lego style analogue computer

[ratstar]

I wonder if you can make an analogue computer out of a lego type building system.

You have a unit, that can be an adder or a subtractor or multiplier or divider, and some boolean logic, and maybe amplifiers, and then u plug these together, and set what their operation is, and the chain of lego is the chain of logic.

Has this been done before? Because it could make hardware accellerated logic so easy a Kid could do it!

 

[hexreader]

Yes, it has been done before...
Google for "snap circuits"
There was a modular STM32 system available for a short time that used hexagon CPU cards and analogue add-ons, but that presumably failed, as I cannot find it now


Thank you for editing your original post to something more acceptable

 

[ratstar]

The kids will still be lost if they see that, but if u make it actual computer units, and it comes with an oscillator, then it becomes more obvious what it can do.

The design i'm looking at for it, actually runs all the "bricks" at the cost of one brick, so its one cycle cost for all physical instructions. U use this thing called fpga pipelining, Putting the program down physically gets you potentially more power than even the latest gpu's.

 

[Nanren888]

Ever looked at fluid logic? Able to make modular pieces that clip together.
.
Sorry did not follow where you got gain from with the lego.
Unless perhaps displacement was the quantity you manipulate.
Lego has pneumatics, I guess. Never played with it.
As with fluids, you can get gain & such if you define things right.

 

[ratstar]

I was thinking of octagons with little squares inbetween, to connect it together.
And it goes in all 3 axi, xy and z.

I mean electrical! So it can buzz really quickly. But I guess you could make it pneumatic as well, that would be fun! =) wouldnt get the huge oscillation potential that electricity has tho.
Its just like an FPGA, except you plug it together like lego (call it logo?), and I make it at the level of arithmetic, so anyone can understand it.
But I wonder if still the archictural framework of logic is still a tricky thing (fan in and fan out) that takes experience to understand and get used to, I also would think adding capactor to capacitor bucket brigade lines in the logic as well for a small state to go with the logic.

It gives you *very* high performance sampling, but with only a very small state, so it suits procedural generation style programming, which doesnt take so much numerical information to generate its output, because it generates itself via the logic, and maybe explaining that idea to kids is a bit tricky as well.

So it would make a nice fractal raytracer, for one thing.