Toastie

You are very welcome ... The "software" I was referring to is comprised of two things: 1) The "firmware" of the RCX (the stuff thant makes that thing tick) 2) The programming environment that allows you to generate code that is "in line" with the firmware on the RCX - making it understand what you transmit ... LEGO gave us some firmware. "In line" with that is NQC. NQC translates plain text code into byte code, which the RCX running standard LEGO firmware "understands": Here you go. If you want "full power enabled" on the RCX than (as far as I am concerned) this is what you want: http://www.robotc.net/. You got ot be careful though: They have not (yet) announced that the RCX is not supported anymore. Version 2.01 works very well with the RCX: Here you get both, an updated firmware for the RCX as well as a wonderful programming environment. If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to contact me - I do run several RCX PBricks - and they are simply wonderful! Best regards, Thorsten

Hi Johan, sorry for bumping in, I am just reading this and I am finalizing my video and some pictures of a motorized "Ben Beneke BR23" (and showing it's performance on wildly curved track, including switch points and flex track): As far as my knowledge goes there is no way build or copy or mirror the doubly bent "curved road of a point" (wikipedia defines this as the diverging track , just checked - I had no idea) with individual curved pieces of tracks. This has been giving a bloody hard time in the past; Mark is absolutely right, this is a great benefit of the flex track. I also like very much that you can offset these annoying mismatches when building a rather "non-linear" layout (I have mine built into my office - no other space available - track running under my desk, through book shelves, now with flex track this has become a fun thing to expand!) Best regards, Thorsten

It depends ... Does your boyfriend own a good number of LEGO bricks? This set comes with a decent amount of (Technic) bricks, but if he is already stocked with Technic stuff you won't really need all that and the $150 would be too much: The heart of this set is the RCX PBrick, the LEGO IR tower and some software. The original software is way outdated, and there are several alternatives available either for free (NQC/BricxCC) or for some $30 (RobotC). The former is a purely graphical environment aiming at kids, the latter are (more or less downgraded) C-like-versions, with RobotC being extermely powerful. You can get an RCX PBrick at BrickLink for much less than $150, I recently got one for $35; same is true for the IR tower. If you want all the LEGO bricks as well though, well then $150 might be ok, depending on the wear and tear of course. The RCX1.5 is "software wise" compatible with the RCX1.0 and 2.0 versions. It does not have a DC in power jack as 1.0, so you have to live on batteries. The RCX is generally not compatible with the newer NXT PBricks - but again, it all depends on what you are aiming at and what you have already in the house. Maybe you can give some more hints ... Best regards, Thorsten

Hi JopieK, sounds all very good. Lets wait for the servo (and actualy switch point setup) story. But then - if we want to go further towards a more general "LEGO train PBrick" - lets first talk about what do people really want (i.e. what is generally featured in the guts of that PBrick), and how do we want to implement that. Currently I don't think that many people are really interested in such a device, given the number of replies in this thread. That is perfectly ok with me, maybe we are discussing a topic that is not very much appealing to the general public. Rock on, Thorsten

Hi Buddha Bricks, well, I guess the thing is that the LEGO LiPo already hosts a fully blown charger circuit with all bells and whistles. You don't need any sophisticated electronics to make the LEGO LiPo happy. It has everything on board. All it needs is some DC in; it appears as if 12 V from a plain vanilla wall wart is a good choice. Regards, Thorsten

Hehe, I saw that one coming, guess this thread may go ballistic ... OK, first things first: I pledge allegiance to TLC and to their ideas, their creativity, the way they form communities, the more-than-fantastic brick, this list is endless. I really do. I don't know how much time I have spent playing with LEGOs, have thought about solutions, and it was worth every single minute. I did when I was three and ten years old, I am doing it now, at age 48. I don't have any other plastic building blocks other than LEGO bricks in my house; and chances are, there never will be. TLC has invented the brick, they shall get all the credit. And I REALLY mean all that. But lets not just put us and TLC in the center of the world: I am lucky enough that I can afford this extremely high-priced toy - therefore I simply expect that the bricks do behave as they do: Superior. There are people around the world that may not be as lucky as me though. I am traveling from time to time to Bangladesh - these folks are very, very happy that these dirt cheap plastic bricks even exist. You won't believe what they pay for this stuff; it becomes very clear that Enlighten must make a HUGE amount of revenue in Western Worlds! LEGO is not even on the market over there. Hmm. See above. Principally, you are right. But TLC has turned into a globally operating high-power player. At thatr point you should not rely on 30 years old patents. None of comparable companies do (SONY, BMW, BASF ...). Yes, true again. But lets face reality; patents do have a lifetime. 30 years of protection may also lead to some sort of "ebony tower" tinking ... once again MAY! Here is a link, there a millions more about this topic. Here we go: Introducing "Bley" ... and not telling people before. I have at least 4 different shades of red on my red bricks. Apparently they were made in China, and they screwed up over there ... ... we can go on with this list. Well I am with you. Particularly with the bad chemicals being present in most of the Dragon Empires plastic. I was solely talking about my choice of maybe considering such bricks (for me only dirt cheap track counts) - I am a chemist as well, and yes, this is the most concerning topic. I would not eat the stuff, would not put in my mouth, would probably careful when scratching begins. We should ease-up at least a little though - how many tons Dragon Empire Plastic do we all have in the house? A shitload ... (this is an adult forum, right? ) Ever driven a Mercedes Benz, top class? I never have but when we would compare "cars" - it may get into an unfair competition, particularly when looking at my uhmm car ... No, not me. I don't want to live with all the problems, I want superiour quality - I am paying for. Citation: "The choice has been made - Oh no, I didnt choose anything, did you - ..." yes, from the GhostBusters movie, my all time favorite. I have so many pieces of LEGO in the house - I can't possibly count them. There are about ten LEGO trains running through my office, all the real thing. By the way, I have motorized Ben Benekes BR23 (not the "pushing" approach, all powered from the engine(!) - can't wait to show it off, but I need ot order some individual bricks from TLC (THAT was novel) ... Summary: You are right. Bashing TLC? No. High priced = high quality. Low price = maybe crap. We are grown-up and should make our choices. I have outlined my above. Other may very well go another route and be very happy as well. Finally: I very much liked your comments - it was fun to reply! That's is the main reason I stick aroud this forum. Rock on, Thorsten

I do well agree on that ... Have fun, Thorsten

Folks, I am impressed and a little excited, particularly regarding the report of frogstudio and the above message. Rip-offs or not, who on earth really cares about that? Honestly, this is a free world, at least that's what I heard. IF that stuff is as good as reported: OK, TLC invented it. OK, I am willing to pay considerable amounts of money just because of that - hey they were the only ones in the past! But be careful: If somebody is making comparable stuff at "unreasonable" low prices, who is riping off whom? Oh yes, TLC did all the development, and oh yes their stuff is BRILLIANT! But hearing that clutc is not that bad and hearing that some folks are not just trashing it because there is no TLC stamp on it - hey come on. TLC discontinued 9V because of revenue. NO OTHER freaking reason. TLC discontinues whatever they want for that reason. Because they are a globally operating power player. We are building according to their rules - never use what has not been approved. If TLC's stuff is superior, yes, I shall obey the rules. I give you one hint in the other direction: 10V wall wart power supplys for the LiPo selling for 25 Euros. That is an insult. The 10V were a lie, the 25 Euros were 20 Euros too much. The Dragon Empire have them for Euro 5 and they work very well. It makes me think. Once again: If quality and inspiration is at top: I am in. When patents run out: Do something exciting and novel. I am in again. But if 9V track is converted to all-plastic crap selling at close to 9V prices, it's creeping into me. OK, kill me, I am ready. Rock on , Thorsten

Well, I have heard that before and it may very well be! But - have you checked on the performance of the rubber o-rings rather than blaming it on the motor itself? The old RC rings a crap - again as far as I am concerned - regarding grip. The "new" small train wheels run sort of uneasy - check #7938, just push the train over straight RC track and it is not smooth, as in the olden days. I guess what TLC has done is increasing the grip by using different o-rings. The old rings resulted in smooth track operation but lousy grip, the new ones have strong grip, but ... I have changed the o-rings from the PF to the RC motor and have run the mod with 9V motors - to be honest - I have a hard time in determining which motor is better or worse. Philo has done serious measurements on power consumption and tractive effort, but he did not change the hardware, at least as far as I know. I just want to make sure we are talking about the same issue. And yes, the PF motor is performing better but again, maybe not entirely due to motor electrical power dissipation but wheel performance. Regards, Thorsten

Yeap, that should work fine. If space is even more of an issue, you could use an RC train motor with 9V terminal (the one they sell at S&H, #8886), connect a short 9V cable to it, funnel that through and hook that up to a PF extension wire that goes to the receiver. The motor is not as strong as the PF motor (oh well, it may also be the o-rings) but for your purpose it should work well - at least it did for me. Regards Thorsten

Tony, as an expert in train building, how do you rate the Enlighten all-plastic track quality? Do you happen to had the chance of inspecting any of those? I am completely obsessed by original LEGO, no doubts here, but when TLC decides on not continuing the 9V system because they can maximize revenue with all platic rails and bloody batteries, I couldn't care less finding an appropriate 9V track substitue. I am seriously entertaining the idea of putting metal foil on RC track, as has been described elsewhere, but possibly not on the original LEGO stuff, provided the Dragon Empire makes reasonable dead-cheap copies (Sorry TLC, the 9V termination DID hurt, and I am not willing to give in here ...). Regards, Thorsten

Dear All, I believe this is catching up some good momentum. There is a lot of diverse knowledge, there are visions, first tries, serious implementations, creative ideas, and most importantly, there is "drive" - in a very positive sense. And yes, there needs to be a smooth balance; name it work and life. For me this means we don't need to power this through - instead let's try to render this into an attractive approach for the numerous train heads around. Wow, big words eh? Whatever. I'd like to share a couple of very vague ideas before moving in, and I think we should agree on some fundamentals; if you don't agree, give my flak. Here we go: - The thing we are dreaming about seems to be a "train PBrick", right? There were/are LEGO PBricks but they do not really resonate with LEGO trains, they are more like "robot PBricks". - Regardless what we dream up, it should be compatible in some way with what LEGO is giving us, e.g., the PF hardware, PF message protocols, IR communication, all the works, right? We may want (I do!) RF communication, but that should not translate to: "If you want to go with what is dreamed up here you are screwd" (I am trying to say that the RF should not be hardwired to the PBrick but rather an external option ...) - And then we all have our preferences. What should such a "Train PBrick" be capable of? What about ... Large ID space. Which translates to "many trains", "many automated switch points", many "whatever devices" are trackside ... It should be small. Do we need full battery power on board? Or just for the the flash memory? How about optional bi-directional communication? RF is one-way. What about hand-shaking? Anything else? There must be a million more ideas ... If we can agree on - or better come-up with - a list of what is central, what is less important, and how do we keep compatibility at max, I am willing to spend some considerable time here. Not 24/7 but more persistently ... Don't get me wrong: I am new here, it was not my idea to start this activity, I am just having a lot of fun. Others may have well thought about similar things in the past!!! My PhD thesis is some 17 years ago, now I am running a PChem department and still do play with LEGOs and I tell you what: It feels (very) good to be here! All the best, Thorsten

Oh come on - this is fun and yes: Congratulations to All! Just imgaine: The 1001 th topic could be one adapted from the Arabian Nights ... Rock on, Thorsten

Hope is always good ... ... and yes the AA PF box is an option but it is also more challenging to get in into a train. As fas as I am concerned (I run several of my 6 (ok, plus handrails) wide trains with RCX PBricks on board, so they have to go upright into the train. That means you have to "lower" them somehow otherwise the height of the train when you put them upright on train base plate completely violates the scale. (If you want an idea here is an instruction for such a train). With the AA PF battery box it appears to be fairly easy to accomplish such "lowering". I guess this this here may illustrate what I am talking about. Best regards, Thorsten

Wow that price for the 1000mAh LiPo is very attractive! However, adding all the "extra electronics" required would be too much of a hassle: The LEGO LiPo has a nice case, the PWM controlled output, the fixed 7.4V source ouptput, the PF terminal, an on off push button, along with a rather wide input charging voltage range. But maybe others have more experience, maybe Mark could comment on this? Regards, Thorsten There were also some rumors in this forum that the LEGO LiPo may become cheaper after Xmas.

You could use the rechargeable battery (LiPo, #8878) and set the power output dial (PWM) to whatever power setting is appropriate for your layout, lets say 3 or 4 (corresponding to the setting you would on the PF receiver. That thing costs $50 though; on the other hand it is - well - rechargeable . Recharging works very well with any regulated 12V DC source for sure, so you would not need to buy the LEGO charger. Regards, Thorsten ... darn, you were three minutes in advance, sorry for the duplicate entry below!

Dear All, I completely agree on what Teddy wrote. (There are a couple of things I'd like to share in the near future, including some RF stuff as well, but that'll take some time. Mark will certainly ground me on my "ideas" - I am a chemist after all - but I will take that as motivation to carry on!) Talking about "time", Teddy, writing up the PhD thesis - for me that is some years ago, but man, it was good times, don't you agree? In any case, the Arduino platform could become a fantastic base to operate from - once a couple of people are willing to go with it. I happen to use the microchip PIC family but I don't mind switching at all! Regards, Thorsten (Toastie)

Thank you all very much for the flowers! Hannah Montana - hmm, we have about 10 DVD's in the house + it was the video camera of one of my daughters, so that uhum was part of the deal . But more importantly, Hannah apparently favors building across multiple themes (9V and PF) as much as I do, right? Well, I did not know before that she was into LEGO building! Best wishes, Thorsten

It is fairly easy to open the LiPo up. There are four plastic "plugs" hiding the 4 screws. I used a small sharp drill bit, turned it 2 times into the plastic plug and pulled it out. Then just loosen the srews and the top part with all the electronis and the battery comes off. There is hardly any damage you can do and can be put back togther rather nicely. I did it twice, because I thought Ihad killed the LiPo electonics when going above 20V. Regards, Thorsten

The 9V train motor is picking up track power through the wheel set, delivers that via a custom cable to the LiPo for "automatic" charging. The LiPo powers the entire train (PF receiver, lights), the PF receiver powers the modified 9V motor via custom cable two. Regards, Thorsten

Dear All, I have slightly modified the 7938 Passenger Train (see recent review here) into a “Best-of-Both-Worlds” 9V/PF train, featuring passenger compartment lighting, front/rear lights, and “auto-battery-recharge” function, holy moly The passenger compartment lighting is realized with both 9V (passenger car) and PF (control car) light elements, front/rear lights are PF. See my BrickShelf gallery for more photographs or the short clip below. Just briefly: The loco is equipped with the LEGO LiPo, which is automatically charged on stretches of powered track using a modified 9V motor. 9V … 18V / 1A DC track power will work well, as demonstrated here. On my track layout I am using a cheap solid state 12V/6A DC power supply originally sold for powering small 12V “car” appliances such as miniature-fridges. The LiPo is delivering power to the PF receiver and to all lights (front/rear/both passenger cabins) via the LiPo source/PWM output – I needed to save PF channels, since some of my switch points are PF remote controlled. So all lights are permanently lit when the train is turned on and running – guess this is also the case in reality, right? If free channels are no issue then the lights can be switched on/off using the second PF receiver output. This train runs on 12V, 9V, RC, and 4.5V track. On 12V (with appropriate power pickup element #1151-1) and 9V stretches the LiPo is recharged automatically and delivers power to the train at the same time. On RC and 4.5V tracks the train runs on the LiPo battery. 9V reversing loops are no problem when they are electrically isolated, for example with one RC track element. Most of the work was going into the car lighting design, particularly for “hiding” the cables in the passenger compartments, so that they hardly show. Also, I wanted the set-up to be modular to eventually add more “electrified” cars (comparable to this). The current design "funnels" the power through all cars finally into the control car. The 9V cables are much more flexible as compared to the PF cables and they make life much easier when it comes to running electricity through the entire train. This was recently discussed earlier in this thread. Power is delivered from the loco’s LiPo via PF to 9V conversion (PF rear lights) then entirely as 9V in the car(s) (9V cabin lights using 2 x #6035), and via 9V -> PF conversion in the control car (PF front and PF cabin lights). The electric light bricks #4767 or #4771 would have made construction even easier, but I simply don’t have any of those … Well, the train becomes rather expensive, but it is fun to drive it through the night … even the Brickster is aboard – in cuffs though and guarded, but that does not mean anything, does it! Regards, Thorsten EDIT: Oversized images (2362x1016) removed by moderator. Please review image posting guidelines before posting images this large. -TheBrickster Sorry, I am getting too old, I guess ...

Mark, you are absolutely the electronics guru here and I am just trying tings out and draw conclusions. That said: I could not get more than 600 mA charging current into the LiPo, even with an empty LiPo and a stalled XL motor on the PWM output set to full power. Did you manage to get more primary charging current flowing? My power supply delivers easily more than 5 A, but they simply do not go into the LiPo. Secondly: The LiPo charging circuit appears to be a smart text-book LiPo charging circuit, note the inductivity, diode, and capacitor combination along with the nifty IC (numbers printed on it don’t make any sense to me though) used in typical “step-down buck converters”. These do generally accept a wide range of input voltages and handle the "dowstream" LiPo charging current (on the "other side" of the IC) very smartly - no damage possible here. Thirdly: LEGO legals must be smart people. Now the LEGO engineers put a plain vanilla input jack into the LiPo - and dirt cheap wall warts come with matching output plugs that in addition can easily change polarity. A kid playing at home may actually figure out how to plug the plug of that wall wart into the LiPo. And now what? Boom? I don't think so. There must be several safety stages built into that LiPo. Otherwise they would have used a super-shaped fancy LEGO input jack, see the PowerFunctions terminal, don't you agree? Maybe you have some time to take a closer look on your LiPo or Philos photos (It would be extremly helpful to know what TLC put in there; at least $25 vs. $6. And maybe more people may be willing to pay $50, once the LiPo is considered to be indeed a very fancy PF device). I would really appreciate that. Best regards, Thorsten

Yes it does. I can report that a dirt-cheap "12V/6A DC supply" connected to a 9V track layout with multiple power feeds is reliably charging the LEGO LiPo on the fly - at least for 2 months now. It cranks out 13V on average and is connected to the LiPo via a bridge rectifier resulting in about 11.6 V. There will be a discussion on this issue in the next RailBricks journal/blog (regarding the long term performance of the LiPo with charging voltages exceeding the 10V TLC - hmm - "recommendation"). Regards, Thorsten

Hi Burf, I guess you have seen it already, just in case not (saw your comment on Xander's blog): Xander has released a first version of the HTIRLink for RCX/NXT communication: RobotC 3rd Party drivers. Works perfectly well for RCX/NXT message exchange - for me this would be the only one thing I am looking for - I don't want to treat the RCX as dumb motor driver. You can do standard messaging (1 byte payload, compatible to PBricks including Scout, Spybot, and all RCX versions running standard Lego firmware + RobotC firmware) or extended 2-byte payload messaging (RobotC only). There is currently an issue with the latest RobotC RCX firmware not correctly doing 6 byte messaging, but that might be fixed "soon". Direct motor control does not (yet), but this is due to the RobotC developers screwing up the RCX firmware - it does not even work anymore within their own IDE (direct motor control) . Rumors have it that there is going to be a final end-of-life firmware version along with a specifically taylored RobotC version. Would be brilliant - nothing compares to the performance of RCX programs written in RobotC. Rock on, Thorsten

I guess they are shooting for October 2010 - I submitted an article on the PF LiPo rechargeable performance for train operation to RB and Elroy positively replied and said he was "hoping" for the October release date. Regards, Thorsten