Large Hub and Powered Up

[Lok24]

Hi all,

perhaps I missed something? Is the LargeHub (Spike, Mindstroms) a PoweredUp Device?

What I think:
It seems that the ports are physically and electrically identical.
What means that you can mix Spike/Mindstorms/PoweredUp Sensors and Motors.
There might be some issues: not alle deviceIDs must be supported with all hubs, not all sensor values must be represented properly.
But this might change with updates.

But: As far as I understood the large hub and its software use BTC, BLE is physically includeed in the large hub.

Is there a method to connect a Large Hub with any other hub (City, Move, RemoteControl,technic)?
Is there software from LEGO to connect them together?
Is the LWP 3.0 available on the large Hub (or is this a silly question)?

THX for each hint!

 

Edited December 16, 2020 by Lok24

[JopieK]

Well it essentially is, they are all almost the same. I should have brought the Mindstorms hub back from school (we went in lock-down today), to open it, but I can guarantee you it is some kind of Texas Instruments microcontroller with BLE like all the others, including the Duplo train and remote controller.

[Tcm0]

Hi.
The large hub is a powered up device because it has a powered up plug and can communicate with powered up devices. However, it's not "programmed" via BLE but via normal bluetooth. It's somewhere between the smartphone and the hub in the normal powered up hubs in that relation.

The Large Technic Hub supports all sensors with a lower level library in python. It's available but not really documented. I'm working on a lib to use the sensors more conveniently and reading for wedo 2.0 sensors and the color & distance sensor works. Only writing doesn't work yet.
The sensor values shouldn't be a problem because the powered up (and EV3 UART sensors which use the same protocol but another voltage) tell the hub which values they use. But yeah, maybe some apps don't support them directly (although there has been an update for the powered up app yesterday or so)

The large hub has a BLE library that you can use to connect to other lego powered up devices but there is no library especially for powered up (yet???). I think that the BLE lib is called uBluetooth.

There might also be the option to support more than one large technic hubs together in the future but we'll see.

[Lok24]

Thanks.

1 hour ago, Tcm0 said:

The large hub is a powered up device because it has a powered up plug and can communicate with powered up devices.

The large hub has a BLE library that you can use to connect to other lego powered up devices but there is no library especially for powered up (yet???).

 

To me it seems that you need two libraries:

- BLE Support (might be there)
- LWP 3.0 (???)

Idea 1:

Large Hub acts like a PU hub:
then you connect it to your smartdevice and send LWP commands with the PoweredUp App.

On the Large Hub you have a programm with only one commnd: SimulatePUHub()

Idea 2:

The complete program is held on the Large Hub, but you can add a PoweredUp Hub
Then the program should look like:

PUHub.Connect()
PUHub.SetMotor("A",50)

In both cases you need the LWP 3.0 on the Large Hub - which is not there.

 

 

[Tcm0]

I mean you can use BLE with the uBluetooth library so you can write your own BLE library. The hub as a (hidden) file system where you can store libraries. There simply isn't a specific one for Powered Up yet (but I think that there is one for the PUP remote somewhere in this forum).

[Lok24]

Hi,

yes, there are 7 hubs in the "PoweredUp" portfolio.

As far as I know 6 of them work with the LWP 3.0, all seven use LPF2 Wire, if necessary (RC and Duplo do not need)
So there is no support for the LWP 3.0 for the Large Hub from TLC.
I agree that this should be possible (and is planned), but today its definitly not possible to integrate the Large Hub into a PoweredUp szenario with software from TLC.

That's what I meant, yes, the intention is already mentioned, but it'2 yet not available.
So to me it is no real PoweredUp Device now, cause a very important property is not devloped yet.

 

Edited December 17, 2020 by Lok24

[Tcm0]

You forgot mario ;)

[Lok24]

Indeed .....

But it has additional connectors, not LPF2 wire ;-)