StarWars Day with a Smart Brick

Today is 4th of May, so “May the 4th… be with you” or in Star Wars parlance: “May the force be with you”. I’m celebrating this “Star Wars day” by building the Darth Vader’s ship: Tie Fighter from Lego with a Smart Brick and it’s weird and fun:

Let’s build a Tie Fighter

It starts with the figurine of Darth Vader and a simple chassis of the Tie Fighter starship:

Smart Brick charging…

There’s a yellow charger for the “smart brick” and there’s a dedicated space for it in the starship, that’s why the back of it is kinda empty:

Finishing the starship

Each Tie Fighter has these prominent sides to it. First I’m building the to bases for these wings:

And then I’m building the proper wings that bend into the iconic shape of a starship associated with the “Dark side”.

Flying with the Smart Brick

Now that it’s done, you can put the “Smart Brick” inside and it makes noises. From my understanding it’s based on NFC and gyroscope, so depending on which kind of brick we put next to it, it responds. When the Darth Vader sits inside the ship, it plays the “Imperial March”.

When you move the starship, it makes whooshing sounds as well, but these are pretty underwhelming.

Of course I modified the starship!

In the end, I had to modify the ship so that the Smart Brick is not so firmly fixed and can be taken out easier (1) and of course there had to be a place for the light saber (2)!