LittleBits Lego House With Garage Door Opener, Windmills and Doorbell

For Christmas, my 9 year-old daughter received a littleBits deluxe kit. Together with a big box of legos from my childhood, she and I created a house (riad style) with two windmills, a garage door opener and a doorbell that triggers a buzzer and a flashing light with a timer. Since we didn't have enough bits to automate the second windmill with the button, it turns on using the sound sensor bit which is triggered by the buzzer.

We had a great time building it. While I had to help her figure a few things out, the littleBits circuits were very intuitive and she was able to figure most things out herself. The house and all of the parts were her idea.

Enjoy!

Step 1: LittleBits Circuit

It took a few tries to figure out the correct circuit connections to make everything work just right.

Step 2: Garage Door

For the garage door, we fit a lego axel to the servo motor which was set to "swing". A piece of cardboard was taped to the lego axel. By attaching the slide bit we were able to control the movement of the servo motor to open and close the door.

Step 3: Doorbell and Front Windmill

For the doorbell, we attached the button to the buzzer and the light string. The light string flashes using the pulse bit and turns off after a few seconds using the timeout bit. To trigger the front windmill, we attached the dc motor to the sound sensor bit which turns on the motor when it hears the buzzer. The latch bit keeps the motor going until it hears another sound.

Step 4: Lego Windmill

We found an old lego motor in a pile of legos from when I was a kid. Using some legos and copper wires we rigged it together to run with a AA battery. We set it up so we could turn it on and off.

Step 5: Arranging the Bits in the House

Arranging the bits around the house really depends on the house you want to build. The bits and wires all fit pretty well with lego, making it easy and versatile to use. Once we assembled everything together we kept most of the parts inside the house.