Smart 'Lego' Set Conjures Up Virtual 3D Twin

philetus writes "New Scientist has up a story on Posey, a hub-and-strut construction kit that senses its configuration and communicates it wirelessly to a computer. From the article: 'If you gave Lego brains, you might get something like Posey, a new hands-on way of interacting with computers developed at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, US. When Posey's plastic pieces are snapped together, an exact copy of the construction appears on a computer screen. Every twist of, say, a stick figure's arm is mirrored in 3D modelling software ... Each piece's plastic shell is stuffed with chips and devices for processing these signals. They are sent wirelessly to a computer using a low-power protocol called ZigBee. This means, bending Posey's pieces can make objects on-screen respond in real time. Right now, each custom-made piece has about US$50 (£25) worth of parts, Weller estimates. But if mass produced, it could be much cheaper.'"

Comments

Zigbee?

[hawks5999]

Because somebody will ask: What the heck is that?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zigbee

Re:I hate the new floaty thing.

[LiquidCoooled]

Whilst I Have not found a way to get rid of it, you can alter the way it interactst with the page.

If you click the little [ / ] icon in the top right of the floating box (same position as close window X) then it switches between the 3 versions:

Left hand float
Across the top floating
Inline between article and comments (basically the original position)

video of posey dorkbot presentation

[blzb]

there is a video of posey being demoed at a dorkbot pittsburgh meeting here: http://www.allartburns.org/dorkbot/dorkbot-200704-weller.mp4

Re:That's Nice

[blzb]

although posey is still a research project, it is being developed on linux in python.

the source code is available from the code lab mercurial repository here:
http://code.arc.cmu.edu/hg/pyposey

if you are interested in building an application for posey send me an email.