The Real Indiana Jones

LEGO Ideas Discussion

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@OneThousand Purely random. You can see a long axle with 2L technic half beams on it, as the axle spins the beams will cause the piano keys to lift and fall. You can probably reposition the half beams to set a different pattern, but from the video clip I doubt you'd see much difference.

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Damn, I love the concept, and it looks brilliant, but I feel they could've gone the extra bit further in regards to having a per-key solenoid, and throwing in some form of sound solution, even a speaker! 

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Depends how much space is in there, but I doubt it would be possible to squeeze in a rotating drum like you find in music boxes. And having your phone play the music isn't necessarily a bad thing.

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I'll absolutely still be buying the set, and the way I see it, it gives me the opportunity to spend some time modifying it to get the features I'd like. As for the phone aspect, I just do like the idea of it being able to operate in a completely standalone fashion. @NathanR

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First Impressions...

I wanted to buy this for years for my brother, who is about to get his masters in piano performance. For such an expensive set, I wish they catered it less to the “twinkle twinkle little star” pianists and more to, like, adults. It’s definitely pretty, but I do miss the gold pieces and metallic pedals from the OG. 

I still need to sit on it a bit to decide whether this is worth the purchase. It’s super expensive and I don’t even know if he’s going to like it :cry_sad: but we’ll see! Would love to get him a lego set like when we were kids

It would be awesome if we could modify it to play any piece we wanted! Would love to get some Chopin rocking 

Edited by Modal

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When I saw this on thebrickfan, I thought it was using metal rods to play the notes. If it's true that it only plays through your phone and the keys don't play individual notes, that's super disappointing for me. Maybe some people will modify it though.

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1 hour ago, NathanR said:

Got to say that this is a stunningly beautiful set. The mechanism looks fantastic, and I never dreamed they'd be able to make it actually play music.

 

When you consider what it is actually doing to play music, it is not really that difficult. They have used their existing technology to make an impulse switch that sends a signal to a phone when pressed and then the phone plays the music. Any bluetooth transmitter combined with one of many different sensors could have done that.

 

1 hour ago, OneThousand said:

Thanks @NathanR, curious as to whether or not anyone knows if it articulates the correct keys in auto-play, or if it is purely random?

It looks completely random (or rather pre-defined but not musical) from the video. If you look at the key movements at about two minutes, they don't look right.

 

 

 

It is a clever design, it looks a little bit like a Great Ball Machine or other machine inside a piano shaped box. But a playable piano it is not. 

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4 minutes ago, MAB said:

It is a clever design, it looks a little bit like a Great Ball Machine or other machine inside a piano shaped box. But a playable piano it is not. 

I see a power functions battery holder..

next they're talking about an app?

:ugh:

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I really appreciate the complexity and mechanics of the original build, but I'd far rather have a soundless, brick-only, manual action model for a lesser price than another bluetooth battery hog that couples to an app.   I just don't see the PoweredUp/App addition as a value added, quite the opposite, it's a gimmick that detracts from the design in my mind.  As much as I like the original proposal, I think I'm out unless I see this so heavily discounted that I don't feel like I'm paying for "features" that I will never use.

 

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"Our piano doesn’t have a ‘natural piano’ function where you play the keys as if they were real because that would have been prohibitively complicated to produce as a LEGO set. (...) You don’t need to know how to play music with this, all you need to do is press the keys.”

That's a bummer. Not really sure why I expected more, probably just a habit of hyping myself up. Also only 10 songs inside the app that can be played? Should be at least 50, and that's only scratching the surface of royalty-free classical music that could have been included. Unless you can upload other tracks yourself, then yeah, it would be pretty neat (albeit completely pointless, other than "just because") to have a beautiful piece of music accompanied by a toy piano pretending to play it. But there's still the issue of loud motor which you'll have to listen to along with the music. Hopefully it's muffled enough with the lid closed.

Still it's a great model, I mean, what other set has the "technical" inside prettier than the already gorgeous outside? I don't even think it's that overpriced, ideally it could lose 30-40, or 60-70 if the power functions weren't in the set, but considering its complexity I can see why the price is so high. It's just a bit of a shame that all this hard work went into a set that can play only 10 songs and it's apparently useless without the app.

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Piano is cool, im a pianist myself and i will wait to buy this set.  £300 is alot of money, I will end up with it thou no doubt!

 

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57 minutes ago, BenderBrau said:

Still it's a great model, I mean, what other set has the "technical" inside prettier than the already gorgeous outside? I don't even think it's that overpriced, ideally it could lose 30-40, or 60-70 if the power functions weren't in the set, but considering its complexity I can see why the price is so high. It's just a bit of a shame that all this hard work went into a set that can play only 10 songs and it's apparently useless without the app.

I have to disagree here, even without an app it is still a great display piece and technic piece that you can show to your visitors. And power functions are still there even without an app

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Just now, adwind said:

I have to disagree here, even without an app it is still a great display piece and technic piece that you can show to your visitors. And power functions are still there even without an app

By uselees I rather meant pointless (just a poor choice of words, english isn't my first language). As in what's the point of having this intricate piece of lego engineering that really well replicates the real thing only for it to not actually function like the real piano when with a better app it really could? So it's rather fault of not having a better system that actually could detect which keys are being pressed, but I understand Lego couldn't have known those 4 or so years ago when PU was being developed.

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Piano: That is one amazing model. Fantastic design, the ingenuity of the mechanics, remarkable.

Well deserved approval for Donny Chen. Incredible work. This is what Ideas is about.

Bonus points for no minifigures. :tongue:

A++

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I think it’s amazing. I get wanting it to produce the sound entirely on its own and do so with individual keys all corresponding to the actual notes, but that would entail a crazy expensive set, when I already see people complaining about price, as always.

Aside from its own worth as a set of a piano, it’s another big step forward for the Ideas program - not only the largest (by piece count), most expensive Ideas set to date, but also the first one to use Power Functions. I long wondered whether that would happen, and if so, when. Still wondering about the first primarily Technic set, the first primarily Duplo set (or first set to use Duplo), the first set with minidolls...

Meanwhile, this is a gorgeous set, and I’d love to get it. We’ll see, though. I have very very few other sets in this price range...

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It is a very pretty set.   Maybe not too hard to turn into an expensive Great Ball Contraption.  :classic:

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1 minute ago, Blondie-Wan said:

Still wondering about the first primarily Technic set, the first primarily Duplo set (or first set to use Duplo), the first set with minidolls...

I think you just turned on the light bulbs that will help three builders get new Subarus. :grin:

Consider making it a hydro/cosmos theme or tied to a multimedia/entertainment license for good measure. :tongue:

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18 minutes ago, BenderBrau said:

By uselees I rather meant pointless (just a poor choice of words, english isn't my first language). As in what's the point of having this intricate piece of lego engineering that really well replicates the real thing only for it to not actually function like the real piano when with a better app it really could? So it's rather fault of not having a better system that actually could detect which keys are being pressed, but I understand Lego couldn't have known those 4 or so years ago when PU was being developed.

I don't think it would be possible to actually sense every key while keeping it within a reasonable budget. You would need either a sensor for each of the 25 keys (which would get large and expensive really fast), or a custom piece with 25 sensors of some sort. This couldn't be done with just a better app.

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1 hour ago, CabbageFace said:

 im a pianist myself

 

I hope the keys of your realy piano are better in line :laugh_hard:
First I thought: "oh men, this keyboard needs repair".

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40 minutes ago, Blondie-Wan said:

I think it’s amazing. I get wanting it to produce the sound entirely on its own and do so with individual keys all corresponding to the actual notes, but that would entail a crazy expensive set, when I already see people complaining about price, as always.

Aside from its own worth as a set of a piano, it’s another big step forward for the Ideas program - not only the largest (by piece count), most expensive Ideas set to date, but also the first one to use Power Functions. I long wondered whether that would happen, and if so, when. Still wondering about the first primarily Technic set, the first primarily Duplo set (or first set to use Duplo), the first set with minidolls...

Meanwhile, this is a gorgeous set, and I’d love to get it. We’ll see, though. I have very very few other sets in this price range...

And first train.

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4 minutes ago, Kaanere said:

I don't think it would be possible to actually sense every key while keeping it within a reasonable budget. You would need either a sensor for each of the 25 keys (which would get large and expensive really fast), or a custom piece with 25 sensors of some sort. This couldn't be done with just a better app.

You're probably right. Keep in mind I'm just a consumer with ridiculous expectations and/or demands who doesn't know what to do with himself when they're not entirely met and needs to be brought down to earth once in a while :innocent2:.

I don't mean to be too negative, I'm way more impressed than disappointed and I hope to get to build it one day, exactly because of its complexity, power functions or not. I have nothing other than respect for designers who pulled it off (and the project creator for making it possible) and I'm sure it'll go down in history as one of the best Ideas sets ever, not only because of its size.

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The piano is cool and I like it but since it needs a phone app (which wont run on my choice of phone) I will give it a pass I think.

Bring on the Sesame Street set :)

 

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11 hours ago, Kaanere said:

I don't think it would be possible to actually sense every key while keeping it within a reasonable budget. You would need either a sensor for each of the 25 keys (which would get large and expensive really fast), or a custom piece with 25 sensors of some sort. This couldn't be done with just a better app.

This is not completely true...

it could be done by using an IR camera sensor (should ever lego release one for PU lineup) and some IR reflecting stickers on each key; exactly as Nintendo Labo cardboard piano works. The only limit is size and number of keys: IR camera resolution would have to be good enough to correctly identify the exact key pressed.

A second solution could be to use the phone camera... by placing the phone inside the piano and placing a QR or color code on each key, the app could tell the pressed keys.

 

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1 hour ago, Rikus said:

This is not completely true...

it could be done by using an IR camera sensor (should ever lego release one for PU lineup) and some IR reflecting stickers on each key; exactly as Nintendo Labo cardboard piano works. The only limit is size and number of keys: IR camera resolution would have to be good enough to correctly identify the exact key pressed.

A second solution could be to use the phone camera... by placing the phone inside the piano and placing a QR or color code on each key, the app could tell the pressed keys.

 

You don't need a very high resolution camera sensor to do that, if you transmit and detect an IR pulse. However, the small but similar distances would be a problem. I doubt they would ever go for one where you had to insert a phone into the model as this would mean they would need to make many versions for different phones due to the location of the camera and phone size or say you have to have a specific phone from a specific company.

But in the end, I don't think people care. People that want a LEGO model that looks like a piano will buy it if they can afford it. It is a bonus that the keys go up and down even if somewhat randomly. I imagine the fun of playing a tune by hitting any key will wear off after five minutes, if that. But I don't think that is what people want here. If people want a playable electric piano, you can get a two octave one for 5% of the price of this and that will play something like the notes you hit. For 10% of the price you can get a 5 octave one that again will play notes you press. You can get an app that plays music on your phone for nothing.

However, I don't think lego should be describing this as a playable piano. I imagine they will get a number of used sets returned when people realise they have been duped by the description.

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