Incredible Minecraft mod brings its redstone gadgets into the real world

Minecraft is an excellent way to lose dozens of hours engineering virtual buildings and machines, but now an interesting new company has devised a way to bridge those digital creations into our physical world.

LittleBits is an invention studio that specializes in smart, connected toys, and it has begun offering a mod that empowers community creators to activate in-game machines with real-world switches and electronics in Minecraft. The product is called CloudBit. It starts at $100, and it is available now. In conjunction with the BitCraft mod, Minecrafters can use redstone — a key item for building complex machinery — to control items from a set of circuits, chips, and dials. Players can use this tech to set up doors that only open when you use the Cloudbit switch. All of this is yet another amazing example of how developer Mojang’s block-building phenomenon, which has surpassed 75 million copies sold across consoles, PC, and smartphones (and is out on Wii U tomorrow), is so flexible and so popular that it can spin off businesses in its own cottage industries.