LEGO Dimensions was a great “toys to life” style game that saw dozens of LEGO minifigs and vehicles brought together in an epic adventure. Alas, LEGO canceled the game, and it won’t see any more updates. But why let your sets go to waste? With some code and a Raspberry Pi, you can turn your LEGO Dimensions characters into an epic jukebox.
This Raspberry Pi project comes to us courtesy of Dennis Mellican, and unlike a lot of projects, he released all the instructions and code you need to build your own. The idea came about when Melican saw a few other NFC-powered Raspberry Pi Jukebox projects and realized he already had quite a few NFC tags and a reader sitting around—in the form of LEGO Dimensions.
LEGO Dimensions was another “toys to life” style game where you bought a portal and starter kit, then purchased more add-ons in the form of LEGO Minifigs and vehicles to extend the game. Each Minifig and vehicle came with an NFC pad, and the portal itself is a glorified light-up three-in-one NFC reader.
Connect the portal to a Raspberry Pi and load Mellican’s Musicfig code, and it will play Spotify tracks or your own custom MP3 list when you place an NFC pad on the portal. You can customize what song fires from each tag, and Spotify integration is optional.
Even better, you don’t have to use LEGO Dimensions NFC tags; you can use Disney Infinity, Nintendo Amiibo, and Skylander toy character. If you own multiple sets, you can go as far as you want. You’ll need a Raspberry Pi, a Lego Dimensions portal, some speakers, and a bunch of NFC tags of course.
Mellican put up complete instructions in a Medium article, and you can even show Album art on a display attached to the Raspberry Pi if you integrate Spotify. Why not get some use out of a bunch of Toys to Life characters you have lying around? The only catch is, you’ll need a LEGO Dimensions portal from a PlayStation or a Wii console. Xbox portals won’t work, sadly.
