shinylego: Shiny application for creating LEGO mosiacs

ShinyLEGO is a Shiny application that lets you create a simulated mosaic composed of LEGO bricks from any image file. Once your picture is uploaded, you can customize various settings for your mosaic such as dimensions, brightness, and color types. In addition, the application will generate specific instructions so that you can build the mosaic yourself! These instructions contain the brick colors and types required for each step, and a diagram showing how the bricks are to be assembled. You can also see an estimated cost associated with the mosaic if you wish to purchase the bricks yourself.

Live version: shinyapps.io/rpodcast/shinylego
RStudio Cloud Project: rstudio.cloud/project/257906
GitHub Repository: github.com/rpodcast/shinylego

When you visit the app, you will be taken to the welcome page that gives a brief description of the app, and links associated with the app developer (yours truly) and influential contributor Ryan Timpe (more on his contributions in the acknowledgements section below).

shinylego is also available on RStudio's Shinyapps.io hosting service at shinyapps.io/rpodcast/shinylego.

This application would not be possible without the innovative R scripts created by Ryan Timpe! Ryan has written excellent blogposts detailing the workflow this application draws upon, and the code for each post can be found on his LEGOMosaics GitHub repository:

Since this application was initially released as part of the RStudio's 2019 Shiny contest , Ryan has now assembled a complete R package called {brickr} enabling you to easily create mosaics in your R session! As of this writing, shinyLEGO now uses {brickr} for the majority of the backend analyses.

In addition to Ryan Timpe’s excellent R programs detailed above, this application utilizes many powerful packages in the shiny ecosystem such as the following:

shinyjs: Easily improve the user experience of your Shiny apps in seconds by Dean Attali
bs4Dash: Bootstrap 4 shinydashboard using AdminLTE3 by David Granjob (part of the RinteRface initiative)
shinyWidgets: Extend widgets available in Shiny by Victor Perrier (part of the dreamRs organization)
shinycustomloader: Add a custom loader for R shiny by Emi Tanaka
DT: R Interface to the jQuery Plug-in DataTables by Yihui Xie
golem: A framework for building robust Shiny Apps by Vincent Guyader and Colin Fay (part of the R Task Force at ThinkR)