[00:00] Sometimes we find the most interesting bits of&nbsp; technology in the most unusualist of places.&nbsp;&nbsp; Inside this box is LEGO's new intelligent Smart&nbsp; Play Smart Brick. This video is not sponsored.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:12] We also might violate the Geneva Convention a&nbsp; little bit, but we'll get to that in a second. What's really cool is that LEGO says all&nbsp; of their new bricks are still compatible&nbsp;&nbsp; with every brick they've ever made, which&nbsp; is incredible. Backwards compatibility is&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:25] very much appreciated. I have an unopened&nbsp; box of LEGO bricks here from 1985—41 years&nbsp;&nbsp; ago—and we'll see if that's actually still&nbsp; the case. These LEGOs have been wanting to&nbsp;&nbsp; be played with for decades, and we're here&nbsp; to make that happen. Thumbs up for that.
[00:40] But first, let's take a look at the Smart Brick.&nbsp; With the new Star Wars Red 5 X-Wing box opened,&nbsp;&nbsp; except for this guy propped up in the&nbsp; corner. This single, inconspicuous brick&nbsp;&nbsp;
[00:54] is the brains of LEGO's BrickNet system. It's&nbsp; got internal power, gyros, accelerometers,&nbsp;&nbsp; a light sensor, and even an internal speaker&nbsp; and microphone—all without any plugs or wires.
[01:10] The brick itself is wirelessly charged on top&nbsp; of this yellow pad. Just like a smartphone or&nbsp;&nbsp; Apple Watch, a two-hour charge gives it enough&nbsp; juice for about 45 minutes worth of playtime.&nbsp;&nbsp; I don't need 45 minutes, though;&nbsp; just 45 nanoseconds. There are&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:25] three main components of the Smart&nbsp; Play system: the Smart Brick itself,&nbsp;&nbsp; a smart minifigure (noted by the expert&nbsp; designs on the back), and smart tags. It's interesting that the minifigures&nbsp; have their own voices, all without&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:41] saying any words. The regular, non-intelligent&nbsp; minifigs do not interact with the Smart Brick.&nbsp;&nbsp; It's interesting as well that you can&nbsp; rip the legs off of a regular minifigure,&nbsp;&nbsp; but the intelligent minifigures have&nbsp; their legs glued on—"Craggled," if you&nbsp;&nbsp;
[01:55] Anyway, taking the Smart Brick and plugging it&nbsp; into an X-Wing, the Smart Brick sits on top of a&nbsp;&nbsp; smart tag, so the brick now knows to generate&nbsp; X-Wing-style sounds. There's a light sensor&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:10] in the side of the brick, and when it detects the&nbsp; color blue, we'll hear an audible refueling sound.&nbsp;&nbsp; And when I pick up the X-Wing, it starts making&nbsp; flying noises and refueling at the same time.&nbsp;&nbsp;
[02:31] The Smart Brick can multitask. If I press the&nbsp; trigger on the back, it can also shoot its&nbsp;&nbsp; blasters. When the color green is placed next to&nbsp; the color sensor, it activates some repair audio.
[02:46] With Luke in the cockpit, he will even scream&nbsp; when I flip the X-Wing over. Leia, who is Luke's&nbsp;&nbsp; girlfriend, also screams in her own little&nbsp; unique voice when the X-Wing flips over. It's&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:02] pretty impressive that one brick with no plugs&nbsp; or buttons can accomplish all of these things. Now, the only way for us to see how Luke&nbsp; works from the inside is with a bath of&nbsp;&nbsp; acetone. Since LEGO bricks are made of&nbsp; ABS plastic, the acetone should dissolve&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:17] the plastic and leave behind whatever copper or&nbsp; electronics Luke has in his body. Like father,&nbsp;&nbsp; like son; the bionics in his body&nbsp; will soon be revealed. As you can see,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:30] Luke's face is completely melting off. It's&nbsp; kind of like the opposite of a bacta tank. We'll come back to Luke in a minute. Making&nbsp; our way back to the Smart Brick and smart tags:&nbsp;&nbsp; it starts making an entirely new set of sounds.&nbsp; The Smart Brick has an onboard synthesizer,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[03:49] so instead of storing a library of pre-recorded&nbsp; sounds, it can generate its own, future-proofing&nbsp;&nbsp; it for additional LEGO sets without ever needing&nbsp; an update. You can see that the blaster noise&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:01] gets triggered when the red LEGO piece covers&nbsp; the color-detecting sensor on the side of the&nbsp;&nbsp; Smart Brick. Again, pretty impressive. And&nbsp; of course, the Empire did nothing wrong. If we put Leia, who is Luke’s sister, into her&nbsp; command station and plop the Smart Brick onto&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:15] the smart tile, we can hear a totally new set of&nbsp; sounds as the gyros detect rotation. And again,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:27] we get a whole new library when the Smart&nbsp; Brick is placed onto the smart tag of the&nbsp;&nbsp; tug. Unfortunately, there is only one&nbsp; Smart Brick included in this whole set,&nbsp;&nbsp; Taking a closer look at the smart tag, at first,&nbsp; I thought that the sticker might have something&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:43] to do with the conveyance of information, but&nbsp; after scratching the sticker completely off,&nbsp;&nbsp; the tag still works great. So, there must&nbsp; be something else going on that's deeper&nbsp;&nbsp;
[04:55] embedded into the plastic. We can't see&nbsp; any hardware inside when shining a light&nbsp;&nbsp; from the bottom or the top of the tag. But when&nbsp; we shine a flashlight from the side of the tag,&nbsp;&nbsp; we get a glimpse of some mysterious loops inside&nbsp; the plastic, which means into the acid bath we go.
[05:11] Before we open up and tear down the Smart Brick,&nbsp; let's see if a LEGO from 2026 can still connect&nbsp;&nbsp; to a LEGO from 1985. You can see that back then,&nbsp; this LEGO set was on closeout for about $3.99,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:24] while the Smart Play system of today costs&nbsp; around $90. But let's not ruin the moment.&nbsp;&nbsp; It's wild that this package of LEGOs has been&nbsp; sitting undisturbed and unopened for longer than&nbsp;&nbsp; I've been alive. The nostalgia is palpable, and&nbsp; it feels like Christmas morning all over again.
[05:39] And take a look at these minifigures. Injection&nbsp; molding has come a long way in the past 40 years,&nbsp;&nbsp; and our minifigures of today have quite&nbsp; a bit more detail. The instruction&nbsp;&nbsp; book is also a little advertisement&nbsp; magazine with a mail-in order form,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[05:52] since the internet didn't exist back then.&nbsp; Four to six weeks for delivery is quite&nbsp;&nbsp; a bit different than today's two-day&nbsp; Prime. Kids these days have it easy. But look at this: an ancient red LEGO&nbsp; brick with "LEGO" still printed on all the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:05] studs. It's almost like it time-traveled from&nbsp; 1985 to 2026 to rest next to its futuristic,&nbsp;&nbsp; more intelligent counterpart. But does it&nbsp; connect? Indeed, it does. The smart LEGOs of&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:17] today will still connect to the LEGO sets of your&nbsp; youth; the "stud-and-tube coupling friction-grip&nbsp;&nbsp; click" is just as strong now as it was 40 years&nbsp; ago. Also, surprisingly, the rubber is still in&nbsp;&nbsp; good condition. LEGO is actually the largest tire&nbsp; manufacturer in the world, producing about 400&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:33] million of these tires every single year, while&nbsp; Michelin only makes about 200 million. Amateurs. let's pop open the Smart Brick and see how&nbsp; it works from the inside. We'll check on&nbsp;&nbsp;
[06:46] Luke here in a second. I'm sure everything is&nbsp; awesome. The Smart Brick is "Craggled" shut,&nbsp;&nbsp; Keep in mind that the Smart Bricks are also&nbsp; not watertight, so keep them away from liquids.
[06:59] With the transparent plastic pulled away from&nbsp; the black outer casing, we discover something&nbsp;&nbsp; fascinating. Theres copper wires everywhere.&nbsp; And this explains everything. See, there's an&nbsp;&nbsp; internal battery down at the bottom, and these&nbsp; copper wires are able to wirelessly charge the&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:14] battery on the yellow dock that we saw earlier&nbsp; through inductance. But when the Smart Brick&nbsp;&nbsp; is ready to interact with a smart tag or smart&nbsp; minifigure, it uses the same battery and same&nbsp;&nbsp; coils to energize other objects through reverse&nbsp; wireless charging. Then, the smart tags or smart&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:30] minifigures have enough power inside of them from&nbsp; that magnetic field to power BrickNet. BrickNet is&nbsp;&nbsp; the low-energy Bluetooth mesh network—not&nbsp; to be confused, of course, with Skynet. of Luke and the red smart tag. Where's&nbsp; Luke at? He is quite a bit more squishy&nbsp;&nbsp;
[07:49] than usual. He looks kind of like his&nbsp; dad did on Mustafar. They grow up so&nbsp;&nbsp; Popping the studs off the smart LEGO brick, we&nbsp; get our first glimpse of the motherboard. We&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:02] also see the top loudspeaker, very similar to the&nbsp; speakers we find inside of a smartphone earpiece,&nbsp;&nbsp; as well as a little hole for the microphone.&nbsp; It's interesting that each of the coils on top&nbsp;&nbsp; of the sides has their own loop. The individual&nbsp; coils help the Smart Brick directionally detect&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:17] where the minifigs are located, and it can detect&nbsp; more than one minifigure or smart tag at a time. I'll pull back the clips that are holding the&nbsp; motherboard in place so I can pop it out. It looks&nbsp;&nbsp; like the battery is welded to the motherboard,&nbsp; so there are no LEGO-style connections&nbsp;&nbsp;
[08:31] inside of the LEGO. Ironic. The light-sensing,&nbsp; color-detecting prism is located on the left side,&nbsp;&nbsp; and it redirects the light onto the sensor that's&nbsp; laying flat on the motherboard. The motherboard&nbsp;&nbsp; also has the processor, the accelerometer,&nbsp; and on the backside, we have the microphone.
[08:47] but LEGO says that this microphone is acting as&nbsp; a virtual button to detect noises like blowing&nbsp;&nbsp; or tapping, and it does not record, store,&nbsp; or transmit any audio. And In the manual,&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:01] it does say a microphone is included,&nbsp; but that it is not currently active.&nbsp;&nbsp; Time will tell, but keep tabs on that consent form&nbsp; if you're nervous about Skynet—I mean BrickNet. Yoinking out the battery, we see that it is&nbsp; a tiny 45-milliamp-hour tiny little guy. And&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:15] since it can operate for about 45 minutes&nbsp; of play, we can deduce that it uses about 1&nbsp;&nbsp; milliamp per minute of operation. Making our&nbsp; way back to Luke, he has seen better days.&nbsp;&nbsp; All of his ABS is now pretty soft and gooey,&nbsp; but I think I miscalculated a bit on just how&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:31] messy he was going to get. I do apologize,&nbsp; Luke. I was unprepared for this disaster. The red smart tag, though, dissolved quite nicely.&nbsp; You can very clearly see the copper coils inside&nbsp;&nbsp; that receive the induction from the primary coils&nbsp; in the Smart Brick. I think that ya know Luke is&nbsp;&nbsp;
[09:46] a little too far gone for us to autopsy cleanly.&nbsp; My bad. Luckily for us, though, Luke does have a&nbsp;&nbsp; twin, and she's right here. We can pop off her&nbsp; head and her arms. A little quartering never&nbsp;&nbsp; hurt nobody. The legs come off individually, but&nbsp; unlike regular minifigs, the smart minifig torso&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:03] is still sealed up tight. I don't think the&nbsp; Cragle is going to be able to fix this one. And look at that. With the lower half removed,&nbsp; we finally see the insides. Leia has two copper&nbsp;&nbsp; coils, one on the front and one on the back.&nbsp; I imagine with how universal these minifigs&nbsp;&nbsp;
[10:19] are shaped, LEGO could turn any minifig into a&nbsp; smart minifig with the same internal hardware.&nbsp;&nbsp; Once the coil inside of Leia is energized&nbsp; by the inductance from the Smart Brick,&nbsp;&nbsp; as they interact with each other&nbsp; inside of the magnetic field.
[10:35] I'm rather impressed. It's screen-free,&nbsp; interactable technology, and LEGO gets&nbsp;&nbsp; in the comments, and thanks a ton&nbsp; for watching. I'll see you around.