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Time Twister: LEGO MINDSTORMS Clock

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Time Twister

This week is good for LEGO lovers! Yesterday, we discovered The Cult of LEGO, a coffee book table that is due to be released next month. It is arguably the best present for any AFOL. Today, to end the week, we have a LEGO creation that will make it hard for LEGO enthusiasts not to drool and embarrass themselves: a LEGO clock.

This clock is called Time Twister. It was created by Hans Andersson, who is already known for his rather interesting inventions. Does the name Tilted Twister sound familiar? That was how Andersson made his name. The Tilted Twister is a robot (with LEGO components, yes!) that can solve the Rubik’s Cube. I am not sure if he is the first one to do this, but he pretty much cemented his geek cred with that creation. Since then, he has been busy with other related stuff (Sudoku Solver!) and his latest baby is this clock.¹

Andersson says that he has always been fascinated with time and clocks. (Admit it – you have always been as well!) With everything that he has been doing, I suppose it was just a matter of time till he actually made a clock, but he took things one step further and got together two LEGO Mindstorm bricks. Thanks to Bluetooth, he was able to make these two bricks communicate with one another. One brick functions as the master, while the other serves as the slave. The former brick is in charge of keeping track of the time and takes care of the minutes digits as well. (I can’t help but think: Time Lord!!!) The slave brick, on the other hand, is in charge of the hour digits and the second indicator.

Andersson created the digits (four in total) by layering black and white tiles. The trick was to make each tile layer rotate 360 degrees, at which point it hooks to the next layer. I don’t know how he did it, but by playing around with the top layer, each column of tiles can be made to display specific patterns, i.e., the time.

Awesome is all I can say. Watch the Time Twister in action.

1. Tilted Twister