Lego Interactive Interface-A Driven via Arduino
Backstory
A number of years ago, a visitor to the LVL1 Hackerspace brought in a box of old Lego items that their father had in storage. The hope was that they would be an interesting project to build something and then use it to demonstrate engineering to children at a science center. The central element was an Interface-A (70455) control unit. The Lego collection also included the Apple II interface card. A working Apple II was not available, so someone suggested driving the "brick" with an arduino.
First Step
Opening the "brick"
The first step was to open up the brick. This was done relatively easy by cutting a number of tabs along a seam.
Now, cutting the brick open was not really necessary since a number of web sites already document this piece of technology. The pin-outs and voltage specs can be found through a series of simple Google searches. Below is a site used for reference.
LEGO - LEGO's first programmable product
From this link one can navigate to a number of others sites with information about this product. Among them is this page with pin-outs.
The information was available and all that was required was a shield and some programming time to get an arduino to drive the brick.
Two Years Later - Some Follow Up
The project simply was forgotten until August 2015. The Director of Legal Evil for LVL1 discovered a LVL1 photo with the brick and decided to close the loop. Based upon the pin-outs and research, he fashioned an arduino UNO shield from a basic prototyping shield.
The shield simply wired arduino pins directly to the pins from the brick (via ribbon cable). Arduino 3 to Brick 6 Arduino 5 to Brick 8 Arduino 6 to Brick 10 Arduino 9 to Brick 12 Arduino 10 to Brick 14 Arduino 11 to Brick 16
| Arduino | Brick | Port Id |
| 3 | 6 | 0 |
| 5 | 8 | 1 |
| 6 | 10 | 2 |
| 9 | 12 | 3 |
| 10 | 14 | 4 |
| 11 | 16 | 5 |
| A0 | 18 | 6 |
| A1 | 20 | 7 |
