Motor 88013

[niznai]

Hi everybody, just a quick question about 88013.

Any info available on how to non destructively open one of these?

I would like to modify it permanently so it can be driven with full speed control as a train motor with the Power up train remote.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

Edited March 2, 2021 by niznai

[Zerobricks]

39 minutes ago, niznai said:

Hi everybody, just a quick question about 88013.

Any info available on how to non destructively open one of these?

I would like to modify it permanently so it can be driven with full speed control as a train motor with the Power up train remote.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated, thank you.

You want to remove the current protection or what?

[niznai]

Nah, just want to modify it so the speed control works. Right now the remote only works as an on/off swich.

[dr_spock]

You can use the Powered UP App to create your own program that reads the PU Remote as input and outputs 0-100 to the Technic Large Motor. 

I don't know if connecting pin 3 to pin 6 and pin 4 to pin 5 will fool the PU hub into thinking the Technic large motor is a PU train motor.  I got it working with the simple medium motor. 

 

[niznai]

Yeah, I want to avoid apps altogether, otherwise I think there already is an app that does that and bypasses the remote completely.

As a last resort I might butcher the cable and see if I can get it working using the hacks I have seen work with other motors, but was hoping for a clean option.

Edited March 3, 2021 by niznai

[Zerobricks]

Speed is controlled by the hub, not by the motor. The motor only has the absolute positioning sensor, but the regulation has to be done in the power supply.

[niznai]

I am not sure what your point is. Of course the hub drives the motor but it does drive different motors differently. From what I understand based on the experience of others it seems Lego has used some sort of motor identification, which is read by the hub to decide how each motor is driven by the hub. What most people did was to change the motor ID to fool the hub into driving any (well at least some) motor(s) like train motors. I am looking into trying to do the same but this time with the 88013 motor. Couldn't find any info though on how to take it apart and it seems it's not going to be easy.

I have seen Dr Spock's video (thank you, Dr Spock) and perhaps would be a good idea to test the method would work before I go ahead and open the motor to hardwire it for good.

Edited March 4, 2021 by niznai

[dr_spock]

21 hours ago, niznai said:

Yeah, I want to avoid apps altogether, otherwise I think there already is an app that does that and bypasses the remote completely.

As a last resort I might butcher the cable and see if I can get it working using the hacks I have seen work with other motors, but was hoping for a clean option.

Perhaps Pybricks can be an option to rewrite the firmware in the hub to have PU remote function as a speed control instead of full on/off with the large motor. 

https://pybricks.com/

 

[niznai]

I am not computer savvy enough to get into writing software. And ultimately this is just a toy for my son. Much easier to hardwire it somehow and be done with it. Lego really screwed the pooch trying to reinvent all the wheels with all these different proprietary connectors and software and hardware. I think they would have sold a lot more if everything was compatible with everything else. I am an avid R/C hobbyist and can tell you if anyone tried to come up with their own connectors and their own hardware and so on, nobody would buy their stuff. And I know Lego was until recently the only option in their market but nowadays it seems to me the market has been breached and alternatives are pouring in. Hopefully they'll take note.

Edited March 4, 2021 by niznai

[niznai]

Dr Spock, your fix works. I ended up butchering the cable because it looked like trying to pull the case apart would completely ruin the whole thing and I realised that you could go to all that trouble and it may very well not work.

Tie 3 to 6 and 4 to 5 and the motor works as a train motor with full speed control in 10 steps.

I cut the wires close to the motor so in the future if I figure out how to open it, I will just shorten the wires. They are to long for a train anyway. Or I might insert a standard plug + socket in the wire so I can modify other motors and plug them in and out as I please. Basically make a universal adaptor for my motors to plug into the hub. We'll see.

Anyway, these wires are crap because form experience the sheath rots away (I had to change all the wires on my old 9V trains' hardware). Not that big a deal but a pain in the dorongo. Why can't Lego just use some decent wiring is beyond me. Bleah.

Edited March 5, 2021 by niznai

[niznai]

And just to close the story, I went with a PCB pin header like this 

https://res.cloudinary.com/rsc/image/upload/b_rgb:FFFFFF,c_pad,dpr_1.0,f_auto,h_843,q_auto,w_1500/c_pad,h_843,w_1500/F7019878-01?pgw=1&pgwact=1

This is for the four wires that are not really needed and can be connected with shunts like these:

 

in whatever configuration you want.

 

For the motor wires I went with a female JST connector like this:

 

to avoid shorting them by accident.

 

On the motor side I just put PCB headers as above for the power supply wires and left the other four unterminated. I will decide in the future what to do with those, probably another two JST connectors but for now I am done. Fiddly job but I've got what I wanted. Hopefully LEGO will come to their senses one day and save us all this dicking about.

Edited March 6, 2021 by niznai