Light up Legos?

[brick man]

I was searching eBay for custom Lego creations and stumbled upon this. its something from a beatles album or something but anyway how did they make it light up?

Heres the link

Edited November 18, 2010 by brick man

[Big Cam]

Looks to me like probably LED's inside the bricks, or possibly controlled light pointing at each brick, like a low powered laser.

[Carbohydrates]

its something from a beatles album or something

It's a recreation of the cover of Abbey Road, arguably the most famous album ever made. It's also quite good - if you find yourself with a bit of spare time, give it a listen.

As for the lighting, you'll notice how the orange minifig heads don't sit flush with the round 1 x 1 bricks beneath them. The orange heads are sitting atop LEDs, the wires of which are fed through those hollow bricks. It seems a few parts have been drilled to allow for the installation of a switch. It's neat, but a bit of a hack job. With smaller LEDs and more precise drilling, I feel the assembly could have been made much more cleanly.

Edited November 18, 2010 by Carbohydrates

[brick man]

But then what powers it?

[fred67]

But then what powers it?

A battery?

I doubt this guy is using these, but wiring a simple LED with a watch type battery is quite simple, and it's hidden under the plates somewhere.

I agree with Carbohydrates... you could probably do this better yourself for less money (or at least looking a lot better).

EDIT: By the way, the darker lights are probably ones he simply had trouble with, or had bad wiring, so he arranged it like it was supposed to be that way, but all you would need is a bigger resistor for those lights. Piece of cake.

Edited November 18, 2010 by fred67

[brick man]

OK so i bought the stuff I need for it and I already had the bricks but so far its already costing me about something about 75$ so I hope this works.

[brick man]

Turns out it was MUCH MUCH harder than I expected. There was so MUCH problems that it raised expenses up to 92$. SO FRUSTRATING!

[Fuzzylegobricks]

Here is where you get them!Anyways if you look at the ebay pics you actually get to know how it works!

[fred67]

Turns out it was MUCH MUCH harder than I expected. There was so MUCH problems that it raised expenses up to 92$. SO FRUSTRATING!

Sorry for your frustration... I guess a lot of us that are saying it shouldn't cost too much (me included) already have a lot of electronics we need to do stuff like this, so the cost is really the LEDs, resistors, and battery holder... if you're just going to make the one it might be a much higher initial investment... a soldering iron and solder, wire...

[brick man]

Looks like they posted it again but starting at a penny. anybody thinking of getting it? Heres the link

[brick man]

Looks like there starting to make light up star wars minifigs to. this looks a lot cheaper and easier to make. but how did they do it?

Edited November 26, 2010 by brick man

[Aanchir]

Looks like there starting to make light up star wars minifigs to. this looks a lot cheaper and easier to make. but how did they do it?

That one looks like it uses an LED with a hidden power source. No idea where they hid it, though (the torso has the most space, but running a wire up through the hand and arm has got to be difficult). There were official light-up Star Wars minifigs similar to this in 2005 sets, but they were nowhere near this quality-- the heads could not be removed from the torsos (due to the head acting as a "button" to activate the light), and the right hand and lightsaber handle were fused with the arm (they also did this with some Police minifigures, using the same piece as a flashlight instead of a lightsaber).