2018 Lego Trains

[Nexogeek]

13 minutes ago, dr_spock said:

 

 

 

Is that a bat-train moc? If so got more pictures?

[Laura Beinbrech]

25 minutes ago, dr_spock said:

They seem to fit.

 

 

Thanks for the info!  Although it looks like the turn radius might be too small for my current Narrow-guage locomotives & rolling stock, I do see some potential uses here....

[Dragunov2]

On 8/23/2018 at 9:11 AM, Yodah said:

have you tried also the 1x1 round brick with open stud? not sure that they don't block too much of the light, but they might fit better in the LEDs. Worth trying I guess.

What about this one?

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=18654&C=85#T=S&C=11&O={"color":"11","iconly":0}

 

[Carefree_Dude]

9 minutes ago, Dragunov2 said:

What about this one?

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=18654&C=85#T=S&C=11&O={"color":"11","iconly":0}

 

I've' tried attaching these to the LEDs. The bracket makes them not connect very well, and the train just looks funny with big bulbous headlights sticking out. 

[Dragunov2]

Couldn't visualize it myself, just a thought.

And pic above is no longer available: tracks.jpg

[dr_spock]

On 8/26/2018 at 10:09 PM, Nexogeek said:

Is that a bat-train moc? If so got more pictures?

Here's a link to a pic on my flickr.

14 hours ago, Dragunov2 said:

And pic above is no longer available: tracks.jpg

Oops. It should be fixed now.

[Dragunov2]

Gracias

[Bristan2012]

Hi

Edited September 29, 2018 by Bristan2012

[Feichti]

My son build today the locomotive from the new 60198. its looks nice. The new PUP is very good i think.

We have got now 2x 60197 and 1x 60198.

I need to order some lights for them :)

[obsidianheart]

I've got a 60198 and a set of lights stashed away offsite for my son's Christmas present.
I ordered a PoweredUp battery and motor of Bricklink, and 2 sets of lights from LEGO for a MOC, and found out the lights don't have a pass-thru plug, so I can only hook up 1 set. I also downloaded the App and found it to be a little... lacking. Only has control pairings for the 2 trains and the Batmobile-thing.

 

Probably I'm just being grumpy about things being different now.

[00bricker]

Have any rumours about new 2019 Hauler Train set?

[aawsum]

There were 2 train sets this year, I would not expect anything next year. Plus, if there were rumours, you would have read about them ;-)

Edited November 16, 2018 by aawsum

[Eaglefan344]

1 hour ago, aawsum said:

There were 2 train sets this year, I would not expect anything next year. Plus, if there were rumours, you would have read about them ;-)

We got an exclusive train in 2011 & 2015 so we should be due. That was when Toys R Us was in business though.

[icemorons]

On 11/16/2018 at 3:27 PM, Eaglefan344 said:

We got an exclusive train in 2011 & 2015 so we should be due. That was when Toys R Us was in business though.

In the USA, both 3677 and 60098 were exclusive to TRU, that's true.  However, both sets were also available worldwide.   I'd expect the same pattern would repeat, based on history and worldwide appetite.  (of course, I have no proof)

[viktor_kovacs]

On 8/15/2018 at 2:45 PM, Mr Hobbles said:

Yep, an mSATA cable with half the connector cut away. It has 7 pins, I think he's just ignoring one of them, perhaps they line up well enough

I've checked the SATA cable connection and the plug with its top removed aligns perfectly, including the small cutout on one side that matches the LEGO plug. The 7th connector on the other side of the SATA plug has to be cut out for the other side of the Powered Up plug. Without the top of the SATA plug, the holding power is zero, so something has to be glued on top with the right spacing to create a crude wired Powered Up socket. It's not too reliable as the side bumps in the LEGO Powered Up socket that are used to hold the plugs in are missing from this hack. It's good for testing but i woudn't use it in a moc. The spacing and the side notch certainly looks like Lego was inspired by both the SATA connector and the standard registered jacks for the Powered Up connector.

The 3.3V power in the plug means there is no constant battery power on the wires for a repeater or a passive hub. Personally i'm trying to figure out a Lego only solution (with a bit of modding, but no external parts) to have up to 3 lights on a single output as usually 2 motors and 5 lights are what i use in my current train mocs (both 9V and PF), which gives 3 white + 2 red on both ends of a locomotive (with direction modded PF leds and colored lenses). The current dual motor/dual hub setup i tested only allows two led pairs on the unused ports. The good part is that the two hubs could be on two opposing ends of a longer train, so great for articulated railcars or longer sets with power on the ends (like a flirt, desiro, tgv/horizon express or the Florida brightline train in the new 60197 set)

[Bricked1980]

For anyone in the UK thinking of picking up the new City train sets, you might want to check out John Lewis. They have just launched their black Friday offers and both trains have been reduced by 33%. 60197 is just £79.99 and 60198 is £119.99. 

[StukaRT]

Any hope someone might be able to create an alternative firmware for powered up with an improved feature set anytime in the future? Atm its pretty useless to me as we often send trains between rooms and with the hub turning off when out of range and no way to take over an arriving train without pressing buttons i have now resorted to retrofit 60197 to powerfunctions and using the powered up hubs for local shunter trains only.

[legotownlinz]

5 hours ago, StukaRT said:

Any hope someone might be able to create an alternative firmware for powered up with an improved feature set anytime in the future? Atm its pretty useless to me as we often send trains between rooms and with the hub turning off when out of range and no way to take over an arriving train without pressing buttons i have now resorted to retrofit 60197 to powerfunctions and using the powered up hubs for local shunter trains only.

I thought about writing an alternative firmware for exactly the same reasons plus to support acceleration/deceleration ramps and to swap the direction in software instead of changing the motor polarity with the soldering iron.

I hope that Lego offers a few of these features in the official firmware so I'll wait at least for the next wave of Powered Up products before I start such a project. Overall, the official firmware is not too bad, the handsets allow to pair each train with each handset and trains with two motors are supported, too.

[3797]

I ended up buying four of those 60197 trains and parted them out. I still wish they would have included classic train doors and windows. I also wish that Powered Up was at the very least compatible with BT4.0. At first I thought my receiver/battery box was broken when it wouldn't connect to my Xperia Z3.

Turns out, I may have to thank the guys at LEGO for motivating me to have a look at the Arduino stuff that I always thought was neat but never really knew why I would want one.

[Tcm0]

On 11/16/2018 at 8:16 PM, aawsum said:

There were 2 train sets this year, I would not expect anything next year. Plus, if there were rumours, you would have read about them ;-)

Actually there were 3. Don't forget the hogwarts express.

But yeah, the last creator expert train came in 2016 (the winter holiday train). It might actually be possible that we'll get yet another train next year.

[Heppy9]

For those in the U.K. Argos has the passenger train on their Black Friday deals at a phenomenal £67.99! A steal at that price 👍

[substatica]

On 8/20/2018 at 4:10 PM, retrotecchie said:

Internally, the PUP lights are virtually identical to the PF equivalent. Two resistors (series resistors for the LEDs - 510 ohm by the looks of it), two smoothing capacitiors, a bridge rectifier and a small resistor (2.2k) for ID. 

A little smaller than the PF components, so values are a little harder to read on the capacitors, but I can't see anything particularly special about the lights. The series resistors in PF were 4.7k rather than 510 ohm, but when measured with a light-meter and run at full tilt, the PF ones are a tad brighter, using 7.2v of fully charged NiMh cells in each case. 

I'm not particularly impressed, especially as they are significantly more expensive than the PF items.

ID1 (pin 5) is pulled down to Gnd by the 2.2k resistor, ID2 (pin 6) is unconnected and the 9v line (pin 4) is not used.

 

 

Now, I'm assuming that the ID pins in the Smarthub have high value pull-up resistors so that an externally floating pin (as ID2 above) shows as a logic 1 and a low value resistor is used as a pull down to Gnd to signal a Logic 0. Obviously in a train motor, the pins are hard-wired (ID1 to 9v and ID2 to Gnd) so the ID logic for the motors and the lights appears to be reversed (Lights=x10 and Motor=x01). 

Anyway, I'm possibly just going to open up a train motor to play with the ID's, or chop a PUP connector off the spare lights and hook it to my breakout board as the PCB in the lights is just way too fiddly to work with. 

I have found another subtle difference between PF and PUP. If you set an output on PF (lights, train motor, etc.) then the output state is maintained until another IR command is received. For instance, if you start up a train motor on (say) speed 4 and then disconnect the PF motor from the receiver, when you reconnect the motor it will operate again at the last set speed. The same with lights - they will come on at whatever power level the channel was last set to. On PUP, disconnecting any load will automatically shut off the output of the port. Re-attach the lights or motor and the default state is off. It can be assumed then that checking the state of the ID pins is a continuous process and the ID isn't simply scanned at power on time. In that respect, the SmartHub Port is more 'intelligent' than the 'set and forget' output of the PF receiver. 

Another part of my experimentation with my breakout board will be to try and change ID states 'on the fly' with lights or motors operating and see what effect that has on things.

I was going to whip up some of these lights. I don't have the stock lights to go by. Does anyone have any ideas on the capacitor values? I figure some 1N4001's would work for the rectifier.

[izx]

12 hours ago, substatica said:

I was going to whip up some of these lights. I don't have the stock lights to go by. Does anyone have any ideas on the capacitor values? I figure some 1N4001's would work for the rectifier.

1N4001s would work, but are large & probably too heavy-duty (can sustain 1A continuous forward current). With the 510R resistors, a 9V supply and a 1.4V diode drop, you're at less than 30mA. The standard small signal diodes (1N914/1N4148 -- 150-300 mA) are tiny and will work just as well.

I think PuP PWM is at least 1 KHz? In that case the capacitors aren't strictly necessary.

[substatica]

Thanks, 1N4148's worked fine. I made a quick vero/strip board layout since I had some around. This is for three LED's (two headlights and a cabin light) but could be extended to more -- works great.