News: 3D LEGO LikeLight Shows You Facebook Likes in Real Time

Matt Reed, a web developer at Nashville interactive ad agency Redpepper, built a massive, real life Facebook Like "button" out of Legos, which lights up whenever someone clicks Like on his Facebook page. The programmer loves LEGOs, and draws an affinity between the legendary building blocks and engineering: "[Legos] are great for prototyping physical objects. I don't manufacture things, but I do click blocks together. Plus, most things I deal with on a daily basis are pixelized. Legos are some of the closest physical representation of pixels." Hence the idea for the Likelight:

It works like this (Reed does a great job explaining): the LikeLight, custom built out of LEGOs, is hooked up to arduinos with an ethernet shield. (Side note: arduinos are tiny microcontrollers that allow programming commands to translate to real-world actions—such as lighting up LEDs.) The arduinos are then connected to the web, which allows Reed to set up a script, which then notifies the arduinos whenever a Thumbs Up is given. And, voilà, the LED wired arduinos illuminate.

VIA All Facebook