LEGO-style circuits make for mix-and-match electronics fun for kids

If you're bored with assembling figures out of plain LEGO bricks, you could give these tiny interlocking circuit boards a try.

 

Meet LittleBits: color-coded, swappable, snap-on electronic modules each with specific functions like light, sound, sensors, buttons, thresholds, and motors.

 

These modules "snap together via tiny magnets in order to make larger circuits," and there is no programming, wiring or soldering required, tech site Mashable said.

 

 

"As one would imagine, these simple, intuitive blocks promote limitless experimentation, prototyping and learning and have been dubbed the 'LEGOs for the iPad generation,'" Mashable explained.

 

Mashable quoted founder and CEO Ayah Bdeir as saying the tiny modules is "democratizing electronics and putting the power of electronics in everyone's hands."

 

"There’s a brick that's light, and a brick that's sound, and a brick that's a sensor, and you can build it within seconds without having any background in engineering whatsoever," she added.

 

She also said it is "really important that we are able to understand how electricity works — how a light comes on, how our systems communicate with each other, and how all these new sensors that are all around us are gathering data about us."

 

Projects posted on LittleBits' website range from a light-up teddy bear to a swimming shark, to a do-it-yourself New Year ball drop.

 

Some of the projects even suggest the modules can play nice with LEGO bricks.

 

Next generation of inventors

 

Mashable said the company behind LittleBits has a "firm commitment to open innovation and wants to help create the next generation of inventors by making electronics a fully accessible material for both children and adults — artists, designers and explorers alike."

 

Everything is open sourced, it added.

 

Mashable also cited a 2012 talk by Bdeir who said then that "electronics should be just another transformable building material, not unlike paper or wood."

 

Bdeir is an alumna of the Massachussetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and a co-founder of the Open Hardware Summit.

 

She was creating interactive art as a post-grad when she got interested in the tools she used, Mashable said.

 

Awards

 

Mashable said Bdeir's New-York based startup has so far won 22 awards and has grown to almost 30 employees.

 

Presently, it offers 37 Bits modules sold in nine different kits. Also, LittleBits kits have been sold in 80 countries.  — TJD, GMA News