Episode 543: Lego Spike Prime Weather Station with Raspberry Pi

"That sounds like a pretty cool role."
It is, it's great to see the kids interested and encouraged. Had so many positive moments when the kids have just got it, and seemed so excited and happy. Although it's also then hard to say no, so my hour a week volunteering, turned in to a couple. Then we moved house so started another club at our local school, but have carried on at the original school too, as so many kids told me how much they were looking forwards to being old enough to join I didn't feel able to cancel the club before they could join!

I must have missed shabaz's project, that looks super cool though. I can think of quite a few uses for it in a STEM club environment, a lot of my work is in primary school, so <10years old, and I think it might be brill for slightly older than that, I find there is often a couple kids a year ready to progress from the block based programming languages.

That Lego brick motor design below is super cool. There are also some motors and servos from a company called geekservo which are lego compatible. 

The Lego Boost sets should work, I've had a play with my son's sets (He's got the original and the star wars droid set), the motors were fine, but they aren't encoded like the spike ones are, so you can just drive them for a time period rather than to a position, but this is the same control as you get in the lego boost programming app.
The WeDo are listed in the compatibilty sheet as well, you can check it out here: www.raspberrypi.com/.../build-hat.html

Perhaps I should just add that the Lego geometry may need to be considered here. If you want to retain positional geometry in height then you would need a stack something like:

   top plate          1/3rd brick high
   spacer plate    1/3rd brick high
   spacer plate    1/3rd brick high
   technic beam  1 brick high
   spacer plate    1/3rd brick high
   spacer plate    1/3rd brick high
   base plate       1/3rd brick high

so one Technic beam in the centre brick position with spacer plates either side.

Ignoring positional geometry, then you could do something like:

   top plate          1/3rd brick high
   technic beam  1 brick high
   spacer plate    1/3rd  brick high
   technic beam  1 brick high
   base plate       1/3rd  brick high

so twice the number of holes but they would no longer align when placed along side 3 technic beams stacked on top of each other.

The alignment of the gearbox shaft with the alignment of the holes may affect some builds. But you could ultimately have multiple 3D models, one of the advantages of making your own motor block. A solution is only a 3D print away...  

SLA 3D resin printing may offer more options here as you could likely print loads of holes and still maintain positional geometry. I'm not sure of the tolerances as they will need to be pretty fine to get the Technic spring pins to lock reliably as they pass through the hole.
(Perhaps avoid using yellow resin, as it could be mistaken for Swiss cheese...) 

Need also to consider where the motor connections would leave the brick. Do you have multiple connectors wired in parallel and flush with the side of the motor cube so you can pick the best side for the project, or do you just pass them through one hole on a flying lead and leave it to the maker of the motor block to decide ?

Nice to see a project with teh BuildHat. I bought one hoping to use it with the Lego Boost and Lego Wedo 2.0 kits my boys have. Unfortunately the Spike / Boost / Wedo kits are just different enough that they don't work together.

A small laser cutter could be used as an alternative to make it as well. Could cut a load of end panels out of a single sheet to mount the motors on, using castellation top and bottom to knit with the lego bumps for additional strength.  

Done, thanks.

This is a really affordable alternative to Lego motors if a 3D printer is available (which probably a lot of schools have by now).

Lots of holes like that can be tricky with FDM 3D printing. What might be easier is to build three sides out of the motor block out of Technic beams and then just 3D print the faceplate for the motor on the fourth side and then trap it between the top and bottom plates. A few dabs of glue if you want to make it a permanent motor block. 

Feel free. I'm already feeling guilty about filling up Katie's project thread here... 

Yes, the green bit is the 3D printed bit and the red and blue are the standard 4 x 4 plates used to cap it off.

Could potentially get it a bit smaller but at the risk of ending up with non-standard spacings.

Currently it matches the height of 3 normal bricks (or 9 plates).

By rotating the flange by 45 degrees it may be possible to fit it into 3 units wide but not sure if you can get a 4 x 3 plate to cap it with. Could also reduce the height to 2 bricks plus 2 plates, but thought it was easier to start off like this as a proof of concept.

I can't edit the comments : (

I was thinking, perhaps an iteration of it could also have holes on the rear (maybe the other sides too) to accommodate studs for both old and new style technic beams as shown here in yellow and blue. But that may result in a bigger cube if the plastic doesn't have the thickness internally for the studs to fit in, so perhaps it's not worth the effort, since the small cube design is nice and useful as-is.