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LEGO RECHARGER

It’s a snap to keep your gadgets juiced and your keys from getting lost. By John Edgar Park

Photography by John Egdar Park

On a recent trip to Legoland, I saw a neat product in one of the stores: a Lego key rack with Lego brick keychains. What a great idea, I thought. With this I could come home, empty my pockets, and have a consistent place to hang my keys. But wait, what about all the other devices I just pulled out of my pockets, where do they go? And, for that matter, how will all their batteries stay charged?

Then it dawned on me. If I attached a powered Lego brick to each gadget to provide life-giving juice for their thirsty batteries, I’d solve 3 major problems in my life: lack of gadget organization, lack of battery power, and lack of Legos attached to all my possessions.

The first thing I did was to sift through my Lego Mindstorms and Technic bins. I grabbed some 9V motor wire bricks and a large baseplate to start

playing with the design. I wanted to avoid modifying the bricks as much as possible. I also wanted color coding so I’d be less likely to accidentally hang my iPod on the cellphone’s brick, thus blowing up the iPod. This is a danger of universal connectors. Since the motor wire bricks come only in black, I needed to use additional bricks for color coding. I considered color-coded tiles on top of the device-end brick, but the smooth tiles always seem to hide a Lego’s, well, Lego-ness, so I opted for a 2× 2 studded plate instead. Much more geek chic. I placed color-matched bricks below the respective charger-side brick on the base plate.

Next, I needed to splice the motor wire bricks onto my power adapters and gadget plugs. My first attempt involved cutting, stripping, and twisting corresponding wires together, soldering them, and

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