Rebrickable helps breathe new life into your kids’ old Lego sets | Hacker News Reader

Rebrickable helps breathe new life into your kids’ old Lego sets

coolmomtech.com

32 pointsMz21 comments

I do like this idea, but surely I'm not the only one with fond memories of just bloody building random crap with the bucket of lego pieces I had as a kid.

Why not just encourage them to enjoy Lego for the random fun that it is, instead of needing step-by-step guides for absolutely everything?

Because building random crap and building models from instructions are both fun. Even cooler when your random crap/custom creations can be enjoyed by others.

It may be easier to 'repackage' that encouragement in the form of a 'new' LEGO set in many cases.

It's a little trickier these days because Lego sets now consist of a high percentage of "custom" bricks, not the basic core building blocks we're used to. Also, as mentioned by another, building from plans can be really fun, too.

LEGO does sell some "creative" and "basics" sets that are just a bunch of bricks without too many specialised weird bricks.

One does not exclude the other.

If you have styles of playing A (follow the manual) and B (random fun), both A and B may actually become more fun than either by itself. Variety is good.

My kids are of an age and a level of mental development where having plans to look at is very helpful for them. The easiest way for them to progress out of that is to have more practice building plans. For various reasons, neither kid I have is going to progress straight to Lego virtuosity without some intermediate scaffolding. If you were able to do so, more power to you and no sarcasm, congrats, but that is not the path all can follow.

For that matter, I've learned some things from building the plans myself lately, a lot of ways of combining them I didn't realize were valid, how to use those weird bricks that don't seem to go with anything until you know the trick, etc. And I haven't even tried Rebrickable yet.

That's exactly what the Lego movie was about!

Came here to say the same thing, built the stuff from the instructions once, but then made some great things without needing ideas from someone else.

Seems a bit boring to be making someone elses stuff tbh, but each to their own.

We've used rebrickable since early 2014 I believe, it is unbelievably useful. We keep our full inventory on the site, and it's really convenient to be able to see how close you are to having the retail sets as well. The guy who built the site (someotheridiot) used to be fairly active here, he built it originally as an exercise in Postgres if I recall correctly. He even has an API for the site.

I'm still lurking around, don't have time to contribute much here anymore :)

We bought the android app this week BTW, thanks for keeping this thing going. Dang we love this tool. If you need help or anything lemme know (mostly a business analyst, but I'm web/python savvy too)

What's up with kids today?

When I was a kid, maybe I built the instruction thing once, but after that, the actual fun started: modification and building new thing!

Do the kids nowadays only do coloring or connect-the-dot books? How about a blank paper? Blank paper is super cheap and can't be monetized nearly as well, so there's no marketing for that...

>> When I was a kid, maybe I built the instruction thing once, but after that, the actual fun started: modification and building new thing!

They still do that. Here's what me and my 5 year old built, from the instructions, and then what he turned it into.

http://imgur.com/a/OvwWU

Talking to them while they're doing it is fun. Those recycle blocks are there for a reason - "because these, they RECYCLE YOU" (in a the most threatening voice a 5 year old can muster). The clear-orange bits on the wing are lava bombs.

(If people don't know lego: those orange ski bits are a tool sold with some sets.)

Neat. This set me off on a search of what people are doing with automated Lego brick recognition and sorting. Apparently it is a diverse field with no solid solutions yet, as predictably, the 3D image recognition challenge is the largest. It is pretty cool to see someone's solution that involves building the robotics side of their solution entirely out of Mindstorms NXT parts [1].

[1] http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/8580-a-...

Even LEGO sorting as a business is something I would totally pay for. We have way too many bricks. I hope someone cracks this nut.

Everyone is different. Some love plans, others hate them. Some like to make something and keep it on display, others like to make it then play with it, while others just want to make stuff. Some of my kids have used sites like this [1] for years while others ignore them.

[1] http://www.brickshelf.com/

You could also follow this guy's prolific custom LEGO building and use some of his instructions:

http://jkbrickworks.com/category/models/

I'm surprised no one has tried using computer vision to identify the parts you have. That would make this site useful no matter what bricks you own.

Cool site, but something about the article itself bothers me.

There is a whole world of AFOLs (Adult fans of LEGO) out there (including myself), but the impression I get from the writer is that LEGO sets are for kids.

Constructing MOCs and free-form building are one of the ways I have been able to recapture some of my fond childhood memories and also stretch my creative muscles. Its very relaxing and therapeutic for me to just build something.

Having ideas of how to re-use existing sets of bricks, or even instructions on how to perform techniques seen in other MOCs are invaluable.

Uh, what? The article is on a site called coolmomtech.com. The article is going to be about kids because it's aimed at mom's.

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