Sound Bricks

[LEGO Shop Girl]

Ok so up until recently I was unaware that LEGO made sound bricks; as of writing this I have not yet had the opportunity to test one out.

So I have some questions and I'm hoping to get some answers from those who may know.

First of all; do they work the same as the light bricks in that you have to hold the button down to get them to play the whole sound?

Secondly; any idea how many seconds of sound they are capable of holding?

And finally; can they be reprogrammed to play something different?

[Pandora]

Hi LEGO Shop Girl, nice to see another en-pinkened bod around (loving Peppermint's new word) especially one who works for TLG.

I've had to listen to a Sound Brick over and over and over, so here's some info:

You can hear it here too, in Rufus' Review of 5771 Hillside House (there's a video part way in).

You have to press the button (made into a doorbell in the build) to make it work, just like a Light Brick, however you just have to press and release for the whole sound to play (just like a real doorbell) rather than hold down the button as you would with a Light Brick. It seems the slightest pressure will set it off and it's very easy to set it off during building the set. You can get an idea of the length of sound from the video. As to whether it can be re-programmed - I doubt it but a more knowledgeable technical person will no doubt answer that in due course.

[brickmack]

  On 5/14/2011 at 10:23 AM, Pandora said:

Hi LEGO Shop Girl, nice to see another en-pinkened bod around (loving Peppermint's new word) especially one who works for TLG.

I've had to listen to a Sound Brick over and over and over, so here's some info:

You can hear it here too, in Rufus' Review of 5771 Hillside House (there's a video part way in).

You have to press the button (made into a doorbell in the build) to make it work, just like a Light Brick, however you just have to press and release for the whole sound to play (just like a real doorbell) rather than hold down the button as you would with a Light Brick. It seems the slightest pressure will set it off and it's very easy to set it off during building the set. You can get an idea of the length of sound from the video. As to whether it can be re-programmed - I doubt it but a more knowledgeable technical person will no doubt answer that in due course.

I've never actually had a sound brick to play around with, but I imagine if it were taken apart, there is something inside that could be reprogrammed to play another sound, or more likely, a section of the circuit board has a chip or something that has the sound already set in, in which case the only way to change the sound would be to remove that chip (which risks breaking the circuit board) and replace it with a different chip with your own sound. If I get a set that includes one, I'll look, but I probably won't get any since I just don't like that kind of set because the brick gets in the way...

[Legoist]

It would be nice to see a picture of the inside of this sound brick. If it's possible to reprogram it, there might be possibly an interface/port visible, but I really doubt it is meant to be programmable... it's more likely to be just a printed chip.

[Solscud007]

My Fiancee has the Grand Carousel and when I get home I can venture and open it up for exploratory minds.

[Legoless]

Wonder if they'll ever produce train-specific sound bricks? It is already possible to get sound chips for 00 scale model trains (although these need an additional small speaker I think) that replicates the sound made by specific locos (eg starting, idling, accellerating, etc) which actually change in accordance to what the loco is doing. Now that would be far too ambitious for a sound brick to accomplish, but it might be possible to have generic 'chuff chuff' steam engine noises- would work for simpler sets like the Toy Story train.

[Legoist]

  On 5/16/2011 at 4:20 PM, Legoless said:

Wonder if they'll ever produce train-specific sound bricks? It is already possible to get sound chips for 00 scale model trains (although these need an additional small speaker I think) that replicates the sound made by specific locos (eg starting, idling, accellerating, etc) which actually change in accordance to what the loco is doing. Now that would be far too ambitious for a sound brick to accomplish, but it might be possible to have generic 'chuff chuff' steam engine noises- would work for simpler sets like the Toy Story train.

There is something like that in Duplo trains, but their main piece is very large so I don't know how big the sound chip inside might be.

[Clone OPatra]

I believe LEGO produces different types of sound bricks. There are the ones like the doorbell brick that you press once and it plays a sound, while there are others that have a switch which, when put in the 'on' position, will play continuously.

Judging from both of our wonderful Grand Carousel reviews on EB, the Carousel has a sound brick that plays continuous (albeit annoying) music until you turn it off. I'm not sure just what sort of sound brick the Alien Conquest mothership contains though; it seems to be activated when you spin the large ring from what I could tell in the Toy Fair coverage.

[fred67]

I would like to incorporate sounds into MOCs, but the LEGO bricks are too limiting. I dabble in electronics (not even really... I guess I would like to dabble, I've not done anything beyond a few simple lights just for seeing how to do it), I would love for a third party like lifelites to build an arbitrary sound brick.

I've looked into the chips they use in greeting cards, but their lives seem way too limited. Plus the electronics to transfer clean sound from a PC, for example, to such chips is beyond me. Moreover, if I were making a wish list, I would want the options to choose which sound to play (or have the electronics select randomly) from several sound files, and to play and stop at the end of the file or loop until stopped.

My goal is to start simple, though - a single sound that stops when the data is complete; the second step would be to loop continuously until stopped. I don't think the electronics should be that difficult. Being able to trigger it with a remote would be cool. It would be great if TLG released such a thing - something you can transfer sounds from your computer via USB to, unplug it, and plug it into your train or house or what have you.

[Solscud007]

  On 5/17/2011 at 3:05 PM, Clone O said:

I believe LEGO produces different types of sound bricks. There are the ones like the doorbell brick that you press once and it plays a sound, while there are others that have a switch which, when put in the 'on' position, will play continuously.

Judging from both of our wonderful Grand Carousel reviews on EB, the Carousel has a sound brick that plays continuous (albeit annoying) music until you turn it off. I'm not sure just what sort of sound brick the Alien Conquest mothership contains though; it seems to be activated when you spin the large ring from what I could tell in the Toy Fair coverage.

Actually the Grand carousel does not have an on/off button. It is a momentary switch. When the carousel revolves, there is an element that will press on the momentary switch. By the time the carousel makes a full revolution, the button gets pressed again. If the carousel is not moving, you can push the button and it will play the sound. However it will stop after a while. It does not loop the song over an over unless you keep pressing the button.

[Clone OPatra]

  On 5/17/2011 at 6:14 PM, Solscud007 said:

Actually the Grand carousel does not have an on/off button. It is a momentary switch. When the carousel revolves, there is an element that will press on the momentary switch. By the time the carousel makes a full revolution, the button gets pressed again. If the carousel is not moving, you can push the button and it will play the sound. However it will stop after a while. It does not loop the song over an over unless you keep pressing the button.

Ah, ok. I assume that the mothership works in much the same way then, since it too involves revolving the large ring.

[Brickdoctor]

Can't the NXT be programmed to play custom sounds?

It is expensive just for that, but as religiously purist builds go...

Edited May 17, 2011 by Brickdoctor

[Solscud007]

I cracked open the soundbrick. It is somewhat complex. there is a small spring that you have to put back in to get the brick to get the button to work properly.

There is a chip/circuit board and a small speaker. I dont know if you can re-program it. Computer savy people may be able to answer that question.

An alternate solution would be to harvest the guts from a programmable greeting card. Record the sound you want and fit the parts into a large lego set.

[fred67]

  On 5/19/2011 at 12:04 PM, Solscud007 said:

An alternate solution would be to harvest the guts from a programmable greeting card. Record the sound you want and fit the parts into a large lego set.

You can actually buy those parts on Amazon.. they are expensive if you don't get them in bulk... even in bulk. I don't know how you'd get clean sounds on them, though, and it says it only plays 300 times.

Having something you can wire up to the LEGO battery pack would be so much better; something with a USB interface to upload clean sounds to would be awesome. I will definitely look into this in the future, but it may be some time.

[AndyC]

  On 5/17/2011 at 10:46 PM, Brickdoctor said:

Can't the NXT be programmed to play custom sounds?

It is expensive just for that, but as religiously purist builds go...

Well you could certainly use one NXT and three push sensors and make three sound bricks in one! Not exactly easy to hide a NXT brick in a design though, never mind the cost.

[Brickdoctor]

  On 5/19/2011 at 4:01 PM, AndyC said:

Not exactly easy to hide a NXT brick in a design though, never mind the cost.

Like I said, only for those who absolutely have to have a 100% purist solution. Edited May 19, 2011 by Brickdoctor