Toastie

This thread should never go necro as 8878 should live forever. Yes, yes and yes. However, maybe there are other options before replacement of the cells. First, what happened and how? There is 8878 and you did what? (I don't want to sound smart - had a good number of occasions though where I was treating 8878 so badly - and it always recovered) This may take a couple of iterations ... Best Thorsten

I can only "confirm". It really is. Not done yet, but I really like the way this model is thought out. With all the ingenuity of EB (and other) builders, particularly the train heads, this will even further improve - I will certainly follow @Dirk1313's pimps. But - have said that before somewhere else: It is always a little more "directed" (not easy - but already heading somewhere) to improve a model. Beginning from scratch though, it is really tough to adhere to 1) constraints from the business folks running the joint, 2) keeping it as close as possible to 6-wide (I know, I know), and 3) make it look "nice". Plus: Time may surely be an issue. And I must add - allow to seamlessly and easily implement PuP functionality. All that makes me tipping my hat (that I actually never wear in real life, but "put on" for this purpose), and slightly nodding. I can only congratulate the TLG building folks, regardless of having maybe IDEAS input or other builds floating around, for this model. It is impressive in many, many ways. For those of you awaiting delivery: It is worth it. Every second. Just my 2 cents - as if anyone would care. But that is what I see in this Crocodile. All the best Thorsten

If you want to make it go away "entirely" you need to edit your reply post as well otherwise it stays there

What the devil ... how could I have possibly missed that! Ahhh - sorry: You turn that 2L pin with 1L axle 180° around its main axis. Phew. That was close. Nevertheless: It makes it run so much smoother!!! Cross fingers that your croc arrives tomorrow! Best Thorsten

And that is the most important thing: That you are happy! You know, that post I made was to support @JopieK live through the vacation time, badly waiting for September - and his wife happily building the Sian. Oh, and it was meant as I joke ... I should use more of these: . See I never built the Sian - just hearsay and reading in the Technic forum. Oooops, Merde Royal (the spell blitzdings thing never catches the French ...) - I sound like DJT - joke wise that is. He is joking all the time ... So, I would do the same thing: When you are happy, go to TLGs website and praise the set. I believe sch posts are even more important (as they are in daily life) than all the complaints. And suggestions. I have a good one for the Sian: The Technic pin on page 666, step 666 should be turned by 180°. That makes it so much bettter. Ha! I am the Technic Guru Have fun! Thorsten

The Lambo - so many flaws ... your wife needs to study the Technic thread on that rather well, she most probably knows though. OK: If I they would let me choose: 10 Sians now or one crock in September: I'd go with the latter. It's worth the wait. Best Thorsten

Oh man. That is really bad. But I will eventually show up. I just wonder how many they made for the initial release. 100? More? Best Thorsten

Toilet paper was very high on the list here. And all sorts of pasta. Some actually offered toilet paper with ridiculous prices during the first weeks in this land of confusion. Well Germany that is. At least we don't believe wearing a mask is for softies only - that works remarkably well. Maybe because we are all softies here, who knows. Seems to work though. Also, for me fair "competition" has something positive to it - would replace that with "neoliberal greedy capitalism" in this case. But then: Why sell 3 per customer? Because they are all gifts for others, I know. Reality though shows better though, I guess. Oh well. Reality it is. ALl the best Thorsten

The app looks for the corresponding "attached IO event" message that the hub fires either upon turning it on or upon - well - attaching the motor, right? And that message contains the I/O device type be it sensor or actor? This is how I find out what the config on the hub is. Or has that method changed? Sorry for asking, but has been a long time since looking into the code or any BLE protocol updates ... Best Thorsten Wow, that - was - quick: Lieber Paketempfänger, Ihre Sendung 05308078153702 von LEGO Shop stellen wir voraussichtlich heute zwischen 09:00 und 10:00 Uhr zu It better be before 10 - at 10 I have a lecture (Chemical Kinetics - just if someone is interested - we do parallel and consecutive elementary reactions today ...). If not, I'll cancel that lecture and wait at the front door ... no I won't. Well who knows ... Have all a nice day! Thorsten Update: It arrived 9:40 local time. Ordered July 1st 0:04 am, arrived July 2nd 9:39 am = 33h 35m. I am impressed.

I read somewhere in this thread (was that from @Mr Hobbles?) that all goes very smooth with the new app. Surely a more powerful (in terms of torque at e.g. low speed settings) motor as the new L version helps in that regard, but is there more? Does the BLE traffic indicate some sort of feedback control of the actual RPM of the motor? And then the app regulates rather than sets the speed? Well on the other hand ... the Haunted House surely does not need such control, right? If it were for the feedback control: Good. If not: Bad. Best Thorsten

Uhmmm - I guess, you EB moderators folks don't like this proposal. I am flagging @Mister Phes and @Jim directly (sorry!) Is there anything other you have in mind? I really, really like the idea of giving credit to the 10k folks - particularly to those who were not selected, but maybe TLG used their Ideas in some way or the other? Just let me know and I will be over it again. Best Thorsten

Thanks a million, @ps1flyer!!! Really appreciate that. Best wishes, Thorsten

That is because the App is built that way, right? I mean, the - oh man forgot the name - the 2IO Hub, the one supposed to go into the croc, detects the motor attached, i.e., it returns the "ID", right? Well it does, as far as I can tell from my software, which is crappy, but on the almost hardware-level tells me what is going on. When that is the case ... hmmm ... I find the TLG croc app - CrAppY. That is not right. It may flag a warning that the hardware set-up may have issues, but not working - phew. That would be a new level of ... some call protection, others restriction. Or even worse. Well I don't do the "App(s)" - so just my 2 cents. Best Thorsten

Ouhhh nice one!!! No grand children here yet - and I am the only one in the household to believe in the brick. So: I like it! Will do the sand castle, flamingo, and the pineapple (with a few extra pieces flying around here). Thanks for the reference! Best Thorsten

Hmmm ... or maybe they just send out a "probe", see how that lights up and then eventually fire up hundreds of molding machines when they sort of know? AFOLs may be more patient plus many seem to wanting to sell the set when the price goes through the roof after official retirement. But what do I know, I just play with bricks. Oh, I just checked because I do never pay attention to any promo thingies, read it above: My parcel is on its way and apparently there are two additional itmes in there: "Lamborghini Huracán Super Trofeo EVO" as well as a "12-in-1-summer-fun" thing. I don't have the faintest idea how these made it into the parcel, but so be it. HOWEVER: I have a feeling that these two sets will sooner or later be as much worth as their volume in pure (999) Gold. Or make that Platinum. Or Osmium. Maybe ... Iridium. Perhaps I will be able to purchase the entire LEGO shop. Or even more!!! Just kidding - of course. I like the "Trofeo" bit though. And "12-in-1" sounds like an (imperial) measure of summer fun, doesn't it? Have fun! All the best Thorsten @Tallus and @JaBaCaDaBra: Soon, the franchise rights alone will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams ... as Dr. Venkman said a couple of years ago ... Best Thorsten

Well, 11 BST in summer is GMT+1, which is very close to UTC+1. In Germany, we are on CET which is in summer UTC+2, which in turn is close to GMT+2 and thus BST+1. In other words, you may have pressed the "purchase" button within a few seconds I pressed it. And now imagine, we would travel close to the speed of light in opposite directions ... that would cause some confusion over at TLG, I can tell ... BTW I may have all the plus signs incorrect. Should that be, replace them with minus signs. Best and have fun with your crocs!!! Thorsten

Oh yes, that could very well be. But when "hot stuff" like this one (20 pages here on EB alone ... in one of several topics) is announced and a fraction of the population of Earth is waiting to see the July 1st thing appearing on the super precise internet clock website - and TLG opens business up that very time ... I go with the simple stuff: Put it on the wish list yesterday, clicked on that on 00:00:15 (was distracted by listening to MSNBC regarding the super smart way Trump is handling all that total mess), put it into the shopping cart, selected the shipping method, clicked on PayPal which is in turn automatically connecting to a bank account, and done. 00:00:30 they told they added 700 something VIP points to my account and PayPal told me about the same time that I paid money to TLG. Was really smooth, I had a) a beer, and b) a "Korn" in place to be ready to curse like crazy. But no: As smooth as it could be. Well, beer and Korn go also very well with me without yelling. Guess I will take cars of those "points" when there is less heat around. All the best and cross fingers, that it went at least through for the Croc. Thorsten

That is absolutely true. But the USB tower won't, as the 32bit drivers were never updated to 64bit environments. Many people searched for that driver. What works perfectly well though is the serial tower, which came with the 1.0 RIS + a RS232-USB adapter. You may want to make (manually) sure that the USB port used by the adapter is <=8. In the days of RCX/RIS, no one could never envision the need to have more than 8 USB ports ... Same holds true for NQC/BricxCC and other older software. Wait I somewhere wrote all that up ... here it is: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/157550-lego-history-programming-20-years-old-mindstorms-rcx’-on-modern-computers/ Best Thorsten

I believe "change" - which some call "deterioration" - of the >lubricant<, regardless what it is, is also a - if not the - major issue. Of course plus chemical interactions with ABS. But lubricants themselves don't stay the same. They change over time. Affected by temperature, humidity and so on. Best Thorsten

I have a slightly different take on that: When I share something in the "open space", I'd rather love to see people copying it. That's the entire purpose for me: Sharing, so others can build and change what they want. When someone actually takes the elaborate way of producing instructions - even better! There is only one thing I like to see: "Original model" or "model inspired" or whatever and then the name, nickname or any other piece of information about the original builder that can be found. If that is not the case, I don't care either, but that's entirely my own take. Maybe I got used to it when putting lectures online (university cloud, pwd protected) just to find them in other places as well. But hey: The kids apparently liked it, so I am delighted see my word spreading. It's PChem though and only a totally unimportant fraction of Earth's population will ever read it even pwd unprotected . Even when people make money with selling instructions - well - I would ask them not to take any money and maybe add a reference to the original builder. This is what I would do in your place now. Not necessarily having her or him putting it down. But add your reference. But again: Just my very personal take. All the best, Thorsten

Now this is what I call decent electronics. This is so nice and clean. How much did you pay? I know, BL is our friend. Best Thorsten

You are very welcome! It is of almost zero effort to make it square or round, change the files size or format. Best Thorsten

(If I would not know that you know better - just for all:) They do. Actually you can do "all". As you know better @dr_spock Needs a little this and that ... but even the purist way works. On my stupid layout, I have a section that consists of a deliberate mix of 4.5V track (blue era), blue 12V track (which is 4.5V + power rails), 12V track (which is 4.5V rails in gray + power rails in gray + sophisticated sleeper attachment), 9V plain vanilla track - as there are no variants other than color, and *sigh* - all plastic track (are these called PF track? No, makes no sense, PUP uses them as well. So PFPUP track? All plastic track. APT, that's it) With properly designed trains/cars, they negotiated the whole mess ... fun to see. The 12V series of trains are the best. Best Thorsten

(Same here) Maybe to make it harder to start new content in this sub-forum as one can barely see that option in the banner. Some call it good, others - well - whatever. Guess somebody pressed the wrong button or buttons. Best Thorsten

Wait! That is absolutely not the point of "9V" ... no way. Not to me. It is metal rails. Delivering power. Crappy power, as you have so nicely and colorfully pointed out. However, they do deliver power. There are many, many ways of picking that power up - crappy as it is. But hey, refine it and feed it to some intelligence. "9V" does not mean "feed crappy power to dumb motors" and clean track for the rest of your life. So: No sir, I do NOT spend increasing amounts attempting to maintain a non-supported product. None what so ever: I do combine a power source - crappy as it is - to devices that take care of that and feed it to either PF or PuP or homegrown devices. These then run forever on the track or near the track - and I don't have to waste batteries - as so many do - nor do I need to recharge others types every so many hours. That is what is 9V to me. I never felt fighting uphill. In contrast. This historical tide you are referring to is - for me - actually driving the whole thing, as if I was surfing it - with some additions I tend to name progress or development. The "hobby" - as far as I am concerned loses a bit, when train are running on plastic track. I do know that hardly any train picks power up from the rails. As TLG does not provide diesel motors, nor any pantograph power pickup system, I believe it is closer to reality to pick that power up from rails. But that is just how I see it - don't like to be called a non-believer. I guess we all have our visions of how to proceed. You go with RC and plastic track, I go with metal track and RC. And I don't complain, nor do I cling. I just do want to. Best Thorsten