LEGO Unveils Smart Play Platform using Smart Bricks to bring your sets to life

Danish toy-maker LEGO has hit the technology focused CES this year, announcing their new Smart Play platform, an interactive way to breathe even more life into your builds.

The LEGO Smart Play platform is a bid to move kids beyond screens, by supplying a smart way to bring their sets to life. Featuring over 20 patented world-wide firsts, the Lego Smart Play platform will use a combination of Smart Bricks, LEGO Smart Tags and Smart Minifigures, which will react in real-time with sounds, lights and more.

Tom Donaldson, Senior Vice President & Head of Creative Play Lab at the LEGO Group said “The launch of LEGO SMART Play™ brings creativity, technology, and storytelling together to make building worlds and stories even more engaging, and all without a screen. We truly believe we are setting a new standard for interactive, imaginative experiences and can’t wait to see this innovation in the hands of kids when we launch this year.”

At the heart of the Lego Smart Play platform, is the Smart Brick – a 2×4 Lego brick that contains a specially created ASIC chip. The Smart Brick is packed with tech as well, including accelerometers, light and sound sensors, and a miniature speaker (with a synthesizer) which produces audio effects responding to your play.

Lego will use Bluetooth-based ‘Brick-Net’ for sharing data between the Smart Bricks, which can locate each other and also recognise the orientation of the brick – all without a hub, app or any external controller.

The Smart Brick will need to charge, which it does wirelessly on a pad that lets you charge several at a time to save time. And if you don’t use it for a while, LEGO are confident in the longevity of the Smart Brick saying it will still perform even after years of inactivity. 

The Smart Minifigures Smart Tags will contain unique IDs which can be read by the Smart Brick using NFC. The Minifigures will look just like any other, just with the addition of a chip inside to carry the code, while the Smart Tags will be studless 2×2 lego tiles. 

Lego is starting the Smart Play platform off in one of their biggest lines to date, Star Wars, with three new sets, each of which include a LEGO SMART Brick and a charger,a LEGO SMART Minifigure and LEGO SMART Tag.

You’ll be able to pre-order these new sets from January 9th, and find them in-store or online at Lego.com and retailers from the 1st of March.