Tcm0

There are some unofficial ones on aliexpress ;) There are workarounds for that. The city trains shouldn't have any problems to climb one plate in height. Or you place the hubs/switches so that you don't need to cross them. or you use the boost sensor to remote control some of the switches.

The 12V switch motors weren't small either. I think that the solutions are pretty comparable. The type of control is a question of preference. Often a technic hub can be a good option that's hidden somewhere. Switches rarely appear individually and you can use the ports for sensors as well ;)

I think that we don't see all of the problems as end consumers. If I hear something about the internal stuff, it's always that they are restructuring the internal teams. It's no surprise that they don't get anything done with that. They said that they will support powered up at least until 2027 so there is still time left. Maybe they're experimenting with new stuff but I don't really see much room for improvement if they don't simplify the next system. Tho they kind of ditched wedo 2.0 already in favor of spike essential.

Where is the problem with automated switches? There are many instructions on how to build them with normal motors and bricks for the current switches. There is simply no need for an extra motorized one.

I think that an important first step would be to market powered up as one system. You can leave mario and duplo out if you want, but why is there no powered up logo on boost or technic boxes? That way people would directly know that it's compatible. In terms of what went wrong I think that there are 2 big problems. First of all, LEGO didn't plan enough before releasing something. LEGO Education threw wedo 2.0 on the market as fast as they could without thinking about the future (and future hardware that was thus incompatible). Maybe they wanted to use the system for just one set at the beginning. But then they wanted to make a new robotics set for normal customers and made boost. I think that at this point the powered up name still didn't exist. Internally it was called LPF2.0 and that name was mentioned in a FAQ, but the system didn't really have a name at this point. Another problem might be that they still didn't decide on the names of the products. The simple medium linear motor is called that in the store, but the box of the zetros says that it's an M-Motor (which makes sense from a PF legacy perspective). Then there is the second problem. Everything should be a complete system and compatible but software development simply can't keep up. One example: the mindstorms sensors are still not supported in the powered up app. 2 years after spike prime was released. But they are still throwing new hardware to the market instead of fixing the compatibility first. For some insane reason there must be at least one new hub per year. Maybe all app development teams should get new hardware BEFORE everyone can buy it. I think that this problem is getting much worse because of the amount of apps for similar things. There is Boost and Boost Star Wars and Powered Up, all use a similar programming language and Boost Star Wars is now discontinued. I think that even Control+ has a similar programming interface for the liebherr. Then there is Mindstorms and SPIKE Prime, both using the same app but now they're thinking about merging the apps. It would make sense if they didn't start with different brandings. Why did they make separate names for them anyways? Mindstorms EV3 was both retail and edcuation. Personally I'm pretty happy with the mindstorms app. It has support for most sensors in scratch and there are debug blocks for the light matrix. Python is really accessible and you can switch between a python and a scratch project without any problems (for EV3 you often had to do reboots and change the microsd cards etc). What I don't understand is that there is no direct support for the non-mindstorms-brand sensors in python. It shouldn't be too hard to add them. I think that a few of the problems are actually part of the concept: app as a service. They wanted to add new stuff from time to time as updates. But they are simply taking too long for the development of new features, especially in the mobile app department. The mindstorms and spike apps are beeing updated more or less regularly (at the moment. I wouldn't be surprised if they stop doing that in a year).

Do you look for something like https://github.com/bricklife/LEGO-Hub2Hub-Communication-Hacks

But only for city. There have been a few passenger steam locos in other categories. LEGO will stay with powered up at least 5 more years. They made official announcements regarding that.

I'm pretty sure that we got crows or ravens at one point. They are in lego worlds.

Happy new year everyone :)

Someone did that already: https://github.com/bricklife/LEGO-Hub2Hub-Communication-Hacks

I doubt that it would be easy. But you can use a wireless BLE communication instead, that should be easier.

Can you post the complete error?

That's not entirely true. NXT used I2C, EV3 UART (except for backwards compatibility to NXT). EV3 used an earlier version of the UART protocol. LEGO EV3/ Powered Up UART devices have a protocol they follow. It includes a handshake to determine the speed of the communication etc. There has been a project to recreate the prtocol for arduinos but it never worked for me for some reason: https://github.com/ahmedjouirou/legopup_arduino It seems to be easier to use your own UART protocol/ a simple uart communication and there are some semi official projects... but I think that they are pretty complicated to get into. You can also configure pins 5 and 6 to be used as GPIO pins but they don't have PWM/ADC. Some examples can be found at https://hubmodule.readthedocs.io/en/latest/port/#mode and in the official documentation https://lego.github.io/MINDSTORMS-Robot-Inventor-hub-API/class_port.html

You have to create a new project to use the import block function.

Yeah, it's expensive. But it includes a rechargeable battery, so that's something.