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Keybrick One / Rechargeable battery pack for Powered Up

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2 hours ago, dr_spock said:

Can wireless charging cause issues for some types of implanted heart pace makers?

If you remove the pacemaker and put it on the charging pad, yes. Potentially, if you decide to press the pad against your chest, it may also cause an issue. Wireless charging is generally something with a limited radius. For example, your phone won't charge wirelessly unless it's sitting on or within a few millimeters of the charging pad surface.

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11 hours ago, rday1982 said:

If you remove the pacemaker and put it on the charging pad, yes. Potentially, if you decide to press the pad against your chest, it may also cause an issue. Wireless charging is generally something with a limited radius. For example, your phone won't charge wirelessly unless it's sitting on or within a few millimeters of the charging pad surface.

Pretty much all there is to say, the best: you don't have to take my word for it either: https://www.wirelesspowerconsortium.com/blog/qi-wireless-charging-and-cardiovascular-electronic-devices The FCC found that even within two centimeters of such a device would be safe as when compared to the norms the ICDs and pacemakers must comply with regarding electromagnetic immunity. On the other hand this is really a very theoretical discussion at this point, because we don't have any inbuilt wireless charging feature currently.

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On a different topic: theres a discussion about our testing going on in one of the Facebook groups.

The main concerns are about the contenders we chose and our testing methodology.

We tested:

  • Brand alkalines (those with the "copper top", which we found to be only bettery by about 3% as when compared to "no-name" cells from our local discounter market in this application)
  • LIDL NiMH batteries (which many consider a good cheap option)
  • agains Keybrick in Normal mode

The setup we used for the number on the website was basically the City Passenger Train 60197: loco plus two wagons on the supplied oval. Setting it to maximum speed and leaving it until it stops.

One criticism we are addressing in the next few days is the choice of rechargeable batteries where we are going to test against Eneloops today.

Another test I have been running in the lab is using two PUP motors directly coupled and connecting the second one to a four quadrant power supply (basically a power supply capable of sourcing and sinking energy) which allows me to simulate many load situations, while measuring power. This way I am able to simulate a variety of load conditions from freewheeling to brack-driving the "generator" to simulate stalling. We didn't publish any numbers from that testing because we felt that it was too synthetic to actually mean anything to most people out there.

The other aspect we find hard to emphasis properly is the one about the discharge curves: with alkalines (and to a lesser extent with the NiMHs) you can clearly see that the train gets significantly slower as the batteries deplete, to a point it's really crawling to a stop (which is actually a significant percentage of the time in the oval loop benchmark, and a significant part of charge where our Kids would complain that the train is getting too slow). Comparing that to the constant power output of Keybrick where you basically have the same power at your disposal until it finally stops is somewhat difficult, because even if the absolute time is a fair bit shorter (alkalines: 3h36 vs 2h34 with Keybrick) it is keeping its pace the full duration.

What we weres asked whas:

  • provide some numbers that show the evolution of speed (first ten rounds vs. the last ten on the different power sources)
  • show the difference between the power modes of Keybrick
  • how the different power modes impact speed / power / battery life

Is there anything you would like to see over that? If you have any suggestion how we could make the battery life comparable I'd be super thankful :)

 

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On 10/1/2020 at 8:00 PM, Phil B said:

What about the idea of having a (relatively short) cable extension of the current port? Perhaps you can put it in a 1x2 brick? That way a builder can embed the box anywhere in the train and either charge directly on the box (if the port is accessible from outside or if the box can be lifted out of the model) or plug in the extension, put the 1x2 brick somewhere in the outside wall of the train and use that to plug in the charger. Of course, then there will be the request to get that brick into as many colors as possible, but perhaps just printing it as black or LBG would be sufficient.

Love this idea

@keybrickone
Ik really hope you use the lastest usb connector,
I still don't understand why tlg used the outdated and more fragile micro usb, especially weird if you consider kids playing with it.

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12 minutes ago, JaBaCaDaBra said:

Love this idea

@keybrickone
Ik really hope you use the lastest usb connector,
I still don't understand why tlg used the outdated and more fragile micro usb, especially weird if you consider kids playing with it.

Sadly no, we're using micro-USB, for various reasons.

USB type C connectors are considerably larger (at that scale anyway) and would have forced us to place the connector on the long side of the hub, which again decided against because it seemed less practical. Additionally the conectors are a good bit taller too, which would require us to use a mid-mount type because we would run out of height.
Finally, implementing USB type C would require a good bit more circuitry inside of Keybrick (because the device is actually supposed to communicate with the charger in order for it to be properly implemented) which comes at significant expense and with the matching board space requirement.

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This sounds like a great idea and I hope you teach your target :classic:

Could I charge from a powerbank whilst in operation to increase runtime?

If this is successful will you be considering a version for the 88012 technic hub?

 

 

 

 

 

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23 minutes ago, ukbajadave said:

This sounds like a great idea and I hope you teach your target :classic:

Thanks :pir-love:

24 minutes ago, ukbajadave said:

Could I charge from a powerbank whilst in operation to increase runtime?

Currently not enabled for EMC reasons. Basically the 88009 hub doesn't do a stellar job at keeping brush noise from the motors away from the battery pack (at higher speeds that is). As this question has been raised a few times I'll be looking into possibilities to make this happen nonetheless. Maybe it could be possible if we force the user into ECO mode while the charger is attached. That way the maximum power, and by extension motor speed, will be limited which might reduce the noise/EMC issue to a level we're both comfortable and still compliant with :)

27 minutes ago, ukbajadave said:

If this is successful will you be considering a version for the 88012 technic hub?

I have one sitting in my lab, bought it to evaluate if we could make something similar. We didn't start anything but its a very real possibility.

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So I have some interesting news. While I wasn't able to validate my results with our external EMC testing partner just yet, it looks like we should be able to enable "in operations charging" with just one very tiny hardware change to get rid of a nasty conducted EM spur which doesn't even require us to modify the existing board because it just requires one additional small value capacitor in a previously unpopulated placement as a RF shunt. :thumbup:

This means that we'll just have to do a minor change in the firmware to enable the feature! A massive thanks to everyone who asked for this! I did simply discard that possibility based on my measurements on just the hub alone, but apparently Keybrick did a good job of killing most emissions as is and the single remaining spur just went away with that additional capacitance! Awesome!

In addition to that some other news of the week:

Battery life testing re-done

by request of a few folks on Facebook we re-did some of the battery life testing and here are the results for our two setups:

On the "lab test-bench" (test setup described in a post above) in a high load scenario:

  • Duracell Plus alkalines: 2h03min
  • Eneloops (white): 1h16min
  • Keybrick ECO: 2h07min
  • Keybrick Normal: 1h37min
  • Keybrick Boost: 1h17min

On the second test setup (which is bascially the Oval out of the 60197 set with two wagons attached to the loco, running at speed 5/10):

  • Alkalines: 3h27
  • Keybrick (in Normal mode): 2h34
  • Eneloops (white): 2h22

Till didn't manage to cobble together a loop counter but he did time the loop duration at 3 points:

  • Test subject: Loop times at 5 min after start / after 1h15 / 5 minutes before stopping
  • Alkalines: 5.31s / 5.83s / 8.13s
  • Keybrick: 5.47s / 5.74s / 5.68s
  • Eneloops: 5.77s / 6.29s / 7.08s

Note: we measured 5 minutes after start to ignore the sharp drop in loop time which seems to be caused by the motors heating up.

Inductive charging and "remote USB port"

Great ideas, we would love to look into more deeply. The remote port is relatively simple to implement, the inductive charging much less-so (technically doable still). But at this point we need some more support for Keybrick One to be able do so.

Review units on their way

We are super pleased to announce that a few review units are already on their way to very valued members of the community. We're super eager to see what they think about Keybrick :excited: 

Getting the word out

...proved to be a bit more challenging than expected. At this point we really want to thank everybody here for being open for discussion and as helpful as you all were! We've got some media coverage in the pipeline luckily :classic:

Have a nice weekend,
- Yannic / Team Keybrick

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Wow!

Thank you so much for the feedback and great ideas for possible add-ons and future projects!

We are actively looking into anything technically feasible. To get your idea off the ground, the best way is to support Keybrick on Kickstarter. Even you don’t buy a Keybrick just yet, you can buy the right to vote on which of the great ideas you mentioned above should be pursued next.

Ideas welcome!

Till / Team Keybrick 

 

Edited by Crygone_Jim

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2 hours ago, rday1982 said:

How long do you charge for to get the 1hr 17 minute runtime?

About 1h30-40 which is the normal time for a full charge from fully depleted. As the  hub draws roughly 320-350mA at that load wirh Keybrick in boost mode it's the expected performance. Keybrick delivers 3.3W of power for 1h17 which cumulates to ~4.1W or 85-90% of the cell capacity.

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So an hour and forty minutes of charging gets you one hour and twenty minutes of running time (with a heavy load). Inductive charging sounds like a must for this. I wouldn't want to have to take apart a locomotive or power car after an hour of running it so that I could put another hour's worth of power in by swapping the battery.

At that level of needing to mess around with the model, I'd probably take Duracell as the preferred option. With inductive charging being an option, the cost would be the deciding factor.

Of course, my track and motors were the 9V system and I was used to being able to just twist the big yellow dial to make the train move, so maybe I'm just spoiled. But if I'm going to rebuild my collection at some point, it seems like I'm going to have to go to the plastic track and use PF motors. So I'm looking at from the POV of trying to keep the experience of running trains as hassle-free as possible, as well as spending as little as possible on infrastructure (yes, I know that some significant outlay will be required either way. That doesn't mean I'm not going to go about things the way that saves me the most money).

I'm also likely a minority opinion holder on this topic, so you might not want to listen too closely to what I have to say anyway. Especially since your project really does seem like a very cool one, and I hope that whatever feature set you settle on, it will be successful.

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1 hour ago, rday1982 said:

So an hour and forty minutes of charging gets you one hour and twenty minutes of running time (with a heavy load).

Thats not really the situation as is. In order to have the same load in a train (or other vehicle/ set) you would need to have a contiuous pretty steep incline to climb.

At steady speed the load settles to under half that value with small increases of load in turns. This is pretty much what you see in the "real world oval test". And the boost mode is really kind of extreme with reproducible derailung at 7/10 speed settings on the smaller radius turns. It's cool for high speed straights and hill climbing because you need a lot less momentum to get going.

Really the bench test values are just an extreme situation test which allows me to run a fairly quick comparison.

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6 hours ago, rday1982 said:

So an hour and forty minutes of charging gets you one hour and twenty minutes of running time (with a heavy load). Inductive charging sounds like a must for this. I wouldn't want to have to take apart a locomotive or power car after an hour of running it so that I could put another hour's worth of power in by swapping the battery.

That doesn't seem bad at all, comparable to the Lego LiPo. A charge time comparable to a discharge time is good, that way you could run all day by swapping two locos. It is also a good idea to give a locomotive a break to cool down.

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So right now it really doesn't look like the kickstarter will meet it's goal. What happens after that?

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On 10/4/2020 at 7:10 PM, dr_spock said:
On 10/13/2020 at 9:48 AM, SD100 said:

So right now it really doesn't look like the kickstarter will meet it's goal. What happens after that?

We still have twenty days to go.
Spread the word! Talk to other AFOLs about keybrick.one if you like the concept to become reality. The more people know about us and decide to support us, the higher the chance to reach the goal.

Till / Team Keybrick.One

Edited by Crygone_Jim

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Maybe posting your idea on other boards like technic and other train boards (e.g. doctor-brick or 1000steine) could increase support?

 

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On 10/18/2020 at 6:40 PM, TuffTuffTuff said:

Maybe posting your idea on other boards like technic and other train boards (e.g. doctor-brick or 1000steine) could increase support?

 

Hi TuffTuffTuff,

we got a bit further on this issue I think even if we are a bit late to some of the "parties". The biggest drawback of being a tiny company: so much to do in a limited amount of time. On the good news side: there are a handful of review units that have reached their destination this week. So reviews should start popping-in soon!

On another note: we've been asked by a few folks if we could provide some externally accessible power tap on Keybrick, so one could power an Arduino or ESP32 board from it for example. As Keybrick doesn't have a suitable internal voltage rail we decided that it would be easier, cheaper (and usaable for everyone even without a Keybrick) to tap into the existing "VCC" rail on the Powered Up connector:

PUPBREAKOUTJIG-v5.png

The "Keybrick Powered Up Breakout-board" uses an IDC connector to cut through the insulation of the original cable. All six lines get exposed for you to hack on a standard 0.1" pin header. I designed as small installation helper by making the actual board just a break-apart piece of the whole product, so lining up the cable with the IDC connector in the right orientation becomes less of a gamble :) the whole thing can be removed again without much damage to the cable. Thanks to the offset-cuts there's no risk that neighboring conductors short out, so a bit of tape to strengthen the cable again should be enough!

Other than than we validated the "in operations charging" feature, so that's happening. And the latest revision of the case fixed the last issues we had on our laundry list on that side (better fit to the hub, an additional notch to suppress some side-wall flex on the battery cover and improved tolerances which makes Keybrick now as sturdy as we feel it should be).

All the best,
- Yannic

 

 

 

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I hope this gets up, I really do, as changing out batteries on various PUp trains is getting real old real quick,


One of the incredible things with the old lego LiPo PF battery pack was the possibility of powering via track power (either 9V or 12V rails)
 

Is there any possibility of being able to "recharge while operating" the KeyBrick One, but with something closer to track power without having to devise a 9/12V -> USB conversion?

The dream would be to have a Pup train which would be able to recharge while it was on live tracks, either on parts of some loops, or on sidings/stations etc.

Myself, I'd like to use old style 12V middle rails to supply 12V for recharging at certain parts of a layout.

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3 hours ago, Stux said:

I hope this gets up, I really do, as changing out batteries on various PUp trains is getting real old real quick,

Thanks for the warm word. That one was the starter for us :) good to see that we're not the only ones really annoyed by this.

3 hours ago, Stux said:

Is there any possibility of being able to "recharge while operating" the KeyBrick One, but with something closer to track power without having to devise a 9/12V -> USB conversion?

The dream would be to have a Pup train which would be able to recharge while it was on live tracks, either on parts of some loops, or on sidings/stations etc.

Myself, I'd like to use old style 12V middle rails to supply 12V for recharging at certain parts of a layout.

Not as-is. The charger IC we're using has an operating range of 4.5V to 6V (it does withstand up to 10V on its input terminal without getting damaged, but stops charging once it reaches its over voltage protection threshold for safety reasons). So this would require an additional step down conversion from the input voltage to ~5V in addtion to the required bridge rectification to account for the changing polarity of the supply. None of this is particularly difficult or expensive to implement, but it wouldn't really fit into the available board space currently.

To be honnest, this is the sort of add-on we'd really like to offer if Keybrick comes to be at a sustainable scale! Noted it and will eventually look into the topic! Thanks

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It would be magic if the required electronics could fit into a brick with a usb port out one side and 9V electric plate on top. Extra points for a 12V plug socket as well ;)

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...I've supported it. I actually surprised you're finding it hard to get over the line. I'll see if I can get some friends on board...

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7 hours ago, Stux said:

It would be magic if the required electronics could fit into a brick with a usb port out one side and 9V electric plate on top. Extra points for a 12V plug socket as well ;) 

Yeah, kind-of what I thought would be possible. A female USB port for the output would require the end-format to be ~3 studs wide and probable 4 studs long. Height will probably be like 1.5 standard bricks (just because of the usb port basically).
The "9V electric plate" you're speaking about is the "Power-Functions" connector right?

 

4 hours ago, Siegfried said:

...I've supported it. I actually surprised you're finding it hard to get over the line. I'll see if I can get some friends on board... 

Thank you. Any help is much appreciated.

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33 minutes ago, keybrickone said:

Yeah, kind-of what I thought would be possible. A female USB port for the output would require the end-format to be ~3 studs wide and probable 4 studs long. Height will probably be like 1.5 standard bricks (just because of the usb port basically).
The "9V electric plate" you're speaking about is the "Power-Functions" connector right?

 

Thank you. Any help is much appreciated.

 

This is what the old electric plate looked like:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=4758#T=S&O={"iconly":0}

Lego currently sells a 9V/PF to PF/PF extension cable. (but not for much longer...)

https://www.lego.com/en-au/product/lego-power-functions-extension-wire-8886

It would probably make more sense to use a PF connector on this hypothetical brick I guess, that'd enable someone to use the PF->9V cable to source power from a 9V motor/pickup (as opposed to PF)

I'm sure its getting hard to find the 9V<->9V cables these days, which is why it probably makes sense to use a PF compatible connector.

This hypothetical piece should demonstrate what a pickup would look like, and it shows 3x2 electrical plate between the wheels.
 

 

Edited by Stux

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On 10/5/2020 at 1:02 PM, keybrickone said:

Sadly no, we're using micro-USB, for various reasons.

USB type C connectors are considerably larger (at that scale anyway) and would have forced us to place the connector on the long side of the hub, which again decided against because it seemed less practical. Additionally the conectors are a good bit taller too, which would require us to use a mid-mount type because we would run out of height.
Finally, implementing USB type C would require a good bit more circuitry inside of Keybrick (because the device is actually supposed to communicate with the charger in order for it to be properly implemented) which comes at significant expense and with the matching board space requirement.

I second the idea to use the USB-C connector. Assuming the battery box will have a long lifetime, it will still be used when USB-C has fully replaced micro USB connectors. And USB-C is much more user-friendly. You really shouldn't use micro USB for products that are used by kids.

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