These Clever Electronic Blocks Bring Your Legos to Life

There are plenty of ways to get started with electronics, from littleBits to messing around with Arduinos, but the new Circuit Cubes might be the simplest, most clever way to get started yet. Designed to work with the Legos you already have—each cube has a four-by-four base and is two standard blocks tall—Circuit Cubes can bring light and motion to all kinds of contraptions with a literal snap.

Each cube is made of a plastic outer casing, much like a normal Lego block, but also some and electric component like an LED or a motor, as well as exposed electrodes for forming circuits. When you snap the blocks on top of each other—the motor block on top of the battery block, for instance—the circuit completes the blocks start going. For additional structural options, they can also be connected side by side, or with included wires, so they don't even need to be next to each other.

The Circuit Cubes are functional on their own, but their ability to mobilize Lego contraptions with ease is probably their most compelling and kid-friendly feature. The "Wacky Wheels" kit comes with a motor cube, an LED cube, and a battery cube, as well as enough Lego components to build several functional cars, though of course the instructions are just the jumping off point.

For now, the collection of cubes is limited to a motor, an LED, and a battery, all of which come as part of the "Wacky Wheels" kit, and Circuit Cubes has plans to introduce other cubes as times goes on.

EXTRACTED FROM: http://www.popularmechanics.com