LEGO Mindstorms has had a profound impact on my development in robotics from an early age. My mother was an IT teacher that used them to teach programming which gave me a unique opportunity to make whatever I wanted with the ten or so kits she had.

LEGO have a slogan of sorts, "Learning through play," which couldn't be more true with their Mindstorms kits.

Nice, I remember building a scanner with LEGO Dacta at one point. So cool.

Thanks! I saw an article on how to build a scanner with the original LEGO Mindstorms, a year after it had launched. Seeing that all those years ago is what inspired me to make this one.

I wonder if there would be a way to get a better resolution, either by some sort of lens or custom sensor, or by using some clever software interpolation.

Using the current gears setup, it is possible to increase resolution a bit by lowering rotation unit values to one of the axis. This makes the maximum resolution result in an anamorphic, yet more detailed, image.

A custom sensor or lens, and using a dual rail instead of a monorail, could also improve image accuracy. If you gather data while the sensor is moving, using a second microcontroller, it would increase resolution greatly. You'd have to be careful for motion blur though.