They Said This LEGO Brick Was Smart...

[00:00] Sometimes we find the most interesting bits of  technology in the most unusualist of places.   Inside this box is LEGO's new intelligent Smart  Play Smart Brick. This video is not sponsored.  

[00:12] We also might violate the Geneva Convention a  little bit, but we'll get to that in a second. What's really cool is that LEGO says all  of their new bricks are still compatible   with every brick they've ever made, which  is incredible. Backwards compatibility is  

[00:25] very much appreciated. I have an unopened  box of LEGO bricks here from 1985—41 years   ago—and we'll see if that's actually still  the case. These LEGOs have been wanting to   be played with for decades, and we're here  to make that happen. Thumbs up for that.

[00:40] But first, let's take a look at the Smart Brick.  With the new Star Wars Red 5 X-Wing box opened,   except for this guy propped up in the  corner. This single, inconspicuous brick  

[00:54] is the brains of LEGO's BrickNet system. It's  got internal power, gyros, accelerometers,   a light sensor, and even an internal speaker  and microphone—all without any plugs or wires.

[01:10] The brick itself is wirelessly charged on top  of this yellow pad. Just like a smartphone or   Apple Watch, a two-hour charge gives it enough  juice for about 45 minutes worth of playtime.   I don't need 45 minutes, though;  just 45 nanoseconds. There are  

[01:25] three main components of the Smart  Play system: the Smart Brick itself,   a smart minifigure (noted by the expert  designs on the back), and smart tags. It's interesting that the minifigures  have their own voices, all without  

[01:41] saying any words. The regular, non-intelligent  minifigs do not interact with the Smart Brick.   It's interesting as well that you can  rip the legs off of a regular minifigure,   but the intelligent minifigures have  their legs glued on—"Craggled," if you  

[01:55] Anyway, taking the Smart Brick and plugging it  into an X-Wing, the Smart Brick sits on top of a   smart tag, so the brick now knows to generate  X-Wing-style sounds. There's a light sensor  

[02:10] in the side of the brick, and when it detects the  color blue, we'll hear an audible refueling sound.   And when I pick up the X-Wing, it starts making  flying noises and refueling at the same time.  

[02:31] The Smart Brick can multitask. If I press the  trigger on the back, it can also shoot its   blasters. When the color green is placed next to  the color sensor, it activates some repair audio.

[02:46] With Luke in the cockpit, he will even scream  when I flip the X-Wing over. Leia, who is Luke's   girlfriend, also screams in her own little  unique voice when the X-Wing flips over. It's  

[03:02] pretty impressive that one brick with no plugs  or buttons can accomplish all of these things. Now, the only way for us to see how Luke  works from the inside is with a bath of   acetone. Since LEGO bricks are made of  ABS plastic, the acetone should dissolve  

[03:17] the plastic and leave behind whatever copper or  electronics Luke has in his body. Like father,   like son; the bionics in his body  will soon be revealed. As you can see,  

[03:30] Luke's face is completely melting off. It's  kind of like the opposite of a bacta tank. We'll come back to Luke in a minute. Making  our way back to the Smart Brick and smart tags:   it starts making an entirely new set of sounds.  The Smart Brick has an onboard synthesizer,  

[03:49] so instead of storing a library of pre-recorded  sounds, it can generate its own, future-proofing   it for additional LEGO sets without ever needing  an update. You can see that the blaster noise  

[04:01] gets triggered when the red LEGO piece covers  the color-detecting sensor on the side of the   Smart Brick. Again, pretty impressive. And  of course, the Empire did nothing wrong. If we put Leia, who is Luke’s sister, into her  command station and plop the Smart Brick onto  

[04:15] the smart tile, we can hear a totally new set of  sounds as the gyros detect rotation. And again,  

[04:27] we get a whole new library when the Smart  Brick is placed onto the smart tag of the   tug. Unfortunately, there is only one  Smart Brick included in this whole set,   Taking a closer look at the smart tag, at first,  I thought that the sticker might have something  

[04:43] to do with the conveyance of information, but  after scratching the sticker completely off,   the tag still works great. So, there must  be something else going on that's deeper  

[04:55] embedded into the plastic. We can't see  any hardware inside when shining a light   from the bottom or the top of the tag. But when  we shine a flashlight from the side of the tag,   we get a glimpse of some mysterious loops inside  the plastic, which means into the acid bath we go.

[05:11] Before we open up and tear down the Smart Brick,  let's see if a LEGO from 2026 can still connect   to a LEGO from 1985. You can see that back then,  this LEGO set was on closeout for about $3.99,  

[05:24] while the Smart Play system of today costs  around $90. But let's not ruin the moment.   It's wild that this package of LEGOs has been  sitting undisturbed and unopened for longer than   I've been alive. The nostalgia is palpable, and  it feels like Christmas morning all over again.

[05:39] And take a look at these minifigures. Injection  molding has come a long way in the past 40 years,   and our minifigures of today have quite  a bit more detail. The instruction   book is also a little advertisement  magazine with a mail-in order form,  

[05:52] since the internet didn't exist back then.  Four to six weeks for delivery is quite   a bit different than today's two-day  Prime. Kids these days have it easy. But look at this: an ancient red LEGO  brick with "LEGO" still printed on all the  

[06:05] studs. It's almost like it time-traveled from  1985 to 2026 to rest next to its futuristic,   more intelligent counterpart. But does it  connect? Indeed, it does. The smart LEGOs of  

[06:17] today will still connect to the LEGO sets of your  youth; the "stud-and-tube coupling friction-grip   click" is just as strong now as it was 40 years  ago. Also, surprisingly, the rubber is still in   good condition. LEGO is actually the largest tire  manufacturer in the world, producing about 400  

[06:33] million of these tires every single year, while  Michelin only makes about 200 million. Amateurs. let's pop open the Smart Brick and see how  it works from the inside. We'll check on  

[06:46] Luke here in a second. I'm sure everything is  awesome. The Smart Brick is "Craggled" shut,   Keep in mind that the Smart Bricks are also  not watertight, so keep them away from liquids.

[06:59] With the transparent plastic pulled away from  the black outer casing, we discover something   fascinating. Theres copper wires everywhere.  And this explains everything. See, there's an   internal battery down at the bottom, and these  copper wires are able to wirelessly charge the  

[07:14] battery on the yellow dock that we saw earlier  through inductance. But when the Smart Brick   is ready to interact with a smart tag or smart  minifigure, it uses the same battery and same   coils to energize other objects through reverse  wireless charging. Then, the smart tags or smart  

[07:30] minifigures have enough power inside of them from  that magnetic field to power BrickNet. BrickNet is   the low-energy Bluetooth mesh network—not  to be confused, of course, with Skynet. of Luke and the red smart tag. Where's  Luke at? He is quite a bit more squishy  

[07:49] than usual. He looks kind of like his  dad did on Mustafar. They grow up so   Popping the studs off the smart LEGO brick, we  get our first glimpse of the motherboard. We  

[08:02] also see the top loudspeaker, very similar to the  speakers we find inside of a smartphone earpiece,   as well as a little hole for the microphone.  It's interesting that each of the coils on top   of the sides has their own loop. The individual  coils help the Smart Brick directionally detect  

[08:17] where the minifigs are located, and it can detect  more than one minifigure or smart tag at a time. I'll pull back the clips that are holding the  motherboard in place so I can pop it out. It looks   like the battery is welded to the motherboard,  so there are no LEGO-style connections  

[08:31] inside of the LEGO. Ironic. The light-sensing,  color-detecting prism is located on the left side,   and it redirects the light onto the sensor that's  laying flat on the motherboard. The motherboard   also has the processor, the accelerometer,  and on the backside, we have the microphone.

[08:47] but LEGO says that this microphone is acting as  a virtual button to detect noises like blowing   or tapping, and it does not record, store,  or transmit any audio. And In the manual,  

[09:01] it does say a microphone is included,  but that it is not currently active.   Time will tell, but keep tabs on that consent form  if you're nervous about Skynet—I mean BrickNet. Yoinking out the battery, we see that it is  a tiny 45-milliamp-hour tiny little guy. And  

[09:15] since it can operate for about 45 minutes  of play, we can deduce that it uses about 1   milliamp per minute of operation. Making our  way back to Luke, he has seen better days.   All of his ABS is now pretty soft and gooey,  but I think I miscalculated a bit on just how  

[09:31] messy he was going to get. I do apologize,  Luke. I was unprepared for this disaster. The red smart tag, though, dissolved quite nicely.  You can very clearly see the copper coils inside   that receive the induction from the primary coils  in the Smart Brick. I think that ya know Luke is  

[09:46] a little too far gone for us to autopsy cleanly.  My bad. Luckily for us, though, Luke does have a   twin, and she's right here. We can pop off her  head and her arms. A little quartering never   hurt nobody. The legs come off individually, but  unlike regular minifigs, the smart minifig torso  

[10:03] is still sealed up tight. I don't think the  Cragle is going to be able to fix this one. And look at that. With the lower half removed,  we finally see the insides. Leia has two copper   coils, one on the front and one on the back.  I imagine with how universal these minifigs  

[10:19] are shaped, LEGO could turn any minifig into a  smart minifig with the same internal hardware.   Once the coil inside of Leia is energized  by the inductance from the Smart Brick,   as they interact with each other  inside of the magnetic field.

[10:35] I'm rather impressed. It's screen-free,  interactable technology, and LEGO gets   in the comments, and thanks a ton  for watching. I'll see you around.