Toastie

I totally agree. I do expand this to: Necessity as a LEGO builder. There are other themes, which are very well expanded by non-existing-LEGO pieces. Other than that: No doubt: If possible with LEGO: Sole option. If TLG doesn't make these pieces, other brands do: I'm in. None of the above: Dremel + Superglue. Over the decades, it appears as I have entirely lost that "I believe in TLG and thus wait until Doomsday, and hope that they make that piece I need before I die" bad feeling. Heehee: 1x5 plates. Who on Earth could >ever< have figured that one out. Question: 1x1, 1x2, 1x3, 1x4 ... 1x6 ... 1x8 ... 1x10 ... 1x12. What do you think is missing? Choices: 0.1, 5, 1E6, 7, 100, 9, 0, 11 (1 point each - it is finals time!). Best, Thorsten

Wow. This explains a lot. During the first wave of Covid, Germany ran out of toilet paper. I see a pattern here. And flush ... Thorsten

You may want to have a look into this thread: Scroll down to page 2. @kage28 has really done some in-depth research here! Best, Thorsten

That is what counts! Very nice, that you had this experience. And you will for sure find ways to operate 7862 as a very useful (as in enjoyable) set. And this is as good as it possibly can get! All the best, Thorsten

Oh, very sorry to hear that. We have "cats and dogs" in the house since decades (well, the two cats from an abandoned cardboard box found upon cleanup in the bushes are still here and doing fine; our first lady dog from Greece lived with us for 16 years, went to heaven in late 2020. It was a loss, as it is, when you lose a beloved family member. We then decided to give a Pumi from Hungary a new home - she is 8+ years old, one eye blind, but she will never >ever< be beaten again; this seems to be what happened to her in her 8+ years of life). I loved to see your beloved cat. All the best, Thorsten Wait, wait - she is back! I just replied from the email notification without noticing. She is - wonderful.

Nice indeed! And, I mean, "this rocks" just gets another twist. Very nice. I shall try that out. Don't have any guitar or the like, but I'll put on some Carlos Santana (or Rammstein ) and then do some rails/wheel cleaning ... Thanks for sharing! Best, Thorsten

@efferman, where is the cat? I mean, the cat that was your avatar? I loved to see him/her, everytime I was browsing your absolutely and completely beyond anything I could accomplish (building skills, constructions, ideas, pieces you create, etc. etc.) ... I'm sure that somewhere in this thread, many people have asked. As I do read you content quite regularly, I was surprised. Hopefully nothing bad happened to him/her. Sorry for maybe asking you for the 100th time. All the best, Thorsten

Welcome on EB! Now, this means that as of now you have LEGO hubs on the trains, correct? If so, do you want to 1) replace the LEGO hub with an ESP32 or 2) add the ESP to the train to operate the sensors you are talking about? Best Thorsten

Yes, I agree. However, "crystallization" begins or has even developed. CaDa, Cobi, MouldKing - I'd say, risk is rather low for bad experiences. I also like to have an in-between "re-seller" located in Europe or Germany, where I live. It then becomes more expensive along the woulf-down-chain , but some of them actually build the stuff they sell. Or "reviewers" do. And put it up on YouTube. My compass is half-price of TLGs stuff. Not failed yet but experience is only from 6 sets. Best Thorsten

Hmm. Why not conserving everything as it is? This what I am doing: Whenever this happens - or I fear it may happen (and it only has happened twice to me) I have a serious look at my hardware. It appears as if hardware needs to live or go with operating systems - at least in the Windows World I am living in. There are now three laptops I did not ditch: One is running Win98 - the version fully compatible with DOS 6.X. The other one is running WinXp ... and everything else in on my Win10/11 laptop. Well, there are basically uncountable nerds out there - old people ;) - who just don't accept the phrase: It does not work anymore in Win XYZ. Actually DOS6.X is doing fine on this laptop. So ... what does it mean to you: TLG announces this, and than that? They can announce the end of The World and I would simply not believe it; "so what", I'd say. Lets see. Just keep on doing what you are doing and try to either conserve or try to carry over the impossible. Which, as time goes by, seems to become less impossible with time ;) And do think about what to do. Not with 5k plus files. Conserve them carfully. Best Thorsten @M2m: Totally. You summed it up nicely; I was just trying to find words. Yes. This is the way to go. I like the "Anyway" bit the most. Best, Thorsten

Wow! One looks like gone bye bye since long. This: Yes, cut one wire at a time. First ground (black) then VCC (red), then white. The pouches are chemical waste - I believe though that the blown up is also chemically dead, the lower one that is. Be careful with the upper pouch. Seems to be intact. As said, this is hazardous waste - don't throw into the household waste bin. Now, as you are researching this to a level I believe no one has reported here on EB: Is there some sort of electronic circuity in between the pouches? And please use cheap water-resistant gloves for doing this. After work is done, throw them away. With regard to picture upload: EB is not a hosting site; use whatever hosting site is available to you (Flickr and the like) and copy/paste the links to the picture into your post. As far as I am concerned: I believe this is excellent information you are providing here. PCB looks good, indeed. Really exciting! Thank you very much for the a) the link and b) all your efforts!!! Best wishes, Thorsten

I also believe so. Air is a viscous medium, so you constantly "couple" the rotating wheel surface with that medium, resulting in the motion of the "rotor". It will become even clearer when you attach little paddle type things to the wheels. In essence this is what propels a boat forward when using a propeller ;). Water has of course a much higher viscosity than air and the wheels you are using are really badly designed propellers , but ... Do both wheels spin in the same direction in setup #2? Other than that (except much stronger friction at the ball-type bearing due to increased weight of the rotor) I don't see why it would not start to spin ... What happens, when you have the wheels in setup #1 don't spin in the same direction? You can also use a hair dryer and see what a additional wind direction at one side of the wheels would cause. Fun experiments! Best Thorsten

@JaBaCaDaBra Wow! Chemistry@work ! That looks horrible. I never encountered that bad behavior. Well, I did not use any Duracell's cells However, before you ditch any >expensive< equipment that does not work anymore due to battery leakage: Send it to me . But I believe it is impossible to re-use the device after a treatment in a medical setting. All the best, Thorsten

Yes, this LiPo pack looks very good indeed. Any chance to have a link to the company selling it? Sorry to hear that your 8878 does not behave on the output - but maybe there is some protection circuit telling the output electronics not to do anything, when the LiPo is "bad" - who knows. After all, LiPo's want and need to be treated carefully, dead or not. Yes, having a look inside may be good: I used a 4.5 mm sharp drill on a cordless electric screwdriver, but it can be done manually as well, takes a little longer. The very old 8878 have a tiny plastic cap covering the channel leading to the screws, the more recent models have slightly strengthened "caps" (this is what I remember from opening one 8878 back in 2013 - the one I opened yesterday seemed to having thicker caps). Once the caps are removed, you need a "thin"crosshead screwdriver, as the screws sit "deeply buried" in the plastic channel connecting the bottom cover to the top panel. Good luck!!! And be careful not to physically harm the LiPo pack. Best Thorsten

UPDATE ;) Opened up one good working 8878 from back then. The LiPo pack is of the type 2S, with 3 wires exposed, black (negative terminal), red (positive terminal) and white. The third (white) wire is indeed going an NTC (thermistor = temperature sensitive resistor with the behavior the warmer, the lower the resistance) wired to the negative terminal of the cells. Quickly checked: The resistance between white and black is about 8.8 kOhm at room temperature and swiftly drops to 8.4 kOhm when in my hand - so this seems to be a plain vanilla 10k NTC, commonly used in LiPo packs. In other words: The electronics of the 8878 is monitoring the temperature of the cells for not (over)stressing them. The balancing of the two cells (I cannot imagine that TLG would go without, it would be against all the safety rules, even in 2010 ;)) thus seems to be done with a small protection board sandwiched between the two flat cells. I cut the enveloping shrink type plastic away and yes, there >seems< to be something between the cells other than the NTC, which is there as well. Can't get any further without risking of damaging the cell pouches, they seem to be "glued" together. Damaging would be bad (cf. Ghostbusters: "I am fuzzy in all good bad things, what do you mean: bad?" - as they may go off in flames). I'd thus say what you need is a 3-wire 2S LiPo pack, where the third wire is an NTC output and not the balancing lead. Plus the LiPo pack needs to have the balancing electronics on board. I believe - but I would only take this route when replacing the LiPo pack. Here is a two photos: Best Thorsten

OK, next test ;) When you have your 8878 on the charger (12V is perfectly fine!), does it function properly, let's say with a PF motor attached, using that orange dial? Does a PF receiver work properly as well? That means everything is fine with the output electronics. The 3rd wire in plain vanilla 2S LiPo packs (= nothing additional fancy built into the pack of two) is for balancing the charging voltage. Individual LiPos (each "3.6/7V" cell) exhibit individual aging and charging behavior. A fully charged LiPo cell reaches about 4.2 no-load voltage. Charging it with higher voltage than that will most probably damage it. When you use just two wires, you'd assume that the charging voltage - let's take for simplicity 8.4V - is equally distributed between the two cells connected in series. However, as current flows, the voltage drops across the two cells may be different, and may lead to a situation, where one cell sees 5V and the other the remaining 3.4V - which means one cell will certainly suffer. Upon monitoring the voltage at the point, where the cells are connected, the charger can "balance" the different charging behavior of the two cells. So the three wire cell(s) would be my favorite. I'll open one of my 8878 tonight and let you know what's inside, OK? I also bet, that others have done that already and may very well know what to do! Best, Thorsten

Why would I want to do that? No way. I mean, when you get attractive sets from TLG with a 50% to 75% discount, the discussion is indeed over: TLG it is. I seem to live in a country, though, where I hardly see such discounts for any "attractive" set. Well, maybe I am not keeping my ears close enough on the rails - but if that would happen, I'd be in LEGO heaven. I believe, there is another thing to consider in this discussion: I am somewhat leaning towards trains. When I recall what LG has produced within that line, I must say - yes, there are trains, but you may want to compare TLG's current train program with this one: https://www.bluebrixx.com/en/bluebrixxspecials/trains I am not saying that these are superb - the sheer number of sets is what calls my attention - and basically none were ever made by TLG. So in essence - for me(!) - it is not about the price alone, it is more this (has been said already) What is offered within certain themes (diversity of sets) Piece availability and price/quality (individual pieces) Price for a set Now, when there are two identical sets, I'd always go for the LEGO one. However, when they are far less than identical, I use my list above ;) Best Thorsten

Huh? Really? I don't know - I did buy BlueBrixx (BB) train carriages - $25 (BB Special, so no idea where the bricks come from, others may know), about 40 cm long each, dark green - I believe TLG would charge something like 3 to 5 times more for that. We are not talking quality, which is slightly less than LEGO, but price. Color-wise perfect matches. Wheelsets are bad with regard to wrong length metal rods, but that's it. I also have a perfect Flying Dutchman here, $160 from BB as Mould King model, <$120 directly from a country with mostly red flag. Everything quality wise as good as TLGs pieces - but that thing is gigantic. I don't even want to know what TLG would charge for that. OK, only two examples, but these are attractive prices, I must say. Best Thorsten

Hello there, couple of questions before diving deep;) What type of charger do you use, the original LEGO charger or a third party device? Did the 8878 turn on with the charger connected to it? Did you already open your 8878? This is really straight forward, and then you can check for the type of LiPo they used on that batch. If I am not mistaken, at least 2 of my 8878's have two pouches, each 3.6V. Maybe it is better to go with that, but I do not remember the wiring. EDIT: Sorry, first read then babble ... you have already selected the 2S type. @Philo's pages regarding tech stuff are superb, this one covers LiPo's for PoweredUp, so not exactly what you want, but is a very nice recource. Let's talk about 1-3 first and then let's see what's next ... Best Thorsten

Welcome to EB, @garmsey! @Hod Carrier is one of the geniuses here - I bet he'll be glad to help out. You need 10 posts to be able to PM him - some folks here don't like resurrecting old threads for the purpose of asking for instructions. But who knows. Just post "here and there", what you like (or not) and then get in touch with him. Well, chances are, he replies here directly! All the best, Thorsten

Over the decades, it seems that I am getting used to it - it actually has some touch, I'd call "real world exposure". Caught myself today in searching for "stained" = weathered white and gray parts (not LBG, the real gray. I am colorblind, but when it comes to gray, I am full in. LGB looks like no real gray to me ), to give my build some touch of vintage. In contrast, shiny or glossy LEGO feels more and more - well - as having being isolated from real world environments ... to me that is! Yes, cleaning from time to time, but with far less effort as "back then". When I go outside, I hardly see anything as clean and shiny as clean LEGO bricks - other than the very expensive (I believe from the looks) car of my neighbor ... I am sure that about 25% of its lifetime, this thing must be inside a car wash. Phew - a look at our Vauxhall Zafira ... according to the papers, this car is pained in "bright white". Living close to Cologne in Germany, so "nice weather" is less frequent during these days. Best, Thorsten

Fun fact: The PUp City hubs (2 I/O) feature only two screws to render the battery pack compliant with New Regulations. They are secured with plastic washers; trying screwing them (well out, the screws that is) does not work without significant labor. I have around 8 of those hubs, fried two because I did bad things to them - in the beginning of PUp and before TLG purchased BL, these hubs were really cheap on BL (about 12€ new). All my City PUp hubs have the screws all the way out because the springs of the PCB connecting the battery pack as well as TLG's super precision moulds snap the battery pack securely to the enclosure and cover. But that is non-compliant with regulations, of course. No screwing, no compliance, and you are screwed. BTW, this is pinned on the EB TrainTech forum, second entry from top. The second pic in the first post shows the screws (with the washers) exposed. They simply can't fall out: Actually, it is very convenient to also "free" the top part (with the PCB, button, and motor jacks) from the battery enclosure by removing two Torx screws (haha - experts tools required to get that far ). Then unsolder the two power "springs" and add a two-wire cable instead. Then remove the two washer-secured screws of the bottom part and use that one to cover up the top part if desired, needs a bit of filing. As a result, you have an only 5 plates thick PUp brain with the original top cover, the motor jacks, and can use your own battery box as you see fit in your MOC. Good for 6-wide (my scale) trains for sure. I also believe that they have to secure the screws; otherwise kids may eat them. I never figured out, why they don't eat 1x1 plates not secure with screws. So I believe it is less of a "2 is worse than 4" issue. No clue, maybe this is also regulated since long ... I mean "all the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now." Douglas Adams is my personal hero. Best wishes, Thorsten

... ... oh man, I need to close the EB browser window, otherwise I will never get these damned reviews done. Their bunny was funny though - nothing more entertaining than having a bunny crashing the cymbals - forever ... Have fun, Thorsten

Two additional things and then I have to work Just checked: Some of my LEGO trains run on decent NiMH cells. Two are operated by RCX 1.0 pbricks, 8 are PF equipped. 4 of the latter run on TLG's 8878, once upon a time they were within financial reach. On my layout, I use the since long phased out 9V LEGO track, which is permanently powered with 15V DC. The RCX as well as the LiPo trains have power pickups (= 9V train motor with motor removed, plugged directly into the jacks of the RCX/8878), so when there is no blackout, the RCX trains don't use the alkaline batteries at all, but run off from their power plug. (Yes, also once upon a time, there were 9V power plugs on TLG's pbricks ... securely running with 9 - 18 V DC, as does 8878 for charging). Then there are two trains which are trickle-charged all the time. Fully loaded NiMH cells deliver about 1.5 V. x6 = 9V. Power feed from the track = 15V, this goes through a bridge rectifier (voltage loss about 1.2 V) to 9V/1A regulator, which is directly soldered to the pack of 6 NiMHs. Normal operation = track power operates PF receiver or RC train receiver, both a very happy with about 14V. Upon running on "modern" all plastic track, the NiMHs kick in without power interruption. These tracks are very helpful for wye branches or back-loops (rail polarity change), etc. The cells are recharged whenever the power pickup is on metal track, but never with more than 9V/6 cells. The loading current is next to nothing (trickling ...). Also, overloading is hardly (not) possible. Point is: None of these batteries have leaked in a period of three or more years. Neither the 1,5V alkalines in the RCX (which needs to be powered from the plug with >9V to avoid the batteries delivering current when being turned off!), nor the carefully trickle-charged NiMHs. The LiPos are fine by definition. But guess what: Just opened a for long unused 2 port City hub with 6 AAA alkalines of decent make: 2 leaked. The hubs are always sucking a tiny amount of current, otherwise they would not recognize the green on button. So all in all it seems to be OK with the chemistry Best and over, Thorsten

Oh, absolutely! I'd do the same, if I had consumers happily willing to pay that amount! This was in reply to the "whopping $70" in @kbalage's comparison to what you pay for good rechargeables on the market. If TLG sold AA or AAA rechargeables, I'd say they would cost around $12 each, because 6 x $12 is a little more than 1x$70, which is equivalent to "better". There would be the LEGO sign on the cells, they would be all black, have the warnings, and maybe something like: Fully compatible with LEGO devices. Recommended to charge ONLY with THE LEGO charger. Since this one would charge 6 AA type LEGO rechargeables, it would be 6 times more expensive than the $30 wall wart minus the actual value of such a charger, which is may be around $40 (in Germany) - getting me to $140. And yes, because they a) certainly have fun coming up with the price tag and b) because they can. Best, Thorsten