SBrick Survey  

409 members have voted

  1. 1. What is your prefered color for SBrick?

  2. 2. What will be your primary LEGO theme used with SBricks?

  3. 3. Which feature of SBrick do you like most?

    • Stairtop design
    • Works in sunlight
    • Big range
    • Controllable by smartphone (via Bluetooth)
    • Remote control from the Internet
    • Profile designer
    • Child mode
    • Other (please post in this topic)


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@pasztorl For you guys I think it is cool to have this SBrick + thing going on. What bothers me is that I still have no proper iOS app running. Two of your coworkers know about it, but still nothing is happening. The app has been released in June, some major bugs submerged only within a couple of days. It is now October and still nothing has happened... Apple releasing iOS 10 only made things worse...

Makes me wonder why I should back up you guys...

 

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14 hours ago, Limga said:

 

Will it be possible to set degrees of EV3/NXT motor's rotation? Or they will work like PF usual motor?  

The SBrick has only outputs, so with SBrick it will work like a regular PF motor. With SBrick Plus, you can use this extensions. 

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With the Sbrick Plus, what is the maximum number of motors and sensors? I assume you have 4 ports, if we have 2 sensors does that limit the number of motors or servo motors (EV3 style) to 2?

 

Can a normal Sbrick be paired to run together with a Sbrick plus, like daisy chain so that for example a single creation can have 4 sensors and 4 motors etc?

 

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7 minutes ago, lee82gx said:

With the Sbrick Plus, what is the maximum number of motors and sensors? I assume you have 4 ports, if we have 2 sensors does that limit the number of motors or servo motors (EV3 style) to 2?

 

Can a normal Sbrick be paired to run together with a Sbrick plus, like daisy chain so that for example a single creation can have 4 sensors and 4 motors etc?

 

Yes, You are right. You have four ports / SBrick so you can use them. You can use multiple SBrick mixed with SBrick Plus at the same time. The current limit is 16 SBrick or SBrick Plus simultaneusly, but it may be depends on your controller device, android or iOS version etc.

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15 hours ago, 2LegoOrNot2Lego... said:

@pasztorl For you guys I think it is cool to have this SBrick + thing going on. What bothers me is that I still have no proper iOS app running. Two of your coworkers know about it, but still nothing is happening. The app has been released in June, some major bugs submerged only within a couple of days. It is now October and still nothing has happened... Apple releasing iOS 10 only made things worse...

What kind of problems do you experience?

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It is good to see that you keep on developing the platform. However, I'm still missing a proper power supply. All the possibilities of the S-Brick are limited by the available battery boxes. I don't want to solder on my own.

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30 minutes ago, Jim said:

What kind of problems do you experience?

Having the latest App installed, which BTW really looks amazing, I notice directly I have slider issues. Reaching 100% and it just stops. Light buttons do not work at all, basically they are at 100% immediately, so that makes sense. After I realized that setting the sliders and buttons at 99% solves the issue Apple released iOS 10. For me this results in having an SBrick App that crashes all the time. I don't even have to control a vehicle, just activating a profile is enough to make the App crash within seconds...

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure the guys at SBrick are working on this issue and doing there very best. The thing is that the App is released last June, bugs were reported almost immediately and it is October now and still no update... Plus next week I attend to LEGO World and together with three other guys we are close to being unable to demonstrate.

We really need a solution, and we need it fast...

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10 minutes ago, 2LegoOrNot2Lego... said:

Having the latest App installed, which BTW really looks amazing, I notice directly I have slider issues. Reaching 100% and it just stops.

I experienced the same issues. When your thumb leaves the slider (let's say it goes to 101%) the app thinks you are no longer moving the slider. That's pretty annoying.

I am about to post a review for the SBrick Plus. I will get in touch with the guys at Vengit tomorrow, so I will address your problem. Hopefully they can fix it before LEGO world. After all, it's in their interest too.

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Together with @2LegoOrNot2Lego... @Davekuhh and Non-Eurobricks member Huib van der Hart we are attending LEGO world next week. And we all run the IOS version of the app. What @2LegoOrNot2Lego... says... We are having huge stability problems.

  • It's is not possible to control more than just one SBrick in 1 Profile otherwise the app crashes on launch of the profile
  • We have to set the the Max output on 99% otherwise the slider's and buttons won't work
  • The app crashes randomly
  • And if you are able to control something it rests for a few seconds or minutes and the app crashes.
  • All our Sbricks display Firmware version 0 and hardware version 0
  • We are unable to update firmware versions. The iPhone says it has the newest firmware version which could never be possible because we even tested a brand new one out of the box.
  • If we try to connect our SBricks to an Android based phone their app crashes too and we are not able to update the firmware trough an Android device

So, pretty unstable.

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4 minutes ago, Jim said:

I experienced the same issues. When your thumb leaves the slider (let's say it goes to 101%) the app thinks you are no longer moving the slider. That's pretty annoying.

I am about to post a review for the SBrick Plus. I will get in touch with the guys at Vengit tomorrow, so I will address your problem. Hopefully they can fix it before LEGO world. After all, it's in their interest too.

That is indeed exactly what happens here too. And now with iOS 10 it is even worse...

Yes, it is for sure in there interest too that is why I don't get it, I pointed that out several times now. You know, the thing is that I might be excited about SBrick Plus, but if the current SBrick is just abandoned there is no reason for a party... So many people do have SBricks and maybe only 5% are using iOS devices... Mark told in there SBrick Plus campaign there are 20000 customers so we can do the math...

Thanks for the effort Jim, it is very much appreciated! Looking forward to what you can achieve... I'm close to being desperate... :classic:

 

6 minutes ago, jaaptechnic said:

...We are having huge stability problems...

You stated it exactly as it is...thanks buddy! 

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1 minute ago, 2LegoOrNot2Lego... said:

You know, the thing is that I might be excited about SBrick Plus, but if the current SBrick is just abandoned there is no reason for a party...

I think the good thing here is that these issues will be the same for the SBrick Plus, so they will definitely be addressed. The SBrick Plus uses the same profile designer, so it's not an entirely different product.

Most important thing for the SBrick team is to get everything working 100%. Like I said in my review, it's been over two years now since the SBrick got introduced, so the problems you are experiencing should be gone by now.

I have published my SBrick Plus "review" in a different topic. Not sure whether that's the best option, but I felt the need to separate the info about SBrick Plus from the regular discussion.

 

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Had the same problem with Firmware and Battery both reported being 0 as @jaaptechnic reported.

This happened after upgrading to the latest version of the SBrick iOS App. Luckily I had another iOS device with an older version so it was possible to upgrade the Firmware. After that I reconnected the SBrick the the latest version of the App and then performed another Firmware upgrade. After that all is fine so far. But did not upgrade to iOS 10.

Reported this issue weeks ago.

So maybe it's just a Firmware issue and all would be fine if the SBrick would have the latest Firmware? But that would be something the manufacturer needs to resolve. Maybe they send you a replacement to test this theory.

Did you try to run the App with a brand-new SBrick?

Edited by tismabrick

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Pasztorl will create a response later, but there will be a new version of the app this week. So hopefully these issues have been solved.

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1 hour ago, jaaptechnic said:

Together with @2LegoOrNot2Lego... @Davekuhh and Non-Eurobricks member Huib van der Hart we are attending LEGO world next week. And we all run the IOS version of the app. What @2LegoOrNot2Lego... says... We are having huge stability problems.

<snip>

  • All our Sbricks display Firmware version 0 and hardware version 0
  • We are unable to update firmware versions. The iPhone says it has the newest firmware version which could never be possible because we even tested a brand new one out of the box.
  • If we try to connect our SBricks to an Android based phone their app crashes too and we are not able to update the firmware trough an Android device

So, pretty unstable.

I had similar issues with trying to upgrade the firmware but on my Android device. I ended up doing the upgrade as a two step process (refer to https://social.sbrick.com/forums/topic/367/firmware-upgrade-from-version-4-0-to-4-12). Perhaps you might want to see if a friend has an Android device which you can borrow, try the two step process to upgrade the firmware for one of the SBricks and then see if the iOS device will talk to the upgraded SBrick.

Note I haven't tried this with an iOS device, so I have no idea whether or not it will work. If you do try this, perhaps post a reply with the outcome.

Regards,

David

Edited by djm
Corrected typo

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@djm We tried exactly that. Not once, but 3 times on 3 different android phones and all Sbricks which i normally use with my iPhone are unable to be read by the android app. Even the simplified app on android couldn't see the bricks.

The only thing i know is that my iPhone can connect to Sbricks which have the newest firmware and the IOS app works with those bricks without any problems. (Hardware V4 or V5 doesn't matter) But getting the bricks updated is a bit like mission impossible. Maybe the new IOS app will repair this issue and let me update the firmware on those Sbricks using my iPhone. Let just wait for that IOS app and hope for the best.

But if it ain't gonna help.... We have to stand on the show with dead models and drinking coffee instead of driving around and let our models bring us the coffee :wink:

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Hi Guys,

Before the design change we totally rewritten the iOS and the Android apps. Now they have two parts. A native one, which do the BLE communication and networking and the frontend which is written in javascript. We do that because it is faster to develop while we can run the same frontend code in both platform. It is also means that we can do updates inside the app so in many case new release to the Apple store or google play simply not needed.

We changed a lot in the apps because of the SBrick Plus. We needed to push the KS online as soon as possible to fund the development. Now, the KS is online, so while it is running we focusing to improve the application stability. We can work in parallel with the two apps so updates will comming soon.

I'm pretty sure about that we will fix all of problems that iOS users already reported and the new ones that occured with iOS 10.

With android the work is much bigger, because of there are many android devices with multiple android versions and the android BLE api is... not the best. The good news is that we managed somehow to work closer with android developers on google side. We need their support because the API is pretty undocumented. If you check the comments on Android apps that controls an IoT device you will find out that the problems are not laying always in the developer side. Now we have open supporting tickets and we hope we can do better compatibility. For example if you check out wedo 2.0 android compatibility page you will find only two(!) devices running android. We try our best becouse we want a much bigger compatibility in this field.

To android users we launched the beta testing when the Google enabled it in the Google play. So you can download new betas from the google play if you enabling beta testing in your side. https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7003180?hl=en

Please try it if you have problems with the current release, it will solve problems.

You can help to achieve our target if you report your problem here if you have a problem with our application: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeQMie_XRcylXdiV_qadJDqR3oqA6f8mmmFi_FOYS7ftB1zOQ/viewform

Please fill this if you have a problem and we can check it for you.

The new apps also have a new feature, that anonymously logs the events inside the app, this helps us to get a low level debug information about the problems with the app.

We also managed to get low level access the ble chip what we use inside the SBrick. Now we are waiting for the SDK from the hardware vendor. If we get it we will have new possibilities to write the firmware, we can reduce the latency and improve the stability at the same time.

We are going to release new app for android and iOS in this week with bugfixes.

If somebody going to a LEGO event please contact us at info@sbrick.com,  we can send apk and apple ipa before it launched in public.

 

 

 

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Thanks Lenard for the update and support Lenard!

 

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13 hours ago, 2LegoOrNot2Lego... said:

Having the latest App installed, which BTW really looks amazing, I notice directly I have slider issues. Reaching 100% and it just stops. Light buttons do not work at all, basically they are at 100% immediately, so that makes sense. After I realized that setting the sliders and buttons at 99% solves the issue Apple released iOS 10. For me this results in having an SBrick App that crashes all the time. I don't even have to control a vehicle, just activating a profile is enough to make the App crash within seconds...

Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty sure the guys at SBrick are working on this issue and doing there very best. The thing is that the App is released last June, bugs were reported almost immediately and it is October now and still no update... Plus next week I attend to LEGO World and together with three other guys we are close to being unable to demonstrate.

We really need a solution, and we need it fast...

 

13 hours ago, jaaptechnic said:

Together with @2LegoOrNot2Lego... @Davekuhh and Non-Eurobricks member Huib van der Hart we are attending LEGO world next week. And we all run the IOS version of the app. What @2LegoOrNot2Lego... says... We are having huge stability problems.

  • It's is not possible to control more than just one SBrick in 1 Profile otherwise the app crashes on launch of the profile
  • We have to set the the Max output on 99% otherwise the slider's and buttons won't work
  • The app crashes randomly
  • And if you are able to control something it rests for a few seconds or minutes and the app crashes.
  • All our Sbricks display Firmware version 0 and hardware version 0
  • We are unable to update firmware versions. The iPhone says it has the newest firmware version which could never be possible because we even tested a brand new one out of the box.
  • If we try to connect our SBricks to an Android based phone their app crashes too and we are not able to update the firmware trough an Android device

So, pretty unstable.

 

I have to agree with guys:(

I have 4 sbricks, and 1 of them with "Firmware version 0 and hardware version 0" is also not working in 100% slider. I also can't update it, no temperature and voltage information. And before last iOS update I have no problem with 100% slider.

I have another problem. When sbrick and device loss connection at long range and then reconnects automatically again (without reloading app and profile), then sbrick start working with sensible lag about 1-2 seconds. It can be solved by turning off and on sbrick power only.

Edited by rm8

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13 hours ago, tismabrick said:

Luckily I had another iOS device with an older version so it was possible to upgrade the Firmware...

So maybe it's just a Firmware issue and all would be fine if the SBrick would have the latest Firmware?

I am unable to update FirmWare with older iPhone/iOS with latest SBrick App, so for me that unfortunately is no option. Even an Android phone can not update the FirmWare whenever an iOS device connected to the SBrick... :sceptic: ...not even a brand new SBrick!

For me it is pretty sure it is a FirmWare issue, but as long as I'm unable to update it I'm out of options. You are so right about this. Asked for replacement yesterday, did not get any reply yet...

52 minutes ago, pasztorl said:

You can help to achieve our target if you report your problem here if you have a problem with our application: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeQMie_XRcylXdiV_qadJDqR3oqA6f8mmmFi_FOYS7ftB1zOQ/viewform

We are going to release new app for android and iOS in this week with bugfixes.

If somebody going to a LEGO event please contact us at info@sbrick.com,  we can send apk and apple ipa before it launched in public.

I all understand about KS project, but I can not support a project of the same company that does not solve current issues, you have to understand this...

In the last couple of weeks I have reported many times my issues to two of your co-workers. The issues are known for weeks if not months now.

Really looking forward to the update. Your co-workers I wrote about do know that I'm attending to this event. So I guess whenever you have the Apple API ready I will receive it, but also my buddies @jaaptechnic and @Davekuhh who attend to this same show. As I wrote your co-workers an event with about 90000 visitors in 7 days...imagine the exposure... 

I'm pretty sure I'm driving your co-workers (probably you too by now) nuts... :laugh: :laugh: :laugh: ...I can be a pain in the bud I know, but after all it is for a good cause...the SBrick cause!!! And to be honest currently I'm not that excited about SBrick anymore, the waiting takes way to long!

29 minutes ago, rm8 said:

I have 4 sbricks, and 1 of them with "Firmware version 0 and hardware version 0" is also not working in 100% slider. I also can't update it, no temperature and voltage information. And before last iOS update I have no problem with 100% slider...

Exactly same issue here, if there only was a way to force a FirmWare update issues would be solved @pasztorl I don't have the lag experience because it all just crashes... :classic:

Edited by 2LegoOrNot2Lego...
typo

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1 hour ago, pasztorl said:

If somebody have problems like this please report here. Please use the email that you use to login the app.

 https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeQMie_XRcylXdiV_qadJDqR3oqA6f8mmmFi_FOYS7ftB1zOQ/viewform

I did report my issues as you asked, so I used the link. Lets hope this helps you guys to get the App fixed!

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On 11 oktober 2016 at 10:38 AM, pasztorl said:

We are going to release new app for android and iOS in this week with bugfixes.

If somebody going to a LEGO event please contact us at info@sbrick.com,  we can send apk and apple ipa before it launched in public.

The end of this week is approaching rapidly, how are you guys doing with this weeks update release?

As I mentioned before me and three of my friends are attending to LEGO World. This events starts next monday, could you please send us as you wrote yourself the "before going public" app?

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1 hour ago, 2LegoOrNot2Lego... said:

The end of this week is approaching rapidly, how are you guys doing with this weeks update release?

As I mentioned before me and three of my friends are attending to LEGO World. This events starts next monday, could you please send us as you wrote yourself the "before going public" app?

We are going to send out the next release tomorrow. We update iOS and Android apps too. I will write here how you can download.

Btw, we just hit the 50k on Kickstarter. :classic:

Edited by pasztorl
typo

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Good to know that, thanks for the information, i must say that the goal was achieved really fast which is good too, it means there are lots of supporters.

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Hi Guys,

We are starting to test the new release. Here is a link for the Android version. This is not the public release, but it is very useful for us fi you can test it also.

Please download this apk if your Android app not works with your SBrick: http://dewsys.com/sbrick/releases/sbrick-4.2.0.68_2.135.16-r.apk
Please send us your report here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeQMie_XRcylXdiV_qadJDqR3oqA6f8mmmFi_FOYS7ftB1zOQ/viewform or you can find feedback menu in the application.

The new firmware version is 16. There are changes in the communication protocol to decrease the packet flow between the SBrick and the Phone. This will improve the connection stability. Of course the driver changed too. Please start with updating the firmware.

With the new firmware the SBrick stores the name, so if you are in an exibition you can find your SBrick easier.

We are still testing too, this is not the final version for the next public release, but I wanted to give you some progress about the app.

If you have iOS, you also can get the new release, please send us your UUID to info@sbrick.com, then we can send you the app directly, without the apple review process delay.

 

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