Category: Lego / Duplo

Following the robot son, an attempt was made to replace me, Dad, with a robot.

The tower is cool but not super stable and the “spoons” are very heavy to move. Trial outside was a failure.

My son is 5, Mindstorms are too complicated to investigate but… By hacking a wire straight to a battery, it’s easy to explain to him how to apply power to a motor. No indirection from the programming or the brick, simply energy applied to motors.

With this you can make a simple car:It’s been great fun to watch him figure out how various gears work. Now for the project, we simply turned this car into a robot which climbs up a string.

Simply run the paper through a couple of interlocked gears, the result is way more fun than it should be.

This one is powered by induction (a motor with a handle is manually turned to generate electricity for the other motor).

It is but a frame but it blew my son’s mind.

We are dangerously entering the realm of projectiles.

I MacGyver’d a sling with rubber bands & a rubber balloon.

I’m helping the counterweight a bit since Duplos don’t have much mass; there is definitely room for improvement in other regards, the sling release specifically. currently it takes a few trials to get a good trajectory.