This blog chronicles my ongoing hobby project to design and build a fully automated LEGO® sorting machine. The project was heavily inspired by many previous LEGO sorting machine projects. The moment I rediscovered Daniel West’s video, I was instantly hooked. This project is the perfect combination of everything I enjoy working on: Electronics, mechanics, 3d printing, machine learning, some web development, writing lots of python code and of course LEGO® building.
Timeline
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2021, December 🎄 Rediscovered Daniel West’s LEGO sorting machine on YouTube and began diving deep into research, exploring similar projects and ideas by many creators.
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2022, January Project kickoff! I began building the scanner module, assuming that part classification would be the biggest challenge - especially since I had no prior experience with machine learning.
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2022, March 17 Initial git commit on the repository 🥳 started development of the scanner software, including camera control and image acquisition.
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2022, June Began work on the V-channel vibration feeder, the component responsible for separating and feeding individual bricks into the scanner. Also the RaspberryPi was added as the machine controller and communication broker.
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2022, September Achieved the first successful training of a LEGO part classifier.
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2023, March 7th Switched to metal gear motors for the belt drive, addressing strong wear on the LEGO® gears.
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2023, March 13th 🚩 Major milestone: Achieved the first full system integration, combining all modules - storage, V-channel, scanner, classifier, and rotating slide - for a working end-to-end pipeline.
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2023, August – December Focused on improving bulk part handling and scaling up unsorted part storage.
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2023, December Open-sourced key parts of the project codebase.
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2023, November – 2024, August Complete redesign of the new sorted storage system, rotating and pitching slide, chutes from cardboard mockups to 3D prints. The machine can now run unattended for much longer and unloading sorted parts became much more efficient.
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2024, September – Still ongoing today Scalling up sorted part storage using a warehouse style automated storage and retrieval system (AS/RS). I got the idea last summer and I am pretty sure this will keep me busy for quite a while.
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2025, April Launch of the blog’s 3rd generation (after blogger and medium). I moved it to enable free access to all posts without having to register for a medium account.
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2025, August - First live stream sorting on YouTube
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2025, September - Build instructions and BrickLink studio plans of the LEGO brick build complete and published