap, and a single programmer-day in many countries would still buy a ton of HITs at a few cents a pop.

jacquesm 12y ago

For a while LEGO had 'modulex' and 'plancopy', at least one segment of which was targeted at lego based planning boards. http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1NgBBDpSJ34/SNm7FhCVdNI/AAAAAAAADXU/unm9aB4gGMQ/s400/6e5f_1.JPG http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_1NgBBDpSJ34/SNm7FhCVdNI/AAAAAAAADX...

Zikes 12y ago
Custom pieces could probably also be 3D printed.
- isaacdl 12y ago
  From what I've heard, the tolerances on Lego pieces are very tight. Most commercially available 3D printers can't yet reach those tolerances, so the pieces don't fit together very well. Although I guess having a perfect fit might not matter as much for a project like this vs. a 2 foot wide model of the Death Star!

sygma 12y ago

I posted this two months ago [0] glad to see it gained traction this time :) [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7914768 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7914768

teamonkey 12y ago

Can anyone explain what hiding blocks in a drawer achieves? I can't work it out.

mholt 12y ago
I could imagine that it keeps resorting to overtime out of sight and out of mind.
PeterisP 12y ago
If you remove a blue block of "Blue project" from some day because for some reason you're doing something else, or are sick or whatever, then you need to place it somewhere else on the planning calendar, as the expected amount of work doesn't shrink. Hiding it in a drawer means that a block of neccesary work has not been scheduled anywhere and will bite you back later (or you'll do it sometime of regular hours).