Winter Brick Race
The Brick Race carries on into the winter, for everyone aged 9 to 99. Build a brick car or walking robot on a micro:bit robotics board, program it, and drive it with a micro:bit joystick over radio. Then race it!
When and where
The first meeting is on Monday 30 November 2026 at Central Camp, Prague, then one in January and one in February: we will announce their dates. Three sessions, three machines: each one is built, programmed and then raced.
- Meeting 1: Monday 30 November 2026, Central Camp, Prague
- Meeting 2: January 2027, date to be announced
- Meeting 3: February 2027, date to be announced
All the machines are on our LEGO models page: turn them in 3D, follow the building steps and get the parts list.
What you build
- A radio joystick controller: a micro:bit on a Yahboom GHBit joystick board that sends drive commands to your car.
- A car: the Wukong mecanum racer on an ElecFreaks Wukong board, which drives diagonally and spins on the spot, or the Building:bit tank on a Yahboom Building:bit board. Both boards take bricks, so every car can look different.
How the challenge runs
Three sessions, three machines. Each one is built, programmed and then raced:
- The tank: tracks, which turn by driving one side against the other.
- The wheeled car: mecanum wheels, which can crab sideways as well as drive forward.
- The walking robot: legs and gears, slower than either and far harder to aim.
The rules are short. Drive with the micro:bit joystick, and use the car modules we hand out. Everything else is yours to change: the chassis, the gearing, the wheels, the program. A machine that wins because somebody thought about it is the whole point.
Then we race them.
Disciplines
We race in three disciplines:
- Hill climb: a ramp 1 metre long. The machine that climbs the steepest slope wins.
- Sprint: 3 metres straight. The best time wins.
- Race: 3 laps of the track. First across the line wins.
The mecanum car
Its program in our MakeCode editor: radio commands from the joystick become drive directions, and the LEDs show an arrow.
The tank
The tank listens to the same joystick commands; only the motor blocks differ.
Updated micro:bit libraries
We updated the micro:bit libraries in our own MakeCode editor at makecode-microbit.geekedu.eu. It has everything the cars need, including our GHBit joystick extension with Czech translations and the ElecFreaks Wukong and Nezha boards. The Brick Race row on the editor's home page has ready-made programs for the controller and every car.
Building guides and walkers
The activities now have their building guides: the Wukong car's chassis step by step in pictures, the tank's assembly guide from Yahboom, and a link that opens each program straight in our editor.
New in the unit are four walkers from the ElecFreaks Wonder Building Kit: a walking robot, a crawler, a spider and a robot dog. Each walks on a single motor, and you can race them too: who covers one metre first?
Build it on screen too: BrickLink Studio
Every model in our LEGO models gallery comes with its LDraw file, and that file opens in BrickLink Studio, free for Windows and macOS. Studio is a 3D editor with the real parts in it: turn the model around, pull it apart, and see how it is held together before you touch a single brick.
That makes it the place to improve a design. Widen the Wukong chassis so the battery sits lower. Move a sensor to where it can actually see. Give a walker a longer leg and watch it collide with itself. A change that fails costs nothing here, which is the whole point of trying it on screen first.
When the build is right, Studio does the rest: it counts the parts, so you know what you are short of, and its instruction maker turns your model into step-by-step pictures, the same kind we publish with our guides. Export those and your own design travels as easily as ours.
Then bring it back: send us the model and we will add it to the gallery beside the originals.
Where to buy the parts
The electronics and kits we race with are sold by the Czech shop HWKitchen:
- Wukong expansion board for LEGO micro:bit robots: the board the Wonder cars and walkers stand on
- Wonder Building Kit 32-in-1 (without micro:bit): the whole kit: bricks, the Wukong board and motors for all the Wonder models
- Building:bit Block kit 9-in-1 (without micro:bit): the Yahboom kit the tank comes from
- Geekservo 2 kg motor: the red motor that drives wheels and legs
- Geekservo 2 kg 360°: the grey servo that steers the steering car
- Geekservo 9g 360°: the small motors of the mecanum racer
- BBC micro:bit V2.21: one for every machine and one for the joystick
HWKitchen does not sell the Yahboom GHBit joystick board; order it from Yahboom. Bricks for your own changes are on BrickLink: every model on our LEGO models page has a parts list to order from.
Get started
All the activities are in the new Brick Race unit. Start with the radio joystick controller, then build your car, or pick a walker.
Have fun building and racing!
