A microcomputer with a working OLED display was made from LEGO parts
If you put off assembling the LEGO Millennium Falcon for $ 700, here’s an extra incentive: you can now insert a ‘computer’ brick with a working OLED display into the cab. New Zealand engineer James Brown has built a tiny computer terminal with a screen that mimics the user interfaces of your favorite science fiction movies.
It’s no secret that LEGO designers are loved not only by children, but also by adults, especially computer enthusiasts, who use the details of the popular designer for a variety of interesting things. It is worth clarifying at once that the project of a New Zealand engineer makes no practical sense – it is just a beautiful toy from a visual and engineering point of view.
The engineer first made a fingernail-sized OLED screen, similar to the one he used last month in another project to create a mechanical keyboard, where each key had its display. It took a 0.42-inch, 72-by-40-pixel OLED matrix and powered it with a custom-made PCB containing a 32-bit ARM Cortex-M0 series microcontroller called the STM32F030F4P6TR with 16 kilobytes of flash and 4 kilobytes of operational. Both are powered by a LEGO 9V system with conductive strips built into the protrusions (LEGO no longer manufactures 9 V systems for safety and marketability reasons).
Very happy about this. pic.twitter.com/1FofmKbqJP
— James Brown (@ancient_james) June 7, 2022
The original LEGO toy computer is based on a 2×2 brick model. The engineer printed a thin plastic case for electronics on a 3D printer, and then used molding to create a blue translucent part from a polymer that replicates the original in shape and size.
Yes, the screen resolution is only 72 by 40 pixels, but that’s enough to display lines that mimic text and even a simple radar animation. It is worth noting that LEGO previously produced Power Function units, which allowed the creation of structures with moving parts, but their production was discontinued. Now, light bricks and simple LEGO vehicle engines are largely a thing of the past.
