Toastie

I don't get, how these two parameters could ever make a PID controlled loop working. Really? It runs a PID loop by just supplying these two parameters? Then I believe it is not PID, but rather generic PI at most? Or just plain P? Which commands in the LWP protocol are you referring to? Best, Thorsten

Very cool project! Have you ever used (Cornelius Munz') Legoino (https://github.com/corneliusmunz/legoino) running on an ESP32 Dev kit board (or any other board that features a ESP32 WROOM module; these cost about $10)? All you need to do, is plugging a USB cable into your computer and the board. The Arduino IDE can be used for programming. Which means that you have all the bells and whistles of C++ including all the functions you want to use (and many, many more). You can sign up about 10 hubs of any PUp kind (2 port (City), 4 port (Technic) hubs as well as multiple PUp remotes to the ESP board. With activated notifications, each hub reports back to the control program changes of built-in or attached sensors (e.g. rotation readings from the tacho motors, key status of the remote), as you can do in PyBricks. And you can always poll such data at any time. The difference, though, is that the ESP controls everything the hubs are supposed to do, i.e., you have that control program in one place. Coordination of the hubs then works through the ESP board. The other nice thing is that you easily can hook up OLED displays via the I2C bus (using only 4 wires, including VCC and GND) as well to show some critical values. Or graphics. I mostly use the remote to set up the whole "experiment" (going to the initial positions etc.). One example is here: https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/190786-br89-90-bb-10-tlg-and-turntable-99-tlg/&do=findComment&comment=3531548; there are 2 City hubs (turn table and BR89) and one PUp remote for manually getting the "system" into initial position (which I automated as well, but during development it was very helpful!) I just finished another rather crazy project, including a Technic hub, PUp remote and - well 4.5V Technic Control stuff from back then - it all works. And once your program is running fine on the ESP, just unplug it from the computer, plug in any 5V USB power supply, and it will do what you designed it for - no smart device required at all. On my train layout, I am currently signing up 8 PUp City hubs - the ESP holds them together https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/188584-mulpi-a-multiple-lego-remote-protocol-interface/ All the best, Thorsten

So do I! There are some Gurus in my group though, who seem to know what they are doing As I am the oldest guy in that crowd, I usually take the freedom to only look at the final results ... maybe a nice drawing or picture. Yes, I can clearly see the reselling aspect - I don't do that, so I wrote my reply from that perspective. Have a good day as well! Best, Thorsten

Here: https://www.bluebrixx.com/de/windows-and-doors/606814/BPP6556-tan-TRAIN-WINDOW-FRAME-1X4X3-X-25-BB-Part-Packs Provided the color is "tan". 25 pieces for €4,95. You need the glass windows as well ... but ones browsing in dark side, you'll find them. Best, Thorsten

Well, some or many apparently do - I don't - and never did. I buy what I desire - provided I can (= want to) afford it. Be it a set for a piece or two (max. €10 ;) - just for the fun of it - or a set for the set. However, I simply lost interest in "modern" LEGO sets. For one, there are alternatives to the price heroes. Second, I do not look for the most shiny = no scratches 40x40 super gloss tiles packed in extra soft plastic bags, nor do I care about color nuances. All I want is playing with bricks and pieces, including electronic stuff. I don't mind studs where there should be no studs, nor do I care about odd shapes - as long as I can imagine, what these shapes are meant to represent. Reverted to "vintage" LEGO sets (that was the time when there were hardly any alternatives) - of the kind that claim you build a washing machine (#1092/#1090) and man, I can tell you, you need to turn on imagination in high gear to dream up a washing machine from that pile of bricks. On another thought: We use AI more or less frequently in our research. I believe, coming up with a "score" for the "value" (both in quotation marks, as there are many parameters (apparently) determining these two numbers) - are individually biased. In other words, a formula, be it linear or non-linear but integrable, will hardly work. An AI approach, individually tailored, may be better suited than a universal formula. Oh well, or maybe not. As said, I buy what I like to have. Best wishes, Thorsten

I know :) You wrote it - and that is so unbelievably cool! Well, my youth never ran into the C64, it was Sinclair world ... But I found one C64 with floppy drive in the storage room of my resarch group. I joined the University of Wuppertal in 2001 as chair of the Physical Chemistry group. In 2010, we merged PChem and Theoretical Chem (TC) into PTC. My predecessors joined in 1974 - 1980; and since then, it appears as if - no - things have piled up . My colleagues are all "gone" - either left Earth (2) or are retired (2). And new colleagues (not me) hired recently don't ... want to deal with 1980s - 1990s crap. That is why there are still (1) C64, (3) Ataries (1024) with three 30MByte HD drives, and "my" IBM XT ... and much more in electronic stuff, even Germanium transistors (the "AC" series and the like :D). So, I guess - I should make a ZX Spectrum fit for operating interface A - all it needs is a cable . And yes, the connectors to the backplane of the Speccy are in the basement as well. It was a small world, back then, in the 1980s. OK, I need to make a program as well. But my love for the Speccy never faded, so it will be fun to do so. How cool is that!!! Hope he replies! And - one day - there may be scans of these booklets on the Internet Archive. All the best, Thorsten

Market analyses, testing balloons (maybe several of those were seen across the US lately? Well, some were simply shot down ). Clearly ahead: $999 and then: Braking thousenic barrier, wait for the boom! Best and Happy Easter time, Thorsten

I don't want to sound smart at all here, but the difference between speed setting and power setting is: Power = apply the 0 to 100 steps of PWM (0 = off, 100 = on, in between = PWM) Speed = Ask for maintaining a certain speed, 0 to 100, which is accomplished by applying more/less power, when speed you asked for is lower/higher than what you asked for. The speed feature needs a tacho motor to function, that is a motor which has a rotation sensor, so that the hub can check for actual rpms and the correct for reaching asked-for rpms by adjusting power (= changing the PWM ratio) applied to the motor. Make sure that you have a tacho motor to set speed. The train motor cannot do that, it just accepts power settings and does what a motor without brain (=tacho) can do. All the best, Thorsten

Well, I don't think so. They are afraid of so many things, because so many people have sued them. UV lights = bad. Directly look into them and mayhem breaks loose. H2O2 = incomprehensibly bad: A dangerous chemical. OK, some use it to lighten up their hair color without knowing - but, no way. So bad x incomprehensibly bad = out of space bad. But: You can do that on your own, if you want to, as you did. Best wishes, Thorsten

Nothing more to add ... ... so incredibly nice - and very well done. It may be just me, but I like the calmness - in that harsh and barren environment. As if they live in symbiosis ... Beautiful. Best wishes, Thorsten

I am always confused with AliExpress: €23 for the entire set??? + S&H, sure, but is that it? Best, Thorsten

You know why, you know exactly why: Because it is what you want to do. Because you enjoy what you do. The whole building process - and "I'll show them what I can accomplish - and TLG cannot" - or wants not; honestly, I believe in the former. I am almost certain that no designer far up North in Billund is going through a sleepless night because she or he wants to make a MOC >perfect< - as you did! 43 seconds of pure fun translate to eternity when you stop thinking about the 44th and further seconds! The designers up North have sleepless nights because a marketing special expert with a degree in "How to get the highest profit out of LEGO" is telling them: "Yeah folks nice models here, honestly, really cool, I am proud of you - but - sorry - you have any friggin' idea how expensive they would be? You want to hold your jobs, right? So get the hell more colors in there, we need to drain a bit of surplus - and a good fraction of the people we sell to are too stupid to build a non-color-coded model. And about 50% of the parts are just redundant. Holy moly, how often do I have to teach you guys that very basic principle of TLG design?" And you did a non-color-coded MOC, you reinforced it, you made it work. 43 seconds is a long, a very long time, time is absolutely relative! So the others had some fun - sarcasm is a really easy game to play, as well mockery, making fun of others, and and and. Much harder than: "Hey, you take it seriously, huh? I wish I had such dreams >and< the drive to make them come true still in me. Any idea what went wrong? I won't be of any help, but - yeah, I wish I had such nights." Whenever frustration with a MOC, idea, or program takes over (e.g., this super simple, totally stupid C++ program I am "working" on now, as of 5 minutes ago, when I saw your post) just does not work!!! Man. And I know it is me alone, as I am too stupid to comprehend C++. And me wants that program to work! Would my wife be up here, she'd ask: Who needs it? I'd answer: I do. Nobody else? No. Well, then it's all your fault. It helps to relax, as it is absolutely true), watching National Lampoons Christmas Vacation regardless of season is also a good cure. Sparky gets the "job" done. In every aspect. They even have to turn on Auxiliary Nuclear upon his success ... And be rest assured: You are not alone: I’m just a chubby 61 years old man with misplaced brand loyalty, pathetically searching for a shitty line of code to make this toy turn around 180 degrees. That toy is a LEGO Dacta set from 1986. And: There is no failure. There is learning. No failure, no "good" learning. Here is to learning And you know what? Your snowmobile made out of LEGO pieces is everything else, but a toy. It can be used as a toy, or regarded as a toy, but it is a dream that became reality in sleepless nights. No other way, I guess - sleepful nights tend to keep dreams remaining dreams. And may lead to sarcasm. Here is to your 43s accomplishment and I bet it was super cool And here is to having sleepless nights at age 50++ because of beers, adrenaline, passion, and will BTW: You should consider writing short stories or even novels, do it. I totally enjoyed every word of your story, from the beginning to the almost very end; this needs a little redaction, I believe: I'd rephrase the "If I give up this hobby" bit. All the best, Thorsten

Hi Evan, this is certainly not what you are looking for, but maybe you get some info you are looking for. Daniel Schmatz (from Austria) who is operating a "museum for pinball machines and LEGO sets" near Vienna/Austria ("eitle Kinderkram", this is the webpage: https://kinderkram.eitle.at/), made a YouTube video in 2021 "showing" all pages of the booklets that came along with 1455 in 1986. The video quality is really not that good, but as said, almost all pages are shown. I accidentally ran across this website when I tried to understand what 9771 is and does, as you know regarding TC, I started from scratch in late 2022. Daniel has a >very< impressive collection of LEGO sets including Technic/Dacta - and has also the Apple II and IBM PC cards. Not sure about the C64 cable only connection, though. The video is 2 years old, that may have changed, but it is nice to see how surprised he is in the video, that the BBC does not need an interface card: About 11 minutes into the video, the hardware setup is shown, and he really takes some time to comprehend the setup (fingers running across the BBC, the disk station, interface A - but no interface card, and gets excited about it. So just have a look and enjoy the nice Austrian accent of his German :D All the best, Thorsten

And that is wise. BLE, the communication protocol the above listed devices are building on, can do so much more than remote control, it is almost crazy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluetooth_Low_Energy). On the other hand, once BLE can do "all that", a BLE device not wanting to do "all that" (or not wanting to be tricked) has to provide firmware that does have to deal with "all that". So all lower level communication protocols that confine themselves to on/off, left/right, start/stop (with hard-coded ramps maybe) and a little proportional steering - will most certainly beat BLE stuff, timing wise. On the other hand: No music to be streamed in parallel - and your batteries may not run as long; BLE was designed along the line of ultra-low power consumption. Hmmm. Wait. Your RC model motors suck in much more than one amp when racing? OK. Forget about the ultra-low power thing. Just go full RC 1:1 communication. Such receivers don't even pose a 1% change in the rechargeable discharge time. As compared to 0.001% using BLE. Which translates to: 99% and 99.999%, respectively. Or 10 minutes run time vs. 10.001 minutes ... Yes, I'd use RC gear to do RC racing. All the best, Thorsten

Well. I must admit: I was looking for the EV3 than for the Spike thingies. Nowhere to be seen. Onto the 4port PUp hub - no. Ahh - there it is: Impressive, all done with the 2 port PUp hub! Must be programmed in Pybrick-Next-Generation-V. Then I looked closer - no, this in no hub: It is a dumb battery box - also not true - as this is a fantastic battery box (#8878) - and two XL motors ... and then - after some moments others call minutes - it finally made "click" up there - this is purely mechanical! Fantastic, absolutely fantastic. Everything. The dials, how they work, the mechanism, wow. Congratulations - and thank you even more so for the instructions - they are worth every 1499 cent!!! All the best, Thorsten

OK, yes - that makes sense (to me). Thank you for clarifying! Best wishes, Thorsten

Hi Evan, is/was there any impetus to reach out to TLG on these issues? I bet there are/were - I am a "bit" late to the game. All the best, Thorsten

What about all the other "pretty good cases"? Best, Thorsten

Just to be crystal clear here, as this discussion is 54 pages long: Are you talking about peak current [A] or peak charge delivered [Ah] in this context? I believe, the issue is current. However, you also touch on the "energy loss" (heat energy to be dissipated), heating up the ICs as reason of failure, and thus things get into confusion. To me at least. Best, Thorsten

That's exactly what some people (including me !) believed when it came to "force" (e.g.(!) - there are so many more examples in the apparently free market driven industry) the meat industry to stop the way they treat animals (= we can a) all afford to eat them on a regular basis and b) they make a ton of money and c) it appears all nice, and clean and easy, no blood or parts of brain visible). So, I bought only meat in the category A (1 pig running around freely - 5 times more expensive than E category meat - 10 square feet of "living space" for 1 pig throughout its "life") - because I can afford it. Change: Zero. What did cause a change? ALDI Germany "disliked" category A meat for whatever reason. They are now on B. Universities did a huge study on that - things have to change on a large scale - to change. In an industrialized mass market world. Sounds reasonable to me. I still go for the A thing - and mostly just don't eat animals anymore. >Not< to change the world, but to get better sleep, that's all. Could help here as well: Yes: Buy sets with prints only. Makes you sleep better, but does not change anything else. Not on the scale, TLG is making money. Best, Thorsten

Here is to Kjeld! Best, Thorsten

OK, this repository on MediaFire, shared by user "JarSTx" is featuring RIS, DDK, NXT, EV3 Mindstorms CD ROMs (as ISO files). This is a bit ahead of upcoming posts here, but it would be weird to just share individual subfolders. https://www.mediafire.com/folder/ohsruj4zmjy9g#ohsruj4zmjy9g All the best, Thorsten

@Coder Shah I believe the direct TLG predecessor of Mindstorms (RCX) is the Technic Cybermaster line, with the two Technic sets 8482 (starter set) and 8450 (expansion set). They were released in 1998/99. There are many videos on Cybermaster on YouTube - this is one in a fairly long playlist created by YouTube user mnptbrag: Cybermaster features a serial (RS232) RF tower; the shape of this tower is exactly matching that of the (RCX/Scout/Spybotics) IR tower. The Cybermaster PBricks understand LEGO byte code, beep in the same way as the RCX does when switched on, have three 9V touch sensor inputs, two built-in motors (tacho motors that is!!!), as well as one 9V motor output. They came with their own programming environment on CD, but can also be programmed (as of today) using NQC. Just to make the line-up in this thread as comprehensive as possible ... and this reply should be between "Mindstorms History 04" and "05", I believe Best, Thorsten

There is even more - I take the freedom to adding that to this thread, hope that is OK. The Scout is my favorite PBrick in the line from RCX to Robot Inventor. Why? Because it is blue The above-mentioned "integrated IR sensor" is the same type as in virtually all LEGO devices using IR communication in some way. In case of the Scout, this is the 38kHz modulated IR light receiver for LEGO byte codes, as you can program the Scout with a computer (via the LEGO IR tower for the RCX) - as you would do with Spybotics, RCX (and software-wise Cybermaster via TLG's RF tower) PBricks: They all understand LEGO byte codes. There are specific byte codes to each of the individual PBricks, but the basic programming codes are all the same. The NQC language reference is a very good source to learn more about these specifics (and the common features). There is also very nice TLG documentation on the individual byte codes out there. The Scout thus also features 38 kHz IR emitting diodes to respond to incoming data, as per the definition of the LEGO PBrick IR protocol. The Scout is capable of messaging in the same way as the RCX and Spybotics PBricks are. Furthermore, the Scout has a 3rd "motor output", which is driving a visible (red) fairly bright LED instead of a motor. The light output is always modulated according to LEGO visible link light (VLL) protocol, which is known to the MicroScout and CodePilot devices. In other words, using a LEGO fiber connecting the VLL output of the Scout to a VLL input of a MicroScout or CodePilot device turns on and off things, e.g. the built-in motor in the MicroScout, or causes them to make beep sounds. In addition, the Scout has a built-in visible light sensor, which is also hardware compatible to accepting LEGO light fibers. The Scout has free programming space for only 396 LEGO byte codes - which means pure fun to program this thing!!! You need to think three or more times about every programming step - but when using NQC you can still accomplish a lot with this beautiful PBrick. Why only 396 bytes? Well, as @Coder Shah said, it features an interface, that allows you to program the Scout without a computer using the symbols on the LCD screen. I never did that, because NQC allows you to do so many more things. The Scout also features a myriad of built-in sounds - it is fun to use them. So only small freely addressable memory space is left ... And finally, there are a number of very useful programs in the Scout Software Development Kit (SDK) 2.5 from TLG to program and monitor the Scout (with a LEGO IR tower) should you not want to use NQC or the like. And yes, back in the days, TLG provided SDK's, believe it or not. Best wishes, Thorsten

I fully share your opinion (and particularly your remaining text in that post). With only one exception: The "your sets are not selling anymore" bit as motivation to ask the community. According to just the numbers, let's say sales and profit (the latter +5% = 2.4 bn$ ), they do very, very well upon selling their boring products. That is the "issue": Customer behavior = "us" (excluding me, of course ). Why would they change any of selling that boring stuff when people in the very rich world go nuts getting it? At ever-increasing numbers over the past decade(s)? I would certainly not change course - I'd make even more boring sets. I believe they ask the community to get in fresh ideas - and then maybe (or not, who cares, with these numbers) turn any of them into boring sets as they will heavily downgrade them to cut costs and so on. Or just use bits and pieces. If it plays out as it did in the past (and I don't see any reason on the horizon why that should change - even a pandemic with all the harsh consequences for several delivery chains did not, in contrast), sales will further increase, as will profit. It's about us. Best, Thorsten