[HN Gopher] Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you idea...
___________________________________________________________________
Brickit scans your pile of bricks and gives you ideas, with
instructions
Author : Orochikaku
Score : 571 points
Date : 2022-09-11 02:26 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (brickit.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (brickit.app)
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Very cool.
|
| Now what I want is something that will scan a pile of rocks and
| tell me how to put them together to build a wall with minimal
| space between them.
|
| https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/stone-wall-texture-pict...
|
| Or better yet, tell my robot how to do it.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Very cool idea, but what I'd need way more often:
|
| Now what I want is something that will scan a pile of socks and
| tell me how to put them together to have a perfect match.
|
| https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/socks-pile-texture-pict...
|
| Or better yet, tell my robot how to do it.
| gog wrote:
| This is an easy problem to solve, find the socks you like and
| then buy 20 pairs of the same socks and get rid of the old
| ones.
| jiggywiggy wrote:
| Not so fast. Sock magic: I've only bought black socks over
| the last 5 year, and still I can't seem to find ones
| anymore that exactly match in both fitting and color (they
| all seem to have degraded in different color tones)
| marssaxman wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned, the point of a sock monoculture
| is never to think about matching: as soon as a sock
| requires any special attention, I simply throw it out.
| taneq wrote:
| Ah, the trick here is to buy all your socks at the same
| time, and open all the packs at once. Don't just open a
| pack every now and then, or they'll age differently and
| you get the variation in wear and tear. Then once you're
| down to a few days' worth of raggedy socks, throw them
| all out at once and open the next batch.
|
| (Source: Am a fellow black-sock-only person who made the
| above mistake last time around.)
| zhte415 wrote:
| This requires sock drawer/shelf management. Socks will
| form a FOFI stack where clean pairs will be taken from
| the top, worn, washed and returned to the top of the
| stack while other clean pairs sit beneath without being
| touched. Those at the top of the stack will wear out
| faster.
|
| Mitigation might include not washing any socks until all
| clean pairs are exhausted, but this may result in a
| smelly linen bin. Alternatives might be keeping clean
| socks in a pair of tights with the toes cut out - most
| recently cleaned in the top pushing down, fresh pairs
| taken from the open toe; hang this up for a better UX.
| rpvnwnkl wrote:
| For my drawers I stack horizontal, old on the left and
| new fresh washed come in on the right. So you can see
| what you've been wearing and what you haven't worn for a
| while and choose accordingly. Works for shirts, socks,
| underwear, etc.
| zbrozek wrote:
| My trick is to have only white socks and to not actually
| care if they're matching levels of tired.
| smilespray wrote:
| Maybe your left foot produces slightly more agressive
| sweat than the right one.
| davidjfelix wrote:
| This only really tracks if they intentionally wear socks
| on specific feet. While some socks have L/R indicators,
| most don't.
| weinzierl wrote:
| I only have black ones and a couple of white ones for
| sports. The white ones are fine, but the black socks get
| significantly brighter over time. Now sorting _almost_
| matching socks is much harder than when I had a hodgepodge.
| Admittedly I mostly ignore the differences in shade but it
| doesn 't sit well with me.
|
| A sock sorter would be perfect.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Im in a military. I get issued 15 pairs of socks each year
| in three different styles. But from one year to the next,
| pairs are never constructed exactly the same. Then the
| wear/washing history of each pair divides them even within
| a given year's issue. I have 43 pairs of socks now in my
| "work socks" drawer (just counted) but no two are
| interchangeable. When they come out of the drier i still
| have to individually match them. Interchangable parts tech
| has yet to crack this field.
| rdtwo wrote:
| Ha I have the same problem. Even the exact same sock
| won't match dye colors. Sometimes it's brighter or darker
| colors.
| vidarh wrote:
| This works remarkably well in that you might think you'd
| end up throwing away a lot of good socks, but in my
| experience socks are surprisingly prone to either design
| flaws that sees many socks from the same batches wear out
| in the same way around the same time and/or similar wear
| from your footwear etc., so when they start going odds are
| you'll see a series of rapid failures, and you're not
| losing much by replacing them all when you're left with few
| enough.
| baxtr wrote:
| Sock matching is not really difficult is it? The act of
| putting them together is the cumbersome part!
| weinzierl wrote:
| Depends on the person. Some are naturally good at playing
| Candy Crush and might even enjoy it. I'm terrible at it and
| for me it's borderline torture.
|
| Same with sorting socks.
| xaduha wrote:
| Very cool idea, but what I'd need way more often:
|
| Now what I want is something that will scan a pile of stocks
| and tell me how to put them together to have a perfect
| portfolio.
|
| https://www.tradingview.com/heatmap/stock/
|
| Or better yet, tell my robot how to do it.
| phkahler wrote:
| Very cool idea, but what I'd need way more often: Now what
| I want is something that will scan dating sites for my
| perfect mate.
|
| Or better yet, tell my robot how to do her.
| reubenmorais wrote:
| If your robot is doing her robot, you can let the
| algorithms do the perfect mate matching, and then just
| grab a relaxed coffee with her, no sexual pressure
| anymore. What Zizek would call a great date:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xYO-VMZUGo
| geoduck14 wrote:
| What meme is this from?
| solardev wrote:
| Very cool idea, but what I'd need more often is something
| that will take a pile of memes and put them together into
| a perfect post.
| pacifika wrote:
| Turns out you already have a pair of any combination of
| socks.
| Tyr42 wrote:
| There's one for bananas on bread.
|
| https://www.ethanrosenthal.com/2020/08/25/optimal-peanut-but...
| totetsu wrote:
| That is a problem in three dimensions, a Photo wont tell you
| the 3d shape of each rock.
| robbrown451 wrote:
| Of course. But I didn't say a photo. (it could be video, it
| could be lidar, etc) And yeah maybe you need the robot to
| pick up each rock and look at it from different angles.
| chrischen wrote:
| Maybe take a normal rock wall and break it into tiny pieces,
| then reassemble.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| This could actually be stronger than a wall built from
| rectangular pieces.
| soco wrote:
| Build bridges, not walls
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Good fences make good neighbors.
| mfashby wrote:
| Dry-stone walling is a skill!
| Teever wrote:
| I've been curious to see what a stable diffusion type thing
| trained on blueprints and schematics could produce.
|
| The magnum opus of such a project would be something that could
| produce the circuit from the text "a guitar pedal that makes a
| guitar sound like wet blankets and dry pickles in the washing
| machine."
|
| The extension of your idea would be a piece of software that
| could generate the BoM and gcode to assemble the circuit, or in
| your instance the bricks.
|
| The meta of that would be the circuit that could build circuits
| that build circuits.
| ezconnect wrote:
| There's lots of papers about that algorithm used on warehouse
| box stocking.
| vidarh wrote:
| More generalised, the act of putting them together is a
| subset of bin packing, which is certainly one of the more
| studied problems of computer science, though NP-hard, and
| having a pile of rocks of different size complicates things
| substantially. Getting a decent approximation once you know
| the dimensions of the rocks is probably doable, but
| minimising the labour necessary to get the scans you need of
| each rock is also a huge challenge.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| A peasant will do that wall better, and (more importantly) for
| cheaper. I know because I'm a peasant.
| xrd wrote:
| Taxi drivers enlarge their hippocampus by navigating around and
| learning routes. I definitely feel like Google Maps has affected
| my ability in certain somehow tangentially related areas to my
| detriment.
|
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/677048.stm
|
| This kind of thing is cool, but seems like it robs us of an
| opportunity to practice something important.
|
| Maybe we will replace it with some other skill?
|
| I would be very curious to know how many AI/ML researchers played
| with Legos and whether this free play was vital in their
| development. I would assume it is.
| nbzso wrote:
| I have already accepted the notion that we as a workforce and
| creativity input will become irrelevant for corporate overlords
| in the next decade.
|
| I have already moved to the mountains, stopped practicing UX/UI
| design, stopped digital drawing and painting, minimized
| smartphone usage and use internet only for work and casual
| browsing.
|
| Already archived a lot of media, movies, books and OSS software,
| just in case.
|
| Moved all the work focus towards frontend implementation with
| clear understanding that the window of opportunity will close in
| the next 5 years.
|
| Suddenly I understand, completely, the Amish position towards
| technology.
| toxicFork wrote:
| Yes, what's the point of learning to play the piano when
| someone has autotune?
| nbzso wrote:
| The context is in the part "corporate overlords". The popular
| music uses autotune ad nauseam.
| kaeruct wrote:
| How did you get to this conclusion from an app that helps you
| figure out what you can build with your Lego bricks?
| nbzso wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth
| daedalus_f wrote:
| This app counts your bricks and then matches that count with
| user submitted builds you have the correct bricks to build. It
| has no magic AI creativity.
| nsajko wrote:
| LEGO bricks, not the building materials.
| gwill wrote:
| i saw the title and was thinking of pizza ovens ive seen made
| with loose bricks and started wondering what else could be
| made.
| silisili wrote:
| Rats, I have a large pile of 10 to 60lb stones in my yard and
| was slightly excited by the headline.
| randerson wrote:
| It must be intentional that the word Lego appears nowhere on
| this site, surely?
| parhamn wrote:
| Or worried about Lego suing them?
| cube00 wrote:
| Lego are very protective of their brand as they have every
| right to be.
|
| There's a store near me that sells Lego-like sets of their
| own distinctive building and the box states "Quality Blocks -
| Compatible with other brands"
|
| Other trading websites for Lego sets and parts use the words
| "bricks" or "blocks" in their names instead.
| charcircuit wrote:
| >as they have every right to be.
|
| I don't care if they technically have a right to do so, but
| they try and remove the usage of LEGO even when its usage
| falls under fair use.
|
| Using LEGO in the examples you gave would fall under fair
| use.
| [deleted]
| logifail wrote:
| Just yesterday my 9 year-old proudly revealed his latest flying
| creation, created - as almost all our children's Lego builds are
| - entirely out of his own imagination and from the multiple tubs
| of bricks that sit next to his bed.
|
| Each new Lego boxed set gets built from the instructions exactly
| once. Admired for a while (days to months), then duly ripped to
| bits and the pieces are used to build _much_ better things that
| then can - and do - change on an hourly basis.
|
| I'm not about to interrupt my kids' creativity by even telling
| them about this app. They need less screen time, not more.
| exit wrote:
| the externalisation of human abilities into machines is going
| to be a major theme in your offsprings life and encountering
| this app could inspire interest in how automation is achieved.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Totally agree. All though in modern times they'll just watch
| ten YouTube / Netflix / paramount+ videos where some dude
| builds Lego shit. Look at all the Minecraft videos out there.
|
| I kinda wonder if it's us who needs to catch up. I mean I watch
| city skylines videos, FPV videos, and gun videos. All those are
| inspiration for my hobbies. What's the difference between that
| and a Lego or "LOL surprise" video my kid watches?
|
| Dunno dude. Kinda think we are the old geezers in this one.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| Wow really surprising how many folks here don't understand that
| lego typically comes in kits with instructions. By building a lot
| of sets using instructions, you can learn patterns that help you
| be more creative in free play. This app is not creativity
| inhibiting any more than coloring books or sketching
| instructionals inhibit kids from drawing their own things. It's
| just a different and also valuable activity.
| [deleted]
| petee wrote:
| This is neat, but I feel it really detracts from the creativity
| you are supposed to be exercising by using Legos in the first
| place.
|
| I'd hope no one lets their kids use this, or they'll just get
| good at assembling IKEA furniture instead of designing the
| furniture.
| [deleted]
| rsgrafx wrote:
| I agree, my 5 year old loves coming with random "inventions".
| He's proud of his random designs loves showing them off. He
| owns the whole of process coming up with idea to building it.
| It builds his confidence. I would not use this app.
| np_tedious wrote:
| You can use this without exclusively using this
| prakis wrote:
| This is one of the most ingenious use of modren technology.
|
| This is how technology should be helping us.
|
| Goodluck.
| aaron695 wrote:
| gnicholas wrote:
| Is there any free functionality aside from the time-based trial?
| It looks like this is $45/year (or $84/year if paid monthly!),
| which seems pretty steep.
| ehzy wrote:
| I mean, I'm not into Lego, but considering what this app does
| this seems like a pretty fair price. It's doubtless fairly
| involved to create something like this. It even gives you
| stylized step by step instruction on how to build then thing it
| invents for you!
| gnicholas wrote:
| According to others, it does not invent the items -- these
| are submitted by users.
|
| Seems like they could run a CourseHero-style business model,
| where you get access for X months in return for uploading Y
| creations. Some people would submit junk, but you would get
| enough good stuff that it would be worth it. Also, you could
| make the default value for submissions low, but give big
| bonuses for submissions that reach a certain level of
| popularity.
| spoonjim wrote:
| It's a drop in the bucket for LEGO enthusiasts who spend
| hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars a year on legos.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Undoubtedly true! It would be great if there were feature
| gating so that kids could use this app even if their
| willingness/ability to pay is much lower.
| sumedh wrote:
| They can have different plans, a cheap kids plans which shows
| simple models which can be built and a pro plan which shows
| simple and complex models which can be built.
| wnolens wrote:
| I dunno my time is worth more than that per hour. And sorting
| all those pieces will take more than an hour. So.. it's cheap.
| gnicholas wrote:
| I assumed many of the users are kids, whose time per hour is
| worth hardly anything. If they didn't have this app, they'd
| instead just play with the Legos the old-fashioned way, which
| accomplishes roughly the same goals.
|
| This seems neat, and if there were some basic functionality
| (only smaller projects, or a limited number of complex
| projects per month), I would give it a try with my kid. But
| there is zero chance I'm going to introduce a subscription
| that costs $7/mo that would likely be used a handful of times
| each month.
| lupire wrote:
| Finding all the pieces for a build is easy. What's
| practically impossible is finding a kit that works with
| your pieces (unless you manually inventory them).
|
| Half the value of LEGO _kits_ is the guaranteed build of
| the project on the box. This app is a recycling tool for
| creating kits from "scrap" LEGO.
|
| You are paying the all to avoid buying the new kit.
|
| > zero chance I'm going to introduce a subscription that
| costs $7/mo
|
| If you buy $50-$200 LEGO kits, you'd buy $84/yr tools.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I don't think you're the target market.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Clearly not! But I could be, with a little feature
| gating.
| samingrassia wrote:
| I had a similar idea, but swapped the Legos for the ikea
| replacement parts catalog. What's the cheapest standing desk you
| can build with these cheap and easily available parts?
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| They have a replacement parts catalogue?
| eesmith wrote:
| https://www.ikea.com/us/en/customer-service/spare-parts/
|
| > Missing a leg for your sofa? Need an extra hinge? Spare
| parts big or small, we've got you covered. Repairing rather
| than replacing your furniture is great for the environment
| and great for your wallet!
|
| > You can order smaller spare parts such as screws, knobs or
| hinges at no cost using our self-service tool. Small spare
| parts will be delivered directly to your address in
| approximately 7 to 10 business days.
|
| > To purchase spare parts for your appliance, contact the
| authorized service center as listed in the user manual
| provided with the product.
| lupire wrote:
| For the folks asking about non-LEGO
|
| https://www.countthings.com/
| cobbaut wrote:
| Would be awesome if this app contained all Lego sets ever
| (including the Rebrickable ones) so you know which sets you can
| build when you just bought bulk Lego at a flee market. But it
| seems it only contains their own designs and some user submitted
| content. Yes, it also finds pieces in a stack, but I'd rather do
| that part myself. Sorting Lego manually is fun!
| swayvil wrote:
| I have an app that scans my paper and tells me what to draw. It's
| pretty great.
| usgroup wrote:
| Scan the inside of your fridge -- list all the dishes you could
| make.
| dymk wrote:
| Jokes on the app - we store leftover spaghetti in reused yogurt
| containers.
| mklein994 wrote:
| Not quite there with the scanning part, but
| https://supercook.com comes close.
| chrischen wrote:
| Can be done by breaking into two easier problems. First is
| identifying the ingredient, and second is taking a list of
| ingredients and amounts and matching with recipe sites that
| never have their data in a normalized format.
| ttcbj wrote:
| To be honest, what I love about legos is the free play aspect.
|
| When I play with my kids, (now 8 and 10), I find that the key
| thing is not what pieces we have (admittedly, we have a lot of
| pieces), or instructions, but developing some theme or challenge.
|
| The theme could be 'space' or 'under water' or 'I'm going to
| build the taller possible leg structure' or 'I'm going to build a
| vehicle that can be blown across the floor with a fan.' Once they
| have a theme, they will do amazing stuff.
|
| Also, I believe it's important to have a big slush pile of
| pieces. It's amazing how much builds change when your are
| scrounging for piece X, and you see piece Y and think,
| actually...
|
| I see that this app is technologically interesting for the
| developer, but it doesn't address my core problem: inspiring kids
| to get started on free creativity. For that, I'd more like a Lego
| theme of the day app, maybe slightly inspired or guided by the
| kids ages or genders. If I did that, I'd have the kids submit
| pictures of their results, and use those over time to assess and
| improve the quality of my suggested themes at different ages and
| Lego piles sizes (there is your AI, if you must).
|
| The pitch would be 'inspire your kids to new creativity."
| yreg wrote:
| When I was younger I would build a set, play with it for a
| while while modifying it. And after that it would be never
| built again, because it would disintegrate into the giant
| collection of bricks I had, used to build custom cities.
| Perhaps with the exception of trains, which I used to rebuilt
| close to the blueprints.
|
| Now that I'm old, I'm not in the mood to build custom LEGO
| structures anymore, and I have some builds (e.g. ISS) that are
| exactly by the manual and just sitting, looking pretty on
| furniture. I think my younger self would be disgusted. :)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Lego + social media. People now want to build "good" lego. They
| want to post pictures/clips for likes/views, which for some
| translates into money. They need stuff that is all the right
| color. They want it to be in proportion. This tool will allow
| them to see what is possible so that they can start a complex
| build knowing they have the bits to finish it. This is modern
| lego building.
|
| "Lego is like minecraft, but with a hard limits on the number
| and type of available blocks."
| SkeuomorphicBee wrote:
| My preference towards free-play, and opinion against guided-
| play (following manuals) used to be similar to yours. But my
| sister made me realize how much that my earlier guided-play was
| essential to develop my fundamental building skills that
| allowed my later free-play to thrive. My sister inherited my
| Lego box but with no manuals, so she only ever knew free-play,
| and she describe her experience with Lego growing up as
| frustrating and fruitless, of wanting to build things but not
| knowing how to even start, because she lacked many fundamental
| skills.
|
| So I realized a basic truth of pretty much all skills and
| hobbies: guided play or formal training are not enemies of free
| creative play, quite the opposite, they fosters creativity by
| opening many new avenues.
|
| Every musical composers or great jazz improvisers started by
| playing someone else's music.
| carlivar wrote:
| When was this? As a kid in the eighties, there were few
| unique bricks. Squares, rectangles, varying thickness. Maybe
| two types of wheels and tires (these were prized above all).
|
| I wonder if the specialization of bricks since then has
| contributed to that "totally lost" feeling. I look at our
| pile and it's mostly specialized doodads and widgets for who
| knows what Star Wars thing a few years ago.
| drewbeck wrote:
| As an 80s kid I made a lot of the same spaceship over and
| over, even with the limited set. I coulda used some more
| ideas!
| solardev wrote:
| Well put.
| sircastor wrote:
| I once tried to join in on some jazz riffing at Christmas. In
| spite of being a capable player, I really could not
| successfully contribute. I didn't have the appropriate
| practice of improvising to be successful. I really should've
| learned those blues scales my music teacher had given me.
|
| I guess my point here is, you're right. The fundamentals are
| important. Both the guided and the free.
| adv0r wrote:
| agree on everything you said. Father of 2 (2 and 4 y/o) here,
| trying to introduce them to lego. I find the app fantastic for
| learning and inspiration, because I suck at lego and building
| with blocks myself.
|
| It can be turned into a super supa parenting tool, for lame
| parents like myself.
| xani_ wrote:
| The thing with creativity is that it is not just "inventing
| things out of thin air". It's picking thru the vast archives of
| things we've seen and did our brain has and applying it in
| different way.
|
| Guided building is basically filling that archive with ideas
| that can be used or changed
|
| "Theme of the day" or just "pick a theme for me" might be
| interesting, but so is just getting some random schematic that
| might not even fit in what you'd search for in the first place
| worldsayshi wrote:
| I think that the best way to learn is to combine free play with
| trying out other designs. That's the best way to learn how to
| achieve the designs you want to make.
| vnchr wrote:
| This seems like a fun way I can share my big tubs of lego with my
| kiddo. He stills thrives on instructions. Thanks for sharing.
| zanmat0 wrote:
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| I'll just put this here...
|
| Brrrap! _A tree shredder!_
|
| _Ahead of him, everything was empty bookcases, skeletons. Robert
| went to the end of the aisle and walked toward the noise. The air
| was a fog of floating paper dust. In the fourth aisle, the space
| between the bookcases was filled with a pulsing fabric tube. The
| monster worm was brightly lit from within. At the other end,
| almost twenty feet away, was the worm 's maw -- the source of the
| noise. Indistinct in the swirling haze, Robert could see two
| white-suited figures, their jackets labeled "Huertas Data
| Rescue". The two wore filter masks and head protectors. They
| might have been construction workers. In fact, this business was
| the ultimate in deconstruction: first one and then the other
| would pull books off the racks and toss them into the shredder's
| maw. The maintenance labels made calm phrases of the horror: The
| raging maw was a "NaviCloud custom debinder". The fabric tunnel
| that stretched out behind it was a "camera tunnel". Robert
| flinched from the sight -- and Epiphany [smartglasses] randomly
| rewarded his gesture with imagery from within the monster: The
| shredded fragments of books and magazines flew down the tunnel
| like leaves in tornado, twisting and tumbling. The inside of the
| fabric was stitched with thousands of tiny cameras. The shreds
| were being photographed again and again, from every angle and
| orientation, till finally the torn leaves dropped into a bin just
| in front of Robert. Rescued data._
|
| - _Rainbows End_ , V. Vinge, 2006
| corwinstephen wrote:
| At first I thought we were building things with "bricked"
| iphones.
| xyzzy_plugh wrote:
| What's next? Finding a needle in a haystack?
|
| This is pretty neat and I would definitely play with it, but I'm
| not willing to front that kind of cash on something that might be
| terrible.
|
| It seems like the ideas are all user submitted -- I was expecting
| something ML here, like imaginary builds of cars. Cool
| nonetheless but there's a lot of untapped opportunity.
|
| My first thought was that this would be very useful for part co-
| mingling or something not-Lego related.
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _I 'm not willing to front that kind of cash on something
| that might be terrible._
|
| I think there's a trial period, but yeah the pricing is steep
| ($45/yr). Probably worth it for enthusiasts, but much less
| appropriate for kids.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| The pricing is high, but I'd pay nearly that much just for
| that counts my bricks, even better if he points them out in
| the picture
| sumedh wrote:
| > but I'd pay nearly that much just for that counts my
| bricks
|
| https://countingthings.com/
| memco wrote:
| > What's next? Finding a needle in a haystack?
|
| I'm working on a jigsaw puzzle and hit a bit of a dry spell and
| was hoping there might be an app that could help find the
| pieces in a pile and where they go. Nothing exists yet that I
| could see. I imagine with a completed picture and a view of a
| piece it would be possible to show where in the picture the
| piece goes to reduce the burden. Extra pints if you can give it
| a view of the current progress and it could show you where the
| pieces should go.
| thaunatos wrote:
| Kind of similar, a guy making a robot to solve jigsaw
| puzzles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu_1S77XkiM
| space_fountain wrote:
| I've had the same thought. I think the tough bit is getting a
| clean image of all the pieces. Without controlling the
| background and lighting it would be quite tough
| justinlloyd wrote:
| Combined downloads for my Scrabble game solver (take a
| picture of the scrabble board, take a picture of your rack of
| tiles, play the optimal word) and my jigsaw puzzle solver
| (finding a needle in a haystack) totalled up to less than the
| fingers on the hands of a bad Youtube woodworker practicing
| every unsafe operation with a table saw whilst being
| inanttentive. After two years, back in 2013-ish, I removed
| the apps from the app store.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| Maybe time to dust that off and try again I'll bet more
| recent phones make those apps shine
| memco wrote:
| Sorry those didn't pan out! I'm not sure I would actually
| pay for such an app since I only do jigsaw puzzles every
| few years. But it is fun to know it has been done and could
| be done again.
| interroboink wrote:
| I have this giant pile of old recycled bricks in my back yard and
| I was thinking "wow, this is oddly specific and useful to me..."
|
| Oh it's _Lego_ bricks (:
| ks2048 wrote:
| I'd like to see some quantitative review of how well the scan
| works. Their demo almost looks too good to be true - it seems
| they even have overlapping pieces, etc. A quick search showed a
| YouTube review where they said there were quite a few false
| positives.
| dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27693560
| parhamn wrote:
| I waited way too long for that animation to show me some results
| and then it looped.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| Same but click see how it works for the whole video
| petee wrote:
| But by then you've already wasted a minute, and to know you
| have to watch it yet again to see what the average person
| expected on the homepage. Slightly irritating, definitely
| enough for some to not bother clicking
| jonas-w wrote:
| The fact that it talks about "itunes" in the google play store
| app description is just...
| dustractor wrote:
| I've been wishing there was an app where you could point your
| phone at a pile of scrap lumber and it would tell you things you
| could make with them. This is a step in that direction even if
| it's just for lego bricks right now.
| TomK32 wrote:
| cutting boards...
| tanelpoder wrote:
| In the spirit of the Yo app, does anyone want to invest in
| bonfire.app?
| neilpa wrote:
| I have a literal pile of bricks in my backyard. I thought this
| was going to be an app that I could scan them with and tell me
| how to build a pizza oven.
| Severian wrote:
| It would be helpful in Argentina... sorry.. couldn't help it.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32794597
| curlftpfs wrote:
| Same! There isn't one standard "red brick" size (like I
| thought lol), but there are a _lot_ of different sizes. I 'd
| pay for an app like that.
| xani_ wrote:
| I want that for my tools and parts
|
| Snap picks of every shelf and drawer then just allow me to ask
| where is it and get a pic with circled in tool.
| spapas82 wrote:
| I just tested it on my kids lego clone bricks; there are like 800
| of them but they are almost exclusively basic shapes (1x1, 1x2,
| 2x2, 2x3, 2x4 and 1x4) in red/black/blue/green/yellow/gray. This
| is a picture of the box:
| https://static-v3.e-jumbo.gr/uploads/resources/137879/201611... ;
| you'll see they are exactly like legos.
|
| The app identified 400 pieces (of the 800) and unfortunately the
| resulting ideas were not possible to be constructed because it
| required pieces we don't have. Of the 50 ideas I was only able to
| construct 1 or 2 that had very few pieces.
|
| I tried it a couple of times with diferent layout in pieces or
| lights, nothing really changed.
|
| Sorry but it doesn't work, at least with my kind of bricks.
| soared wrote:
| Wild to comment that someone's app for identifying legos
| doesn't identify not legos.
| spapas82 wrote:
| These bricks are exactly the same as normal legos and of
| course they are compatible. I can't differentiate from real
| legos unless I check if they have the lego logo on them. So
| I'm not sure this is a problem with these bricks...
| zibby8 wrote:
| Why don't you try the app on real legos first?
| spapas82 wrote:
| Yes I'll do that also tomorrow, I've got this Lego
| classic box https://b.scdn.gr/images/sku_main_images/0059
| 74/5974558/2021...
|
| It just happened that my kids were playing with the lego
| clone and I definitely don't want to have both boxes on
| the floor at the same time :|
| lupire wrote:
| They are not the same. They are made of cheaper plastic
| with looser tolerances, leading to builds that bend or fall
| apart. And they don't have the tiny LEGO imprint they
| advertises the quality of the mold and tolerance.
|
| None of that should affect the performance of the app,
| though.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| So are they trying to upsell you by showing what could be built
| if you just bought a couple rare pieces?
| spapas82 wrote:
| No, not really, my understanding is that they are not related
| with Lego. The problem is that the app mis-identifies a lot
| of my pieces.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27693560
|
| Barely a year ago. I thought it was maybe 5 years ago. Time
| itself must be accelerating.
|
| I need an app that can scan my hard drives, connectome and
| biochemistry > bleep bloop > tell me what I can still do with my
| life.
| [deleted]
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| Scan hydrogen atoms and tell me how to built a type III
| civilization.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Scan quantum resonances and tell me how to bring back my cat.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| That's not hard. Metabolize sugars until cellular and genetic
| damage is so severe you stop metabolizing sugars and decompose.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| Did I need an app for that?
| andersonmvd wrote:
| For kids I guess it kills creativity, but using the same idea for
| (house?) decoration would be very neat. Scan your messy things
| and suggest how you can rearrange them to make it beautiful.
| c7b wrote:
| Pretty amazing what AI can do already. It's one of those ideas
| that sound logical when you explain it, and hard when you think
| about how to build it.
| anoncow wrote:
| Won't the amount of variations possible in the bricks be very
| limited? A full size brick, a half brick, a 3/4 brick and sizes
| in between. Isn't the app then going to give the same set of
| recommendations for almost every brick pile? In that case is it
| even a brick scanning app anymore?
|
| Post read edit: Facepalm. This is about Lego bricks!
| elAhmo wrote:
| A prime example of how comments made without reading the
| article look like.
| idiocrat wrote:
| Good, looks like outsourcing the core creativity and imagination.
| Next make a robot, which pointless builds those objects. Your
| child now can go consume corporate video streaming content.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| This takes the same position as the building instructions you
| get with a Lego set.
|
| To me the interesting part is you can buy brick buckets and
| still allow unexperienced kids to build something cool
| following instructions.
|
| They'll still do modifications and evolutions from there, the
| important part being that they know how it was built and can
| break it and rebuild again.
| tamrix wrote:
| When you were a kid wasn't the funniest part modifying the
| design or building your own? Isn't that kind of the point of
| Lego? It's in small blocks so you can create something with
| your imagination?
| makeitdouble wrote:
| A lot of kids fall into that bucket yes.
|
| There's also kids who need a bit of push at the start,
| and/or will go through a full build following the
| directives to see what they want to change, or how they'd
| build it better.
|
| TBH I fall in the latter category, and take that approach
| for a lot of things. I.e. I'll follow a coffee brewing
| recipe to the letter to see what it gives, and infinitely
| iterate from there, including taking completely different
| approaches to compare.
| yojo wrote:
| I have a 5 yo that is very enthusiastic about Legos. It
| turns out that both directed and free play are good.
|
| He gets new kits and starts by following the instructions.
| He learns techniques along the way. How to interlock to
| make things that are strong and won't fall apart. Patterns
| for building subassemblies like body panels or spoilers.
|
| As soon as he's done following the instructions he takes
| the whole thing apart, and starts building his own creation
| with the pieces, applying the concepts he learned.
|
| It's kind of like music. You don't learn to play piano by
| composing songs, you start by playing other people's music
| to learn the fundamentals. Then you can start riffing on
| it.
| thedorkknight wrote:
| ...can't you still do that, even with this app, if you
| want?
| ezconnect wrote:
| When I was a kid imagination filled in all the missing
| details of my lego build and it look awesome and amazing.
| Now that I am older I just look at them as a low resolution
| approximation of the real world and not as exciting it was
| before.
| spullara wrote:
| Lol. No, they buy new builds with microtransactions and then
| watch it build them.
| dotcoma wrote:
| You forgot: They pay to have pics of what the app built for
| them stored on the magic blockchain...
| mongol wrote:
| What I remember from childhood was that you were often looking
| for a particular piece you knew you had, but could not find it.
| This app could be useful for that.
| bartvk wrote:
| It's gotten worse, too. There used to be a limited amount of
| colors. My daughter now has a lot of of the Lego Friends
| series. It's very difficult, because there's pink, light pink,
| purple, light purple, and some sort of lilac. So if you want to
| perfectly build a piece, it takes a whole lot of searching. But
| then again, it's kinda fun too because you're forced to
| substitute.
| NeoTar wrote:
| If you keep your LEGO sorted then many builders suggest
| sorting by part rather than by colour - its a lot easier to
| identify a pink vs. hot pink 1x4 brick, rather than to find
| the 1x4 brick in your hot pink box.
|
| However, sorting by part can be frustrating. Imagine only 1x1
| tiles/plates (i.e. the pieces which are 1/3 the height of a
| regular brick), to my knowledge there are:
|
| * 1x1 square plates (i.e. with a stud on top), * 1x1 circular
| plates, * 1x1 circular plates, with a hole running through, *
| 1x1 square tiles (i.e. with a flat top), * 1x1 circular
| tiles, * 1x1 arch-shaped tiles, * 1x1 quarter-circle tiles, *
| 1x1 circular tiles with a nubbin on top
| PebblesRox wrote:
| Yeah, sorting by color is a lot quicker than by part,
| though once you have things sorted by part (even roughly)
| it's easier to find placeholders that might not be the
| perfect color but still perform the same function.
|
| All those 1x1s could go in the same place and it would
| still help a lot with locating them, just knowing there's a
| place that only has 1x1s.
|
| If you're sorting to make it easier to build from
| instructions, sort by color. Otherwise sort by shape/size.
| regularfry wrote:
| Having recently done some moderately frustrating builds for the
| first time since my age was in single digits, I discovered that
| a small amount of pre-sorting _radically_ improved this
| situation. And it doesn 't seem to matter what parameter you
| index on: colour, size, type - anything to reduce the search
| space seems to work. Nor does the sort need to be complete.
| Just reducing the size of the unsorted pile also helps.
| lupire wrote:
| Then kids play _once_ and wreck your presort.
| vidarh wrote:
| When my son was still interested and I was building with him,
| I did not have the patience to pre-sort, but I used to
| casually sort while searching for a piece, and so the search
| time for subsequent pieces would gradually drop.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| Oh man, nowadays, presorting is one of my main ways of Lego
| play. I never knew I had such ocd tendencies. But if I can
| change maximal entropy into neat stacks of color and shape, I
| feel like _god._
| silviot wrote:
| I subscribed to the free trial for the Play store app, tried it a
| bit, and now I'd like to cancel my subscription.
|
| I found a "Manage subscriptions" link in the app, and it points
| to the Play Store app. I can't find an "unsubscribe" button
| there. If I try o uninstall the app I'm explicitly told "Your
| active subscriptions will not be canceled". I spent ten minutes
| looking for this, and I'm a web developer. How on earth will
| regular Joe be able to unsubscribe this?
|
| Also, can anyone point me in the right direction?
| aetherane wrote:
| Click on your image in the corner, there is a payments and
| subscriptions button. Click unsubscribe.
| silviot wrote:
| Found it, Thanks!
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| Realistically you shouldn't be allowed to unsub without first
| posting your impressions on HN
| silviot wrote:
| I loved the AI driven piece recognition. It worked great! But
| all the things around it are not that good for the price I'd
| be paying. In particular, I'd like to be able to use the
| recognition to build a small db of all the pieces I have in
| each box, so that when I can't find a piece I can use the db
| to help locate it. I believe it would have worked better,
| instead of building an app and targeting end user, to build
| an API service and target developers. This way many different
| products could be made with this feature.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| That's one thing that Apple got right, you can cancel any
| subscription from settings so you don't have to deal with that
| crap.
| criley2 wrote:
| Apple and Google both have all subscriptions in a single
| place that are easy to manage, this user just doesn't know
| how to access them.
|
| This is normal. My parents do not understand the iOS settings
| app at all, and it confuses them that they have to leave
| their app to manage their apps in a different app. I don't
| think Apple (or Google) got this right, there is definitely
| room for improvement for average user UX
| silviot wrote:
| Definitely correct: I didn't remember how to access them (I
| actually did it in the past, but forgot exactly how. My
| point still stands, I believe: it's too hard, not prominent
| enough. In particular I was disappointed by the "Manage
| subscriptions" link that brought me to a screen where I
| could not do that.
| lozenge wrote:
| Did you try the Google Wallet and Google Pay apps? Could be in
| either of those.
|
| Edit: for me it's Play Store, round profile button/account
| switcher in top right, Payments and Subscriptions.
| homonculus1 wrote:
| Why not just... play with the LEGO?
| bismuthcrystal wrote:
| Because more tech is always the correct solution, right?
|
| The world will be a better place once we outsource everything
| to our machine overlords, can't you see?
|
| Why waste precious time thinking when you can get your answers
| right now? Thinking don't lead you nowhere, the machines will
| do it better than you anyway.
| swayvil wrote:
| Tech is a way of controlling things without ever leaving the
| comforts of the inside of your own head. For every
| circumstance, a map. For every need, a button.
|
| Touching actual reality with your own meaty paws and wet
| eyeballs is just upsetting.
| [deleted]
| vanous wrote:
| Next: scan a pile of cash and propose what to do with the
| calculated amount...?
| rvba wrote:
| I need something like this for a section of puzzles rhat I got
| (all one color...).
| stakkur wrote:
| Thereby defeating the fundamental benefit of playing with Legos.
| So much software tries so hard to replace what never needed
| replacing.
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