Toastie

This is so unbelievably cool! Wow. Oh yes, the "ceremonial head of the state" has exactly the right-sized ship Thank you so much for sharing! I'd love to put some of these randomly in my LEGO "room". Really nice. All the best, Thorsten

It really is. Welcome to Eurobricks! Good to know that you will be around. Here is to simply feeling good All the best, Thorsten

Well, I am not that patient Sooo many times, TLG released a piece that I desperately wanted "back then". "Then" = about 1996, when I got back into the hobby, which started in 1965, when I was 3 years old. I was taking a "pause" between about 1978 and 1996, just to find out what happened in between ;) And, since about 2010 I just cut and paste "remodel", to get what I need. Mainly small pieces that is, 9V track as well (TLG simply abandoned ages ago ^^) - and panels missing holes for LEDs and this and that. Only after trying hard. And with much love to do it right. And then ... TLG releases that part I needed so much - back then. So no, I don't replace desperately needed parts (at the time), I make them. Best, Thorsten

Hi Nat, thank you very much! Did not expect anyone to find this post here on the forbidden territory! I am using these posts mostly for documentation purposes - should EB go down the drain, my documentation goes as well ^^ but hey, it is a hobby. I promise: Should I ever I get the programming of the Circuit Cube going (aka use the LEGO PUp remote buttons to click speed up and down) I shall take another video. Lighting will remain crappy - I have no real video equipment, only this, wait, what does is say: Sony alpha 6000 photo camera. It constantly outsmarts me regarding its gazillion settings. So I just go to autopilot. Let this thing focus, what it wants to focus on . Oh, I really do fully agree with your quality and building experience judgement! Did also some (very small) changes here and there, mostly because this station is in operation. These metal gold pieces ... man, not one or ten, but sooo many. Thanks again, all the best, Thorsten

Thank you very much @Feuer Zug I remember that you actually took the Schwebebahn - I guess it was when I wrote somewhere here about Wuppertal ;) The 12V rails - other than giving strong support and grip, also lead to rather low rolling resistance. That is why the tiny Tenka Cubic motor sitting next to the wheels has no problem at all moving the quite heavy train hanging down from the monorail. And thank you very much, Dave! Oh yes, the gears - all these Technic sets I took apart when wandering into free-style studded train world about 15 years ago had so many of them. Now a few found a home - no tough forces, just free spinning. I shall operate a second Circuit Cube with the Cubic motors and attach one to this gear "rack". Well, it is a rack of gear, I guess. Programming wise (should I ever understand the really cool code @Asper wrote for the Circuit Cube ...) I plan on: You need to switch on the rack of gears first, before the V10 motor in the train can be fired up, which is needed to be able to let the train move. All the best, Thorsten

Dear All, one of my favorite themes (in many regards) is Steam Punk. Steam-propelled futuristic technology, in shiny brass, gold and silver, leaning towards Jules Verne's "fiction". Not the dirty dark, maybe original punk. I am not sure whether the shiny stuff is Steam Punk at all; this genre has taken on so many forms and interpretations … Whatever, it may well be that my affection for Steam Punk comes from my admiration for Thermodynamics – in chemistry of course So guess what happened, when in late 2023 I became aware of the #85007 set “Steam Punk Railway Station” from Pantasy/China? Yes, I got sort of positively nervous. It quickly turned out that the title of the set is misleading: They use the railway station shown on the front of the box and the two instruction booklets simply to hide the Steam Punk locomotive along with one carriage. I almost freaked out, when I saw the train. And finally I passed out when I saw that the train is of the suspended monorail type … for more than two decades I was dreaming of a suspended LEGO monorail train – read more about that here: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/150261-wip-lego-monorails-custom-rail-systems-crs/&do=findComment&comment=3680627. With respect to the Dark Side: Pantasy is using GoBricks pieces (as per advertisement on the box) – and these have reached the 100%(+) LEGO quality level, no doubts. OK, as expected, has been discussed on EB. Very small injections points (barely visible), perfect colors, perfect clutch, same “softness” as the latest LEGO bricks and plates have, metal gold and silver pieces all over the place. On their website (https://pantasy.com/blogs/news), they talk about their approach, which is a quite nice read. Building that set was pure and utter fun. It was as if the Pantasy management said to the designers: “Folks, go Steam Punk nuts – no restrictions, just freak out and have fun. When you need more pieces to make it even more glitzy and punky – just do it”. 2723 pieces, BlueBrixx asks for €140, you can get it much cheaper – it is currently almost everywhere sold out, though. No surprise. This set is a blast in every regard. Motorization of the engine From day one, I wanted to motorize this model – it appears to be designed for display only. There are a couple of challenges to do so, though: For one, any propulsion system needs to turn the wheels on any of the four roller brackets the locomotive and the carriage are attached to. Second, available space is rather restricted, as the locomotive is essentially one “solid” piece of snotted ABS – except for the magic glass boiler: (At first, I thought: OK, TLG's well known color vomit coding here as well – but then was told that I was totally wrong: It is right here, where the Steam Punk magic generates the power to propel the locomotive: Inside the glass boiler. Attached is a 10 cylinder V-motor connected to the 8 blade pearl gold propeller on its back side – which actually propels the train. Well, there is no color coding at all in the entire set, except for the boiler brackets. So yes, these colors very well may represent the Steam Punk magic). Third, the elevated track Pantasy used is of the roller coaster type, JK Brickworks also employed for their suspended train (https://jkbrickworks.com/suspended-train/) and thus may be no good choice for motorizing a 700+ g heavy Steam Punk train; this will certainly will fail in roller coaster curves. The original (four individual) roller brackets look like this (Stud.io render) In conclusion, there wasn’t any space other than within the boiler for motorization, but I had no clue how to get any gears, axles, rubber bands to the wheels of the roller brackets. A medium PUp motor may fit in there, but the next challenge would have been PUp cabling and powering. The carriage also provides some space, but no LEGO hub fits in there, even after hefty modding, at least in the lower league I do my builds. But then I remembered a post not mentioning the elephant in the room, a thread @zephyr1934 created back in early 2021 on EB (https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/184036-a-review-of-circuit-cubes-without-mentioning-the-elephant-in-the-room/), which deals – in addition to the Elephant in the room – also with the Circuit Cube BLE hub and Cubic motors from Tenka (https://circuitcubes.com/). Furthermore, @Asper reported on using these (@HoMa called “critters” ) for train automation of his four wide trains, whereas @Ts__ showed a prototype truck for train displays. I looked at the dimensions of the motors (the Cubic motor is 2x 2x4) and the hub (2x 4x4) – and … BOOM – brain currents got ballistic. Furthermore, the wiring between the motors and hub is done with Dupont connectors. Tenka uses 2-wire sockets receiving the corresponding two pins of the hub outputs and motor inputs; however, these sockets are too large to fit through a Technic hole. One can easily make single socket wire ends, which then do fit very well. After some tinkering, MLCad suggested: It may work. My plan was to a) motorize the 10 cylinder V-engine from “within” the boiler section, b) propel the entire train with a motor mounted on a 2-axle monorail bracket assembly, c) route the cables somehow to the hub, which is to be mounted in the carriage in a way that one can easily turn it on and off – and d) easily recharge the hub … so far, a) to c) have been accomplished; d) is on the to-do list, see below. Here we go: New roller brackets for the locomotive and the carriage, and the entire driving motor assembly (render and photographs below). I used two stacked 9V train wheels arranged in the same direction – this way, the (custom) rubber band on the driving wheel has good grip. The rubber O-ring on the powered axle for enhanced traction is one I found in the lab – the white LEGO O-rings do not provide sufficient grip, even on the 12V rails “with teeth”. Here is what I use as my monorail track (no Dark Side elements to be seen, all pure LEGO): https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/150261-wip-lego-monorails-custom-rail-systems-crs/&do=findComment&comment=3680627. Photograph below: One Tenka Cubic motor “inside” the boiler, with an attached axle extending all the way to the front, rubber band connecting to the 10-cylinder motor driving axle. (Custom) cables attaching to the motor are routed through Technic holes in the boiler bracket and locomotive frame. They extend to the Circuit Cube hub mounted in the carriage. Pantasy designed the boiler essentially as an all-four-side-studded central structural element. All other parts attach to this element and, at the same time, the “side panels” secure the whole model from falling apart when lifted through snotted connections. You can remove the two large “side panels” - and are left with this when they are put together (and yes, good clutch power really shows): This is the entire engine … ... and the lightly modded carriage: The photographs below are showing the Pantasy railway station, designed as a terminal station. Some folks were complaining that the four platforms (labeled 2 to 5, prints of course - there are no stickers in this set) don’t make any sense, as the monorail runs perpendicularly to the apparent platforms. Of course this makes sense : Below are four tracks terminating at the station: (track 2) 4.5V track – coal delivery for steam locomotives on track 4 and maintenance; (track 3) 9V track – passenger and freight trains; (track 4) 9V track – real steam passenger trains; (track 5) 9V track – freight trains. The monorail is of course floating above all that; when the suspended train is leaving, all these tracks can be serviced ... duh. I thought this is the whole point … The Pantasy Railway Station … Station “unfolded”: Have a look inside: Ticket counter (right) and barista coffee stand (left) … when you push the 3-elements revolving door, the golden (Technic break) disc and the clock hands are spinning as well – this calls for additional motorization … Train 85-007 ready to depart … no surprise, should James Bond be on board … After arrival at the other terminal station: This is the Circuit Cube doing all the work; charging is from the top (see below, though), the on/off switch is easily accessible from the back of the car. To-Do list: I need to find a way of controlling the Circuit Cube hub with an ESP32. This has been demonstrated by @Asper; he has provided his code on GitHub (https://github.com/asperka/LEGORemoteCircuitCube). Steffen used a tiny M5Stack Atom and used the Visual Studio Code IDE with the Platform.IO extension described by him here: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/184878-controlling-two-circuit-cubes-with-one-lego-remote/. I’d like to use the same program I wrote for my Crocodile; this was done using the Arduino IDE and Cornelius Munz’ Legoino code (https://github.com/corneliusmunz/legoino). The reason is simple: It works with 4 optical sensors I want to use again for stopping at both terminals and acceleration/deceleration phases. We will see how that shakes out For charging the Circuit Cube, I need to make a custom USB cable (space … need a flat top USB-B plug). Make a longer video showing how powerful the Circuit Cube stuff really is. It is simply amazing. Video wise, I only have this less than 30 sec clip: First, the 10-cylinder engine fires up, then the train departs, totally loses focus, stops somewhere , V10 stops as well as it needs to kick into reverse (yes, the motor goes into reverse, this is a Steam Punk motor, no gear box here – you can see that by carefully looking at the pistons, they go down and up upon return, not up and down when it started), train reappears, totally out of focus, stops and gains focus, motor shuts down. I suck at taking videos, I know. https://bricksafe.com/files/Toastie/pantasy-steam-punk-railway-/Pantasy Steam Punk Train.mp4 (Updates will go into this thread) All the best, Thorsten

Thank you very much! Me too - but they are from the Mindstorms Mars Mission set. I really had a hard time figuring out what to do with theses when not on Mars ... these trans greenish 2x2 round bricks are from Yoda's light saber Best, Thorsten

Masao Hidaka-type LEGO elevated track for suspended monorail trains Dear all, for many years, actually more than two decades ;) I dreamt of a LEGO monorail for operation of suspended trains – I now have one: Why such weird dreams? Because since 2001, I am working at the University of Wuppertal in Germany and the city of Wuppertal has a public transportation system called “Schwebebahn”, I believe some people here on EB have heard of or actually rode it. It is a monorail operating suspended trains – and a very efficient means of moving thousands of people every day from one location of the city to another. Along the river “Wupper” that is, which in thousands of years has created a valley (“Wuppertal” translates to “valley of the Wupper”). The development of this mass transportation system began as early as 1887, and it came into operation in 1901 – you can read all the details here (press “EN” on the top right of the webpage) https://schwebebahn.de/en/geschichte-der-schwebebahn. Since then, it remains in operation. The Schwebebahn survived WW1 and WW2 (although it was very badly damaged in WW2). Today, it is by far the most efficient way of traveling the 13 km long stretch of the city, mostly over the river Wupper. In other words: I am deeply in love with that ingenious system. Every day when I am biking 15 km to work (we live close to Wuppertal in a town called Gruiten, which is located about 500 m away from the Neanderthal, history hits hard there), I do cross the “Sonnborner Kreuz”, a fairly large Autobahn intersection, over a rather narrow bridge and then descend into Wuppertal Sonnborn, where the Schwebebahn track is directly above me (or I am directly underneath it ;) Upon passing the Schwebebahn station “Zoo/Stadion” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wuppertal_Schwebebahn#/media/File:Wuppertaler_Schwebebahn_Karte.png) I leave the river/valley and climb up to the “Schwarzer Weg” (which provides a very nice view on part of the city) and then finally turn towards the university. What I experience on this journey: The Schwebebahn trains – nicely swinging in curved sections of the track; the elevated track itself with the beautiful supports and posts; the wonderfully restored stations; and I am always looking at more than 100 years of operation. Every day, I am in awe – it simply does not stop … Then came the LEGO IDEAS Schwebebahn entry in December 2021 (https://ideas.lego.com/projects/f013b46e-db4d-48f6-bf9f-e8e52ffbd747) – and in no time reached 10k votes. I had a look (of course) and thought: TLG will never approve this entry. Why not? Too big, too many pieces, too nice to be true – and not enough people crazy enough to shell out 300++ Euros. Never. Guess what. It was never happening. Well, two independent startups took on the idea of providing a (of course non-LEGO) brick-built Schwebebahn – and that is a total blast [1) https://wprtal.de/products/klemmbaustein-schwebebahn-gtw72; 2) https://stone-heap.com/b2b-seite-wuppertal/]. EDIT: There is a third one: 3) https://schwuppidieschwebebahn.de/shop/vorbestellung-klemmbausteinset-schwebebahn-schwuppi/ But with these models – something was missing (for me) – I want them to move. The Schwebebahn is all about efficiently moving people, and I had a hard time in figuring out a way to motorize these two nice renditions. And then, in late 2023, German Youtuber “Steinküste” presented the “Pantasy Steam Punk Railway Station”. Many others have reviewed that set as well, but I saw it for the first time on his channel. This is what Pantasy calls their set: A railway station. Literally “on the side”, even not shown on the front of the box, you also get a suspended monorail Steam Punk train, with one carriage … there simply was a nuclear type of eruption in my head … 1887 – steam – punk – suspended – train – running – on – a – monorail. Believe me, a lot of gears began to turn up there … I tore my X-Mas wish list (yes, old school here) to shreds and just wrote the order number from BlueBrixx (they do sell Pantasy sets in Germany – no hassle with waiting for the order and custom issues, all taken care of by BB) on it. Santa, aka my wife, fulfilled my wish … BUT: The train and railway station are not the point in this post: This needs to go to the Community Forum as the set is from a Dark Side Company (which is utter nonsense – but read on over there). Here, in the LEGO monorail thread, I want to just briefly present my monorail track approach (for a rather heavy suspended train, which weighs a bit over 700 g of ABS). The track design is heavily (I’d say 95%) borrowing from @Masao Hidaka’s design, also many others are using. In contrast to his flat top monorails, I am using the (outer) 12V train track rails with the little teeth on the surface for better grip. These rails provide a lot of additional stability. For the curved sections I only need two layers of brick (either all 1x2’s or, as in the photographs below, 1x2’s on top of 2x2’s just because I had not enough 1x2’s) and one layer of 1x2 plates at the bottom. The top layer is secured by the 12V rails. Using this approach, the monorail track needs posts/supports about every two 12V rail sections only. I am dealing with severe space related constraints in my attic – it simply is occupied by ABS all over the place, including vintage computer cases (with the original electronics inside of course ;) – and, well, my office stuff is also in there. The cool thing of elevated track is – it is elevated. No problems when crossing other tracks, “open (ABS) water” or whatever – just the pedestals need to find some small, but free area on the ground. That was exactly what gave the “go” more than a hundred years ago in Wuppertal: A valley is a valley and when the area is stuffed with streets, buildings, factories etc.: Just open up a new level. And even better, the Schwebebahn did not need any supports interfering with car/street traffic: They secured most of the supports on the riverbanks of the Wupper. On my layout, I just built a small section of elevated track, about 2 m (6 feet) long and U-shaped, see first photograph. There is absolutely no problem in mixing straight sections with right and left turns – but not in my room. I believe switch points are really difficult to realize using this approach, though. Regarding the supports: These are essentially made from two Technic 1x10 bricks directly integrated into the 1x2/2x2 structure along with some Technic lift arms to fasten them to the posts, see render below. I made the posts from beech wood – as did Ole K. Christiansen when he made his toys back in the 1930s – also the pedestals. The reasons are simple: a) I had not enough LEGO pieces, b) two posts are mounted to a “water” surface and that was too much of a challenge for me, c) when the founder of LEGO used beech wood back then, doesn’t this count as a totally purist approach? I used 15x15 mm2 beech wood strips, almost having the width/depth of a 2x2 brick (16x16 mm2). After cutting them to length, I drilled the holes for two Technic axles; a sharp 5.0 mm metal drill on a drill press does the job quite well. The posts/pedestals are then sanded and coated twice with black acrylic paint. The 16L long straight section, combining the two “90° almost R40” curves, features some gears – Steam Punk is about gears … you turn one, they all move. This needs motorization, of course … The light gray axles in the render above are used to fasten the support to the wooden post. The axles are black on the real posts. I made a second “train station” as well – on a logarithmic scale from 1 to 10 though, this one doesn’t even show up, when compared to the Pantasy railway station (which is at 10). Guess this is it. I will have posted more photographs showing the Pantasy railway station and the motorized train in the Community Forum: So far, I took a very brief 30 sec video with the suspended train departing from and arriving at the station. Problem is that I can’t film and operate the cell phone at the same time – the train is propelled by a Tenka Circuit Cube/Cubic motor combo. As with the LEGO hubs, it is also controlled by a smart device. This needs to be changed of course … Best regards, Thorsten

Holy Smokes, this is insane(ly nice) - and yes, as others said: As if one would ride this beauty. I like the complexity of the entire structure!!! Thanks a lot for sharing Best, Thorsten

Bad times - but the price increase is reported in Euros ... Best, Thorsten

of 35%? Difficult: https://www.euromonitor.com/article/global-inflation-tracker-q3-2023-inflation-eases-while-global-divergence-accelerates Maybe some new technology is built into the set - a hydrogen propelled pull-back motor? Who knows . Best

THIS IS THE BEST I HAVE EVER SEEN ... Oh my - it does not get any better. This is my everyday life at work - and you nailed it. Each display is 100% spot on - I do not like OChem at all (I am a PChemist so that explains it ;) but wow do I like the rotary evaporator, and the furnace, and the diffractometer, and the workbench - everything!!! But what really tops it all is that periodic table ... this is completely blowing me off. Wow. Thank you so much for sharing! All the best, Thorsten

And for you, if I am correct? I mean, a thing that apparently can deliver 100W total, as per the public BW website, operated in a public space, with a total rest mass of 6 kg, surely needs some attention of the operator - everywhere. As in: Choose remote areas for light speed experiments ... otherwise, driving a Tesla vehicle through a public space with toddlers present may as well get Tesla in trouble, should the electric brain in there short circuits. Forget it, I am just kidding That bug is really nasty! Best, Thorsten

Very good advice - just downloaded VSC. Why re-inventing the C-wheel, when Steffen had done so years ago ...

OK, that is my understanding as well. Glad you straightened that out. And I am sorry, I got a bit overexcited: Werner just replied via PM: He never used CC's. He used the M5 and programmed it with the Arduino IDE (which is good to know!) for PUp hubs. So chances are, the CC's use different directives - that is why I'd like to know their structure. As said, I have Steffen's code but as much as I love to "read" real hardcore C code, I simply remain in awe - with zero understanding. I guess this is the encoding of the motor power command Steffen created: std::string CircuitCube::BuildVelocityCommand (int channel, int velocity) { std::stringstream cmd; cmd << ((velocity < 0) ? "-" : "+") << std::setfill('0') << std::setw(3) << ((velocity==0) ? 0 : (55 + abs(velocity))) << char('a' + channel); return cmd.str (); } I consider this code as "beautiful" but have no clue what it does; line 1 - std::string - and boom Yeah, have to do homework, I know. Once again: Thanks a lot! Best regards, Thorsten

Thank you, Thomas! Sorry, my bad. What I want to do is controlling the CC hub with Legoino running on an ESP32 Dev kit board (and not the M5 Atom - I plan to hook-up sensors and 4 input keys to the ESP, don't know whether this works with the M5). I am rather familiar with the Arduino IDE, it would be great when I can use these components for this project as well. My question was: The directives built into the firmware of the CC hub have certainly a different syntax as the directives for the LEGO hubs (LWP3.0), or are they identical? Legoino sends out LWP3.0 commands. I just found out that Werner (@Lok24) used the Atom M5 with Legoino back in 2020. Yes, I did find the service IDs etc. in Steffen's code. But when CC's can be controlled with Legoino, then the control directives appear to identical (motor_power etc.)? Did you use the Arduino IDE to do your programming? It does have the M5 Atom board installed. Best, Thorsten

These are (thin) baseplate, right? I recently purchased a package which looks quite similar at "Kaufland" here in Germany, 6 for €7,99 (2x blue, 2x dark grey, 1x green, 1x white). The material is ABS (injection molded), as you can tell from the (barely visible) several injection points. Clutch power is higher on these than that on TLGs polystyrene (high impact type) plates, which suites me very much, but maybe not children of younger age. Oh yes, nice, the second link is actually pointing to plate high 32x32 plates! Best, Thorsten

Hmm, but in this case the Eldorado approach is not resembling a "baseplate" anymore, is it? Well, I guess this is i) a how to mold a plate high "baseplate" so it does not warp, and way more importantly, ii) a how to make it as cheap, as a baseplate manufacturing currently is question. ii) is simply not possible, but how much to charge then? When the current price tag is around $8 upwards? With decades passing by, molding plate high ABS baseplates (PHBP's) has become (profitable wise) possible, and some are working on it. When TLG and others can manufacture a 16x16 plate, they can make 32x32 plates as well, the blueprint (structure) is the 16x16 plate. Let's see, who makes the "breakthrough" first. I believe it will be somewhere in the tomorrow land. And let's see, what they will charge. Best, Thorsten

And so it is, as TLG has decided to do, long ago: Baseplates are thinner than plates. And yes, it is frustrating. Best, Thorsten

// Aluminum hat on: Seems to be "the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything" related. May take some time to solve it, though. On the other hand, time machines suggest y = near forty-two. Wolfram Alpha comes up with a bit of lengthy equation when asked to solve for y (or x) that (roughly) seem to point in the same direction. And that may also be the reason why you can't delete it. OK, Deep Thought, aka @Jim, most probably can. // Aluminum hat off. Thorsten. P.S.: "The Uploader" - is that Matrix related?

Hmm. What are the "other plates" you have? Are these the small ones, as 2x4, 4x8 (etc.) plates? Baseplates, from LEGO or other brands, are per design thinner than plates. To this date, that is. Best, Thorsten

Oh yes, I tried to say this ^^ - avoid plugs and sockets just "bolt" the wires on (OK, solder them) - wires don't melt. Plastic around bad connections may. Best, Thorsten

Sorry folks for bumping this topic (again ^^) but hey - these Circuit Cubes are so totally cool! Now, before Christmas, I was asking myself: Where would I need these absolutely incredible devices, there must be something, what could it be ... then Santa gave me a mind-boggling Steam Punk train station, which included - on the side - a monorail suspended Steam Punk train ... which simply blew me off my feet - in other words: After Christmas I knew >exactly< what to do with them. The original set is a true display model, but that does not mean it can't be brought to non-display operation ;) we'll see ... the order from Tenka is on its way and according to tracking, the package is in customs. Which may translate to: Travel to Wuppertal Vohwinkel, have a large cup of strong coffee in the backpack, put on a law-abiding face when entering the Holy Grail, and then wait. Don't push them, wait. Eventually pay the taxes, receive the packages and get the hell outta there . What I would like to do is controlling the CC BLE "hub" with an ESP32 Dev kit board. Why? Because with such a board, I have already tested sensors and working code, that allow me to run a train back and forth on a stretch of track - I did that for my Crocodile back then and now I would like to do that for the suspended train as well. @Asper, @Ts__ - I need your advice though ... Steffen and Thomas: You have worked with the CC's. Both of you used the M5Stack Atom light as BLE server, is that correct? And Steffen developed the GitHub hosted code for doing that: CC BLE hub and LEGO PUp remote sign up to the server, the remote is used for controlling one or two hubs in either tank (power on/off) or train (power=power+/-10) mode, correct? (Yes, I downloaded your code Steffen, and I believe in having understood the main loop code - but everything that has a "*" or "::" or "->" in the code leaves me clueless - my amateur programming skills are BASIC. And a little VB6 ...) So what I have is: The ESP32 Dev kit board, the Arduino IDE with Cornelius' Legoino installed (a bit tailored towards my needs), and my C++ code written as if it were BASIC of course. Steffen, you said somewhere that the developers of the CC stuff provided you access to the control codes (motor power etc.) - is there a chance that you could send me these documents? I have >no< clue at all, whether I can get that going within Legoino, I guess this will miserably fail. If not, I shall also contact the CC developers, but maybe they get nervous when another user is asking for CC core matters ... If you guys see fit, please PM me, I don't want to hijack this thread for personal purposes! Best regards, Thorsten

oh yes ... I guess the connection (plug/socket) will get rather hot at some amperage, as this is the place of highest resistance in the circuit if not done with care or when there is some oxidation (P=IxR^2). 9V train switches are good examples when you let some serious long hauls with proper multiple 9V train motor configurations thunder across the track. The juice is usually flowing nicely within the track sections (maybe even equipped with multiple power feeds) but also the poor lil' mechanism inside a switch has to swallow all the electrons and spit them out at the other end ... On another thought: I believe there is also quite some data traffic between PU hub and motor in case the latter is not of the type "dumb" (dumb as in train motor and other non-tacho motors), isn't there? That may be affected also, when the cables become too long and not nicely done, no? Best, Thorsten

Well - when you light something up, even with today's low power/high efficiency LED's, considerable currents need to flow. Even with a close to 100% electrical current to light emission conversion (today, up to 80% electrical to light conversion efficiencies are reached, depending on wavelength and brightness), you need to flow electrons through the device to generate the corresponding amount of photons. As you want to light up your builds, quite an amount of photons is necessary to do so. And the electrical current through the light generating device is driven by the voltage difference in/out; and yes, I know, you and many - if not all others - know all that. Watch batteries never really need replacement or charging, when the display is of the LCD type and you don't use the light-up button for the display that often. Doing so is the main drain on watch batteries, not the display nor the electronics inside. Plus, the amount of light you need to discern the display content when there is no or not enough ambient light, is much lower than for lighting up a LEGO model. The other thing is that batteries of any type may (but don't have to) start to "leak" at any time, particularly when discharged to rather low levels, as gases produced in the battery under such unfavorable conditions tend to stress the sealed sections to an extent that they may produce micro leaks. I would thus not use batteries as power supply for such long term installations but rather (tiny) wires that you tie to one (or more) external small power supply/ies (wall warts or the like), if carefully planned and appropriately equipped with resistors in each supply line to the lighting elements. These should be organized in parallel to the power supply/ies outlet/s. Best, Thorsten