Lego Smart Brick General Discussion/Concerns Topic

[Johnny1360]

When I first saw this I immediately thought, so they just took the guts out of Mario and put them in a brick. Not sure of all the capabilities of this smart brick but it sure seems like a spin off of the Mario technology.

[SpacePolice89]

I really hope that these so called smart bricks won't be shoehorned into most larger sets because they'll only make them more expensive. It seems that nowadays Lego is afraid of imagination.

[Mylenium]

9 hours ago, Dolor said:

This will change LEGO forever...

That remains to be seen. Considering the short lifespan of previous electronics, "forever" can mean anything from two years to indeed long-ish like a decade or more. It really will come down to how versatile and accessible the system is and how future generations of it are backwards compatible with previous ones. For now I'm not seeing much there that would get me hyped and those extra thirty percent on top of already expensive Star Wars sets are just ridiculous.

Mylenium

[MAB]

I doubt it will change LEGO forever, and I don't think LEGO needs to be changed. The accelerometer may make them a little more interesting for AFOLs although that tech already exists in fairly miniature form if you don't mind a little bit of electronics tinkering.

[Toastie]

7 minutes ago, Mylenium said:

For now I'm not seeing much there that would get me hyped and those extra thirty percent on top of already expensive Star Wars sets are just ridiculous.

Yeap, same here; it is only $70 for ~470 pieces. Of which up to three are so smart! 

But don't you see? These sets are so smart! We are not anymore, so we better compensate for that. Light and sound and sensing each other = smart! And there is smart recharging! BTW, is the recharging unit an extra? Of about ... let's see ... $30? All power LEGO supplies cost at least 25$, this one is smart, so $35 sounds right. Induction is expensive! How long does the "battery" last - I bet nearly forever.

But: Good for me; no Euro lost on any of this stuff.

Best
Thorsten

3 minutes ago, MAB said:

I doubt it will change LEGO forever

Agreed - 4.5V did not, TC did not, 12V did not, 9V did not, Code Pilot did not, RCX did not, MicroScout did not, Spybots did not, NXT did not, EV3 did not, Dimensions did not, Boost, PUp, and Spike do not ... so these super-smart miniature sound and light bricks along with some RFID tags will certainly not. 

Whether TLG needs to change or not is probably not so much of a question, is it? Can they change at all without losing being LEGO? Or do they simply have to excel on making creative, playable, challenging, i.e. divers LEGO sets? Maybe even at affordable prices?

We'll see.

Best
Thorsten

[Peppermint_M]

The most I like in a MOC is lights or a motor. I prefer my build to be analogue.

This looks mildly interesting, but expensive as many said.

The light up minifigures did not last long. App sets did not last long. We will see.

[Calanon]

Just watched some SW set video demos. It's rather quiet and hard to hear. Maybe it's easier in real life but it seemed like an effort to get the music to play (and not even authentic music) and the sound of the Lego pieces being moved was louder. Seems like it might be fun for children to reenact dogfights with fighters but I'm shocked that some of the sounds were not authentic SW sounds. It makes it sound cheap and feel gimmicky.

[Mr Hobbles]

I love the possibilities of this, but execution is gonna be critical.

I love the direction and distance sensing capabilities of the Smart Bricks. The X-Wing vs TIE fighter play demo they did with two kids shooting at each other and registering hits was very cool. Similarly the demo with the racecars crossing the finish line and the winner being registered was cool also. I can see many possibilities - a train that can go end to end on a track by putting smart bricks at each end and reversing direction. Or a police car with a smart brick in it (with flashing blue lights), and a robbers car with a smart brick, and kids chasing them around.

I think these things are fundamentally so simple that the end state HAS to be to get the cost of them down such that every kid has a handful of them in their toy box. Then whenever they buy a new Lego set, even if it isn't a Smart Play set, it can come with a Smart Tile, and the build can have space for the Smart Brick, such that anyone can add Smart Play functionality to any Lego set with components they already own. The Smart Tiles are no doubt incredibly cheap. I believe this is already rumored with the second wave of Star Wars sets - Smart Play sets but with no Smart Brick included.

My biggest observation so far is that the sound quality is incredibly bad. I know why it is - they've prioritised using synthesised real-time sounds over playback of pre-recorded sounds. They take up less space and its easier to store the sound pattern on the Smart Tile/Smart Minifig itself, as opposed to requiring a firmware update for new sounds. But, it's just not good quality sound. I _hope_ that there some inbuilt storage to unlock the possibility of using pre-recorded sounds in the future.

[Auroralampinen]

Well, i have no idea where this topic would be best fit. But let's try it to be here:). 

All right if you have lived under a rock. Today at CES(Consumer Electronic Show). Lego revealed the most hated thing on the planet;). 

https://www.lego.com/en-us/aboutus/news/2026/december/lego-smart-play-announcement

While others are complaining about the set looks being terrible and price being terrible(me included). 

I have a different point of view for this electronic gimmick:). 

Well, im not a enviromentalist person. But i really worry how are you gonna replace the batteries when they go bad. And batteries do bulge out sometimes. So has lego maked sure that they would not burst in to flames if kid got curious why the smart figure bulged overnight. Im not against for rechargable batteries. But i worry how you are supposite to change the batteries. Or has Lego builded a international service network, to replace smart play batteries or some other electronic compnents. If they haven't made this. The environnemental impact would be huge. And parents would be angry if they would not get their expensive smart play stuff fixed. Plus i think this goes against lego's own environnemental protection claims. Like when they changed to paper bags because plastic is bad for environnement:). 

But i might be alone with these concerns. But it's always important to bring up your own points of concern:). 

But anyway if you too have your own concerns leave them in this topic:). 

To make clear yes, i know there is the Control + All In One hub with rechargable battery. But you don't interact with it the same way as the smart play system. And also when the ipod nano battery bulged you could not change it due to the design. And i wonder has the smart figures the same compact battery placement. Where in case of bulging you cannot remove it. And i think kid would not even notice their smart figure bulging until it's too late.

Edited January 6 by Auroralampinen

[MAB]

3 hours ago, Toastie said:

Agreed - 4.5V did not, TC did not, 12V did not, 9V did not, Code Pilot did not, RCX did not, MicroScout did not, Spybots did not, NXT did not, EV3 did not, Dimensions did not, Boost, PUp, and Spike do not ... so these super-smart miniature sound and light bricks along with some RFID tags will certainly not. 

Whether TLG needs to change or not is probably not so much of a question, is it? Can they change at all without losing being LEGO? Or do they simply have to excel on making creative, playable, challenging, i.e. divers LEGO sets? Maybe even at affordable prices?

Do they need to change? No. However, they do need to keep current and there are always some people wanting modern tech in their play. So long as they don't start putting these bricks into all their sets (which they won't) then I'm fine with it and it might even produce some interestng parts that can be hacked. It is a little gimmick to help sell sets to kids (and maybe adults) that want interactive features aside from building. I don't think the point of them is to change LEGO, but just enhance a few sets for those that like this sort of thing. When the IR controllers were reverse engineered, I built a little arduino based kit that had an IR beam across a train track and when broken by a passing train it sent another IR signal to the train to slow then stop at the station, play some sounds, change some LED display boards, pause the train for a few seconds then start off again. It was a fun way to add some functions to LEGO without changing what it was. I think this is similar but much easier for a non-electronics hobbyist to get into, a bit like using Mindstorms compared to buying bare boards and sensors.

I also think many of the examples you quote did change LEGO, at least a little. Pretty much every city style display at a convention I see has a train. Whether it is Power Functions, older 12V or newer stuff, that changed LEGO _a little_. Similarly Boost, Spike, Mindstorms, etc changed LEGO _a little_ for those that enjoy that type of thing. There is loads of creativity that come from the latter in terms of GBC or other moving creations. For those people, those sets/parts were important.

But of course nothing will change LEGO as much as (i) the minifigure and (ii) licensed sets, both of which have led to the popularity of it today. And possibly a third, ICONS/18+ sets.

I also think they are making more diverse sets than ever. At affordable prices, possibly not. But that is the state of LEGO today. So incredibly popular with casual fans or new fans that weren't around even just ten years ago. 

[Toastie]

58 minutes ago, MAB said:

For those people, those sets/parts were important.

Oh, count me in. That changed >a lot< for me - regarding my special interest. I have all of those gimmicks except EV3 and Spike, simply due to repeating concepts. Yes motors, sensors, computing power, communication changed, but the overall LEGO thing, create and make it work did not. After all, GBCs and other moving things, essentially every Technic set (of the past), were/are about motion. With modern stuff you can create even more complex things, but well, "will change forever" did not happen for me.

I agree in everything else you wrote as well.

Best
Thorsten

[Yperio_Bricks]

Now I have watched of the SW demo videos too and I am shocked how bad this is. The sounds are hard to hear and the rattling of the Lego pieces is much louder. And not even the Cantina Song is playing, just some royalty-free slop? This whole smart play thingy will be interesting to kids for one minute and then they continue playing the "classic way".

Gosh, I hope this flops so hard 

 

[ShaydDeGrai]

5 hours ago, Toastie said:

Agreed - 4.5V did not, TC did not, 12V did not, 9V did not, Code Pilot did not, RCX did not, MicroScout did not, Spybots did not, NXT did not, EV3 did not, Dimensions did not, (...snip)

This sounds like you're taking inventory in my Lego Junk Drawer.  I think if you throw in the MovieMaker Studios sets (and associated orphan-ware) you've pretty much named all the dated and mostly abandoned Lego-compatible crap I have gathering dust in the fringes of my collection.  I have sixty year old bricks that still integrate seamlessly with kits I bought last week while electronics and apps that are younger than my daughter are next to useless. (Though not my PF stuff.  That's still actively in use. I've refused to "upgrade" to PUp specifically because of its ties to smart phones - at least PF was wholly self contained )

As for this whole smart brick hype, maybe it's just the grumpy old man in me but back in my day we had to make our own "whoosh - pew! - pew!" noises when we swooped our galactic cruisers around and we managed the complexities of the task just fine.  

[icm]

I just watched the demo videos from Beyond the Brick and Mini Super Heroes Today. At least in the Beyond the Brick demos, the sound quality is so bad. It's too quiet to hear over the parts clacking, and the sound isn't even authentic. Generic sounds like that should have been put in an in house theme instead. Use Star Wars sounds for Star Wars sets! Also, it's such a monkey's paw moment to finally get an astromech body that allows the head to rotate, only for the body to be flat instead of round at the back. However, the new A-wing looks amazing. Granted, it doesn't have the fairing behind the windscreen, but that should be easy to add and otherwise the shaping and scaling of the ship is incredibly good thanks to straight slopes and wedge curve slopes that debuted in the past few years. I sure hope resellers will be selling that separately from the rest of the throne room duel set.

[Dolor]

Very good points. Think about it for 1 second...

[Renny The Spaceman]

1 hour ago, Dolor said:

Very good points. Think about it for 1 second...

Okay, I will.

Done, thank you 

[RichardGoring]

The app-free experience at least means it has a chance. I also like that it's rechargeable.

I suspect it could be fun and I can imagine my children playing with these kinds of things if implemented well. The costs are pretty high and the sets don't look that good.

[Toastie]

3 hours ago, ShaydDeGrai said:

This sounds like you're taking inventory in my Lego Junk Drawer.

Well, as I grow even older than dirt, this junk actually has me again! For some reason, for about 5 years now, I am so much into restoring 1980s computers, as well as trying to get all the ancient to half-megablocks modern programmable LEGO stuff (along with their programming environments; there were no apps back in the day, there were programs . Initially they were running within DOS (it began with TCLogo), then Win 3.11, Win98, Win XP, Win 2000, Win 7 ... on 8, 16, 32, 64 bit data busses. As far as I can tell, I have everything here on my laptop, a Win 11/64 bit machine. This thing I made a few years ago, talks IR to BLE, all protocols

and I can happily operate all the junk; some of my trains run on the infamous RC battery box, others on 4.5V/9V/12V battery boxes and the PF hardware (as PF receivers happily operate within that voltage range), and actually 4 of them even PUp around. I gave all the non-RF hardware RF receivers or even transceivers; that black lill' MulPI box can talk to all of them - and I talk to the MuLPI box via a VB6 program and a USB connection. Just gave all the various protocols an "address range"; once the MulPI box sees that, it sends out the appropriate RF signals. It's fun seeing #115 and #185, along with #7740 sharing the tracks with modern RCPF/PUp trains ...

Heck, right now, I have a C64 on my desk - my current bet is the PLA blew it, replacement is in the mail. We'll see. And I am planning on running the LEGO Lines software (1986) on it, as I just received another #9750 from the US. So all these electronic devices and their programs are not exactly junk to me, but all this did not "change LEGO forever". What it does is keeping me happily busy - uhmm - forever. Still, I need to build in Classic, Technic, or free style LEGO bricks and plates around the electronic stuff, so that actually seems to last forever.

All the best
Thorsten 

[ShaydDeGrai]

I can think of two genuinely good things about this new smart bricks:

1) It's an app-free experience - yea for keeping screens out of the equation and offering a complete out of the box solution from a play perspective.

2) These sets will help me stay within my Lego budget this year as I have no intention of spending any money on them - hard pass thank you very much

[Toastie]

8 hours ago, Mr Hobbles said:

I can see many possibilities - a train that can go end to end on a track by putting smart bricks at each end and reversing direction.

But that would require a smart actuator or actuator controller, nowadays called hub. Now, imagine the new smart brick speaks the LWP3.0 protocol ... BLE could be one way to go, as it is rather smart on power consumption. THAT would be cool. History implies though that this kind of compatibility is not regarded highly (anymore) in LEGO world. Instead, they like to replace existing technology with something entirely new. For some reason.

Again, we'll see. Once this smart stuff is compatible with PUp, I may watch out for the smart bricks selling on BL/eBay/etc. some years down the road, when most people forgot about it.

Best
Thorsten

 

   

[Toastie]

8 hours ago, Auroralampinen said:

Well, i have no idea where this topic would be best fit. But let's try it to be here:).

Uhm - I believe, there is a similar thread in the General LEGO Discussion forum, started last October or so - the discussion is going forward ...

Best
Thorsten

[JesseNight]

I see good and bad, and it definitely won't change Lego "forever" because nothing lasts forever. They're just throwing around the word "smart" a bit too much nowadays, guess everybody thinks that's cool? It doesn't seem all that smart, motion detection and optical sensors aren't exactly new. I'm glad they at least kept it app free.

Other than that, the mixed reactions bring me back to the mid 1980s when 9V Light & Sound made its first appearances. That had a lot of mixed reception too. And yeah the sound was quite horrible  I see with the new smart brick that part won't be a whole lot better bc there's simply no room for a good solution.

Edited January 6 by JesseNight

[Mr Hobbles]

2 hours ago, Toastie said:

But that would require a smart actuator or actuator controller, nowadays called hub. Now, imagine the new smart brick speaks the LWP3.0 protocol ... BLE could be one way to go, as it is rather smart on power consumption. THAT would be cool. History implies though that this kind of compatibility is not regarded highly (anymore) in LEGO world. Instead, they like to replace existing technology with something entirely new. For some reason.

Again, we'll see. Once this smart stuff is compatible with PUp, I may watch out for the smart bricks selling on BL/eBay/etc. some years down the road, when most people forgot about it.

Best
Thorsten

 

   

I’m agreed. I’m pretty sure that if it can be “app controlled”, it won’t be LWP3. I recently put some effort into reverse engineering the Lego Education Science motors, sensors, and remote, and it’s an entirely new protocol. Mind you, I’d say it’s a better protocol - it’s simpler than LWP3.

Lego has stated the Smart Bricks have BLE, though in what capacity, we don’t know. We know they can have their firmware updated over BLE, but whether we can control the lights or sound, or read sensor values, who knows.

I’m also interested in finding out if the new “BrickNet” mesh capability of the Smart Bricks is related to how the Lego Education Science components work, as it sounds very similar to their own communications capability achieved through BLE broadcasts.

My hope is we can communicate with the Smart Bricks through BLE just as we can with Powered Up and Education Science (incidentally, named “Coral” internally within LEGO)

But regardless, if Lego is willing to put in the effort, it could be an exciting new ecosystem. Only time will tell.

Edited January 6 by Mr Hobbles

[JopieK]

11 hours ago, Toastie said:

Uhm - I believe, there is a similar thread in the General LEGO Discussion forum, started last October or so - the discussion is going forward ...

Best
Thorsten

I merged the topics :)

LEGO should have done this more as a case study. Maybe they still intend to use it as such (even though I doubt it as they integrated it mostly with Star Wars already of course). I think we need much more automation in LEGO but I also have big concerns if this is the best execution...

[Renny The Spaceman]

Jang talks about the bricks using audio synthesis rather than recorded sound. This makes sense as to why they don't do the relevant sound affects for Star Wars stuff but it does make me wonder if this was a good option. Like a kid won't care about the slightly different lazer sounds but I wonder why they did the Cantina at all as it seems mainly build around the gimmick of playing the Cantina music but it seemingly can't?