Using LEGO motors

[Half Shell]

It occured to me in the car today that I have some LEGO motors buried around here, as long as tons of motors from back in my childhood. LEGOs themselves are pricy these days but I have a huge back catalog of LEGOs built up over the years. LEGO's gears and easy to build and accessibility should make it ideal for making a robot chassis. I did some searching and I managed to find this thusfar:

http://www.philohome.com/motors/motorcomp.htm

Specs on all the LEGO motors. They pull surprisingly low amounts of current.

Yes, I know there is the mindstorms kit - I used to own one. Unfortunately they left much to be desired and if I could maybe hook up an intro level development board like Arduino up to an h bridge controlling these motors, this could be an easy route towards building a robot.

Has anyone come across something like this before?

[Spoil9]

I too have thought about this. I have done a serach on Google for pix of robots made of Legos and have found quite a few out there.
I don't see why you couldn't cut one of the Lego connector wires in half and hook them up to any MCU.
I mean, a motor is a motor regardless of who makes it and what casing it is in, they are all going to operate about the same.

[Admin]

wow that chart is really useful!

Ive used lego motors in the past for robots . . . first, they aren't servos, so you'd need to use a motor driver to attach them to a mcu . . . secondly, the motors I used (I don't remember which) had very poor torque (which explains the low current draw).

[Rebelgium]

indeed, there's nothing that stops you from making a robot out of lego's.
All you need to buy is a processor board (eg.the Arduino) and a dual H-bridge motor controller. (based on the L298 is always a good choice)

look for info on these two board on SoR and google if you need it.

Oh and a battery pack and a charger would be nice to, you don't want to use the standard lego battery pack.
NiMh is the best choice.