Project: Programs to allow interactions between old Lego Control Interfaces (RCX, Lego Interface B, others?)

[Toastie]

I have one more  ... I would love to work with:

This is another vintage LEGO device, the LEGO Dimensions toy pad. I know that @Mr Hobbles has realized a fantastic solution for interacting with the pad/let the pad do things, but I am simply too dumb to get that going. Here is one of >his< stunning videos about that:

Wouldn't it be incredible, when putting a tag (figure/minifigure) on one of the sectors on the pad, that Interface A would "react" and does something? These pads would also add some nice lighting to any larger build as well. And if I am not mistaken, even multiple pads could be used ... 

Just an idea ...

All the best
Thorsten

 

[Bliss]

6 hours ago, AJB2K3 said:

CADA

I had to search for what is CaDA...   If I understand well, it is non lego bricks company...
I had no idea who they are...  For the moment, I have enough only with Lego devices :-)

  

4 hours ago, Toastie said:

This is another vintage LEGO device, the LEGO Dimensions toy pad

Wow, I never heard of this...

And after some search, I see that LEGO Dimensions pad are for Game console like WII, XBOX, PS4 etc...  So they have different protocol (and cable ?) I would guess according to which console you have?

Edited Sunday at 02:51 PM by Bliss

[AJB2K3]

From what I can see it's advertised as 2.4GHz. remote devices. they have an app so I assume they could be Bluetooth but haven't got the will power to look into it.

[Bliss]

I finally got a Techinc control+ hub with one XL and one L motors.

It seems to work with Lego Blockly out of the box with all the motor blocks.

But technic hub has new internal sensors to handle that I have to take care off...

Stay tune for more...

[Toastie]

4 hours ago, Bliss said:

I would guess according to which console you have?

Yes. As far as I understood, the XBOX version is one type, which does not work with non-LEGO software (as the protocol is unknown?) whereas the other version (for Wii and all others) does work, as the protocol is known. @Mr Hobbles knows certainly more about that as he can read/write to the Wii type device using node.js.

I have the Wii version of the pad and I had somewhere a control program I found in the webs (which I can't find anymore ) that let me turn on/off the LEDs in the pad and change their colors on a Win10/11 laptop via USB.

They are also rather cheap.

Best
Thorsten

Edited Sunday at 06:59 PM by Toastie

[Mr Hobbles]

5 hours ago, Toastie said:

Yes. As far as I understood, the XBOX version is one type, which does not work with non-LEGO software (as the protocol is unknown?) whereas the other version (for Wii and all others) does work, as the protocol is known. @Mr Hobbles knows certainly more about that as he can read/write to the Wii type device using node.js.

I have the Wii version of the pad and I had somewhere a control program I found in the webs (which I can't find anymore ) that let me turn on/off the LEDs in the pad and change their colors on a Win10/11 laptop via USB.

They are also rather cheap.

Best
Thorsten

Exactly as you said, the Wii/PS3/PS4 Toy Pads are identical, with a pretty basic wire protocol running over USB HID. The Xbox 360/One version is different - the cable has an authentication chip in it that means it will only talk to Xbox consoles. It's pretty useless for any other purpose.

The Toy Pad acts as a basic NFC reader (well, 3 NFC readers actually), allowing arbitrary reads of blocks from an NTAG213/214/215 tag, not just LEGO Dimensions tags. In fact, I've tested it with the pairing cards that came with LEGO Education Science/Computer Science & AI. It can read them just fine. Sadly, it cannot read Smart Play minifigures, as LEGO moved to NFC-V/ISO15693, which the Toy Pad cannot read.

The most annoying part of the protocol is the TEA encryption used for decrypting the data on the LEGO Dimensions tags. This is required to read/write any game specific data to the tags, such as reading which character or vehicle ID was placed onto the Toy Pad. Other than that, nothing else is encrypted, just raw message payloads (ie. changing color, fading effects, reading UID's, etc).

Though, if @Bliss wanted to add it, I'm sure Claude or Codex would make short work of it by pointing it at my Node.js library. :) https://github.com/nathankellenicki/node-toypad

Edited Sunday at 10:32 PM by Mr Hobbles

[Bliss]

31 minutes ago, Mr Hobbles said:

Though, if @Bliss wanted to add it, I'm sure Claude or Codex would make short work of it by pointing it at my Node.js library. :) https://github.com/nathankellenicki/node-toypad

Thank you very much for all this information and link to your work.

I just found out today about the existence of Lego Dimensions...  And I saw some toy pads not too expensive on marketplace around my location.
I will certainly try to add support for this in Lego Blockly.

Thanks also to @Toastie to bring this up...

[Bliss]

In version: 2026-05-17-2324

I improved the tilt block that works for BOOST and Technic hub internal tilt sensors (Choose port "TILT") (Boost does not have axis Z).

I will add soon the Accel and Gyro and Gesture blocks (Technic Hubs)...  I'm not too sure about the values they give. 
Accelerometer give mG (milli-G) that gives a number that could be used for the tilt but I prefer the Tilt block as it give Degree of tilt... 
Gyro gives DPS (Degree Per Second) so I think it must detect moving or accelerating, not sure yet...

14 hours ago, AJB2K3 said:

From what I can see it's advertised as 2.4GHz. remote devices. they have an app so I assume they could be Bluetooth but haven't got the will power to look into it.

From what I can find about it, they use BLE (BLE use 2.4 ghz).  They did not make their protocol public but there might be people that have done some reverse engineering etc...

I'm glad to know there are other alternatives but I will put this in the very bottom of my todo list for the moment.

Edited Monday at 04:30 AM by Bliss

[BrickTronic]

1 hour ago, Bliss said:

...

From what I can find about it, they use BLE (BLE use 2.4 ghz).  They did not make their protocol public but there might be people that have done some reverse engineering etc...

...

Hello,

Have a look at Brickcontroller2

Jo

[BrickTronic]

7 hours ago, Mr Hobbles said:

...

The Toy Pad acts as a basic NFC reader (well, 3 NFC readers actually), allowing arbitrary reads of blocks from an NTAG213/214/215 tag, not just LEGO Dimensions tags. In fact, I've tested it with the pairing cards that came with LEGO Education Science/Computer Science & AI. It can read them just fine. Sadly, it cannot read Smart Play minifigures, as LEGO moved to NFC-V/ISO15693, which the Toy Pad cannot read.

The most annoying part of the protocol is the TEA encryption used for decrypting the data on the LEGO Dimensions tags. This is required to read/write any game specific data to the tags, such as reading which character or vehicle ID was placed onto the Toy Pad. Other than that, nothing else is encrypted, just raw message payloads (ie. changing color, fading effects, reading UID's, etc).

...

Hello,

(Where) Are the readouts of the TAGs available ?

What Value does the TAG-Characters represent ?
At which address in the TAG-Memory is the character-ID stored ?

Jo

Are there more RAW-Data than the 14 of the SmartPlay Tags known ? Bricklink reports 36 (Tiles + Figs)

[Mr Hobbles]

On 5/18/2026 at 6:58 AM, BrickTronic said:

Hello,

(Where) Are the readouts of the TAGs available ?

What Value does the TAG-Characters represent ?
At which address in the TAG-Memory is the character-ID stored ?

Jo

Are there more RAW-Data than the 14 of the SmartPlay Tags known ? Bricklink reports 36 (Tiles + Figs)

Well, code is source of truth of course, so I recommend reading the library first and foremost. But LEGO Dimensions uses tag pages 0x24-0x27. Block 0x26 stores a flag to detect if the tag is a vehicle or a character. If it's a character, then the id stored in a uint32 (first four bytes) of block 0x24 is encrypted with the TEA cipher using a key derived from the UID of the tag (so you'll need to read this first). Once you have the character id, you can look it up in the map: https://github.com/nathankellenicki/node-toypad/blob/master/data/minifigs.json

If it's a vehicle, then the id is not encrypted and can be looked up in the map https://github.com/nathankellenicki/node-toypad/blob/master/data/vehicles.json

There is additional data on the tag for vehicles (written by the game) which stores which in game vehicle upgrades the user has chosen.

Character tags have those blocks write-locked out of the factory. Vehicle tags can be rewritten.

Note that only those blocks are write-locked (or not). A lot of the other blocks are not locked, and not used by the game, meaning you can store arbitrary data in them without affecting their use in game. :D (I my have had some personal creative uses for this lol)

Note: The TEA key being derived from the UID means it's pointless distributing dumps of the tags. They can't be cloned byte for byte onto another tag, as the UID will be different, and therefore decryption will fail ingame. It is however possible to write your own tags as they'll do the TEA encryption. There are Android and iOS apps for LEGO Dimensions that do this.

As for Smart Play, I have some reverse engineering notes here, including some tag data https://github.com/nathankellenicki/node-smartplay/blob/main/research/notes/HARDWARE.md

I haven't bothered to document all tags I have. Also as far as I know noone has managed to decrypt the data on the tags yet - it looks like AES, and the key appears baked into the ASIC on the Smart Brick. But, unlike LEGO Dimensions, the data isn't encrypted using a key derived from the UID, so you can successfully clone the Smart Tags/Minifigs onto blank tags, and they will work.
 

Edited Tuesday at 08:26 PM by Mr Hobbles

[Bliss]

In version: Version: 2026-05-20-0052

New WeDo 2.0 hub support:

The following example will change the color of the WeDo2 LED randomly every time you press on the WeDo  green button (short press)

Another example for the Distance and Tilt Sensors:

It only supports the WeDo 2.0 Sensors and simple motor that came with the set.

There is a piezo inside the WeDo 2.0 hub but I find it almost inaudible (at least for me), so I did not implement it.  I can add it if someone realy want it in blockly...