Looking for a Lego brick? Daniel West's Raspberry Pi universal Lego sorting machine is just what you need. It's made of Lego bricks, for Lego bricks, and can recognize any brick shape!
The machine is made with 10,000 individual Lego bricks. To power the main sorting operation, a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ was used. That said, a Raspberry Pi 4 would also do the trick.
(Image credit: Daniel West)
The system uses more than just bricks and Pi—there are a few microelectronic components, including six Lego motors and nine servo motors. These motors operate a series of belts that move bricks one at a time where they are sorted into one of 18 individual bins.
The Lego bricks are scanned using a Pi Camera Module V2. The images are sent wirelessly to a nearby PC, which uses an AI neural network to recognize bricks and predict newly introduced ones. Once the brick has been identified, the information is relayed back to the Raspberry Pi, which then assigns the brick to be moved into the proper bucket.
If you want to see this incredible sorting creation in action, check out West's official channel on YouTube. Be sure to visit our list of Best Raspberry Pi Projects for more cool creations from the maker community.
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Ash Hill is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware with a wealth of experience in the hobby electronics, 3D printing and PCs. She manages the Pi projects of the month and much of our daily Raspberry Pi reporting while also finding the best coupons and deals on all tech.
