Toastie

Huh? Wait wait wait. Folks put things up on Ideas. And many of them rush through all social media platforms to fish for support. In the public domain. The moment you do that all IP vanishes into oblivion - that is the whole idea of IP. You could translate "IP" to "rules" on Ideas - or whatever. But why on Earth do you feel bad about that? I don't get it. TLG has really done an >excellent< job in making people feel bad about buying stuff that a) is not under IP anymore and b) is way more expensive ... ... and any idea trumpeted into the free world is a free idea. When you want to keep this idea under IP, you want to capitalize on it. But then: Take care of it. When you don't want that: Always reference the source. Then there is no theft anymore. So in real life: Do we always buy the stuff from the original owner of the IP of a product from 1960/70/80/90? And do we call these products "clones"? No. We are very happy to getting something "as a bargain". And then brag about it. Who doesn't? One example: I buy Arduino - clones. 5$ vs 25$. IP? No, they did not do it. So for me, it is in the free market. What I do is, donate to them - regularly. Because I like their spirit and software development. But electronic hardware? And living in a truly capitalistic world - sorry. No bad feelings here. If we apply all these "moral rules" to all our everyday purchases - at least I would need a second job. Best Thorsten

Well well well. Nice. Really nice. Never heard of these. I like this. A lot. Maybe more than a lot. Best Thorsten

Years. I can clearly see years of thinking and building and tweaking. She looks like a very nice sample of very expensive Wine. Wine meant to ripe for years. Or Whiskey for decades. Wonderful piece of art. Cheers to the loco - and you! Thorsten

I am taking the freedom to commenting this ... For me, "Mindstorms" is: RCX, Scout, MicroScout, Spybot, NXT, and EV3. 23 years of intelligent bricks and counting. With different capabilities and "tasks" they were designed for. They all work as of today on current OS' (Win10 is what I know) and machines (64 bit). PoweredUp is evolving. Let's see, whether it does live up to expectations. Potential is certainly there! It is all about documentation and the community developing stuff for the platforms. See, with e.g. BrixcxCC any many other 3rd party software, folks out there (not TLG) have done a teriffic job for the Mindstorms line. And TLG did a terrific job as well as they have provided some very detailed documents. With PUp it is a bit bumpy regarding the firmware ... but that is only my personal view. So I think the Mindstorms line of PBricks is "better" than PUp Best and have fun with PUp!!! Thorsten

Ouuuhhh - nice. With Carlsberg Elephant or Porter, some Faxe varieties, Aalborg Aquavit and all that? (Just kidding - I live close enough to Denmark to get all these wonderful fluids in stores nearby) Best Thorsten

This is the thing that I don't get as well. What does this imply or tell? As said, don't know. But here are a few things that just pop in there: Chinese manufacturers do this because they want to make the world a better place. Could be. Doubt that this is the main driver. But who knows. Because the items are "cloned" it is so cheap for them to make them: Nope - LEGO made them before. No more development cost for LEGO as well. Yes they need new molds, but so do the Chinese. Well, when TLG has thrown away the drawings for making the molds: Buy a clone piece and clone it. Chinese folks do make so little money, that production costs become so low that it still makes economic sense. Hmmm. I don't know. Could be. It is the case with other stuff as well. Chinese folks are smart enough to get all this going - and maybe they don't want to make a fortune with every single piece. TLGs overhead is so big, that there is no way of making anything out of producing such pieces other than debt. Well that would be their fault though. Any other thoughts? Best Thorsten

And why did I "know" that - am thus - why am I not surprised. At all. Best wishes, Thorsten

Oh my, Emanuele - I know! You don't have to promise - well - you are a child, my friend. And you know how I mean that - I am as well. Very happy about that. With regard to the pistons: What should I say? No frigging idea why they just don't do it. Yes, it is an investment. Because we train folks are a niche within a niche. But you know what? Why on Earth did they do the Crocodile? Why did it work out decades ago? There are so many reasons we can bring up. One is: The "accountants" - the ones that do the Excel sheets (I know, they'll never ever use Excel, they have of course some super smart software running on Linux or - on Macs ) lost contact to the user base. >As well as< to the higher-ups. I don't know. You know what: All is good. Your MOCs are way, far, far away beyond my horizon - maybe someone is listening. Maybe not. I still do believe though both of us are very happy with what TLG is giving us. All the best and my best wishes to the family. Yours Thorsten

I simply believe that the compromises in a LEGO build - regardless of model, particularly though for LEGO train models - are >the< fascinating thing. The tricks and skills to make it look like the real thing - and to somehow induce some imagination. The closer a "model" gets to resembling the real thing, the less we have to extra- or interpolate, to envision, to let a stud in the "wrong place" vanish. And even that is wrong: There is a stud, where a stud is. When you have the skills to let it physically disappear - or TLG finally releases that very part - do it. I am mostly just dreaming it away. I still believe that Ben Beneke's BR23 is a miracle. The boiler is far from being round (at all), I need to make it round in my imagination. And so on and so forth. I will never touch this design - because for me, it is perfect. But: Everyone has a different view on this. Living with some limitations though, makes life much more interesting. And for me, the same holds true for my hobby. Which after all is meant to be a toy for kids and those adults who never grow-up (ask my wife). Best and happy building! Thorsten

Here is something for you guys interested in the chemistry of yellowing, degradation, whiting, repeated degradation ... https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&amp;t=6084 Now, there is the usual speculation and misinformation you will find again and again in forums and on the web in general, however, look for the entries of the user "Chyros" - he is apparently a chemist , for example here: https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?p=228113#p228113 and here https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?p=228424#p228424 He talks about the Bromine containing fire retardants as well - which make of course not that much sense as cause for the yellowing of modern LEGO ABS, as it has been banned in the US since 2004 or so. I do not believe that the lawyers at TLG take it up with the Justice Department in the US. Well, who knows. But seeing them on their knees when the Osprey Technic set hit the fan ... no they won't. The thing is: Yes, oxidants as bleach - or much better - H2O2 at rather high content percentage + sunlight can make the plastic white again - but just to accelerate the degradation processes after whitening. Makes sense; a polymer structure always suffers from (rough) oxidation. Color may "return" to white by bombing the degraded chemical bonds responsible for the >discoloring<, but the integrity of the polymer cannot be healed by such a rough treatment - actually such bombing always causes some more or less serious collateral damage. The analogy to surface treatment with H2O2 + sunlight is close to "aerial bombing". Oh well. Chemistry rocks. Best Thorsten

This is really weird indeed. I also do agree with you on the "should not break" issue, of course - as @Alexandrina has pointed out. That is another league. And with my bunch of bricks it really hardly happens at all. But back on the yellowing issue - which naturally occurs. You said the model/parts was/were mostly in a box. Was that box (unintentionally) exposed to heat? My LEGO space is in the attic. There are two rooms up there - in one I have to survive Zoom meetings for about a year - so last summer in installed a little air conditioner. The other (smaller) room next to my though gets really hot from time to time. A temperature sensor (oh yes, ESP 8266 - it is just one door (=4 m) away from my chair, but it is way cooler to call up a website ... ) told me: 43°C = 109°F. Or exposed to anything else? Ozone for example? Had it been sitting in sunlight for some time? I am asking because I am curious. Heat? Difficult. Oxidants? Thinkable. Sunlight? For sure. However, it could also be that once you "trigger" a chemical reaction (by e.g. light) yellowing could very well be of radical chain type reaction. Not fast (this is what they are usually), but more of type "persistent"; once triggered in the material, there may not be that many radical scavengers. But: Just wildly speculating. As said: Light for sure, the longer the exposure, the yellower the formerly white brick. OK, that tails out of course, as once the upper molecular layers have reacted, there is naturally an end, as you can't see into the bulk material. Interesting. Best Thorsten P.S.: Searched a bit the web ... as usual, there is so much garbage out there. But this one seems to be of decent nature: https://www.polymersolutions.com/blog/what-makes-plastic-turn-yellow/ The last paragraph is of interest, as it goes along the lines I was speculating "Of course, UV radiation isn’t the only factor that can cause plastics and polymers to age. Exposure to visible light, extreme temperatures, humidity or exposure to solvents can also cause a polymer to fail over time. When it comes to yellowing, however, UV light is often the primary culprit. Getting back to your game console, it probably sat atop your TV for years — catching some rays — before you packed it away. Even though it’s been sitting in darkness for a while, the damage was already done and yellowing occurred. UV radiation was also the source of the yellowing in the case of the medical tubing failure. It turns out the patient was an avid sunbather, so the tubing got a much higher dose of UV rays than the manufacturer anticipated."

Oh well. I could not care less about the guidelines in this case. Once such a beautiful model makes it to/arrives in this section, I regard it as "pearl". No, as "Pearl". As being at the top. As a model that I will never be able to create. Plus: In this fine forum, such beautiful builds are not dumped to forum page 2 (and at latest then living in oblivion) in no time, simply because there are not that many "Pearls". I believe it is a very great honor to present in this forum. And I have no clue - zero - why this is not featured on the front page. But this is up to the higher authorities. @Sariel Wow. I am totally in love with this rendition of a wonderful car. Colors very well-chosen - 1931 is a time in space that is a bit difficult (for me). Seeing this car in white in addition to the flower ring - makes it very, very easy to truly admire it. Nice. Tipping hat, slight bow. Yours, Thorsten

As @kieran said: When your smartphone knows how to learn IR codes sent @2400 baud, 1 stop, 8 data, odd parity, 1 stop bit, then yes. The LEGO remote has a rather limited range of codes it generates (ABC motor ports full fwd/bwd), messages 1 - 3, starting program slots 1 - 5, stop active program and "beep". When that is enough for controlling the RCX in addition to the protocol constraints then yes, it will work. Best Thorsten

What I don't get: Why are LEGO bricks supposed to "last" (just in terms of changing color) "forever"? Is there any other plastic material that people know of, which does not do that? Plastic material that has the following other characteristics: Clutch power. Can be swallowed and comes out through the natural human digestion process unaltered. Put together and taken apart a thousand times (LEGO is meant to be a building toy). When lit up, it does not act as fuel. Etc. etc. etc.??? Best Thorsten

In 40 years? Let's see. Today - 40 years = 1981. For simplicity, lets round that down to 1980. 1980. So what did we have back then? Ahh sure the bricks. Electronics? Well. Personal computers? CD's? The internet - a decade in the future. 3D printing? Huh? There were needles punching dots on paper, regarded as very high resolution. A 3 PDP 10s were still regarded as mighty computers - discontinued only three years later. And Queen did "Another one bites the dust". And I did get my high school diploma. I have not the faintest idea(s) - zero - what will be in 40 years from now - other than that most probably I will be dead. Which is entirely OK - that is what life is all about. VR/AR and 3D printing don't need anything close to 40 years to develop into something that nobody can even remotely envision. Best Thorsten

But isn't this called "competition" and "the free market" we all go after every single day in the real world??? Who (here) is not shooting for the cheapest deal? Of course not for crap but the nice and shiny stuff. And who is not doing this in real life? My goodness, just because it seems to be always touching on the Holy Grail (or whatever) when it comes to LEGO (they really accomplished that: From invalid joints to not copying the obvious that is IP >unprotected<) we just go there: Don't even think about these things. Make the cheap deal. Don't you folks do that when it comes to ... almost every other piece of merchandise in real live? Don't you hunt the highest quality El-Cheapo? Do you always go to the family owned home-made - and THUS so expensive product? To be honest: I really try to do that. Go with the real folks. Pay more. But almost fail miserably every single day when it is non-LEGO. For the Germans here: ALDI had some gardening stuff today on sale. Covid-19 or not - they are open. It was crowded in there, really - stupidly - crowded - and I just left. The things I was looking for are also available elsewhere. Little more expensive though. Which feels like it sucks. Oh well. All the best Thorsten

Dear @camellia, I really do admire your ideas and your realization in LEGO bricks. This is what TLG did for a long time as well: All the smart bricks have electronics on board - covered by a complex ABS enclosure. You can go all the way back - it is always the same. Even today, the BLE boards residing in the hubs are covered by nice LEGO brick compatible enclosures. You are doing the exact same thing: Incorporating very smart electronics into brick built enclosures - which in turn resemble very nice vintage devices. I love your approach very much. And the LEGO design of your turntable/amplifier is really well done. Equally important: I really do appreciate your background information - and particularly the well-chosen pictures! Believe it or not: Yes, I do have a turntable and yes also quite a number of vinyls ... All the best, Thorsten

@Dazzzy: Failed??? The topic title is wrong. Not "failed". I'd go with not supported - which means nothing. Absolutely nothing. Your MOC is a true beauty. And a very nice build. Thank you very much for sharing (the lovely) details! All the best Thorsten

This is soo cool @KotZ Just to keep this very nice build up on the forum! Everything else has (maybe not) been said. I love this. Best Thorsten

I am not a fan of one line/one icon/or one word posts. So this sentence makes me feel better. The point is: - I really agree with what you said. Best Thorsten

Wow. Man. This is really impressive. Thank you for sharing. I am not the "LEGO Ideas Fan" - for some reasons all discussed here. What I really like though: Not a NCC XYZ ship - aka the good folks - but a really nice and detailed and to the point ship of the - well - good folks, when you are looking from the other side. You really captured the nature of that perspective. I love this ship. And - bit late - but: Welcome on EB, @im__hungry! All the best Thorsten

Good evening, well, I did not expect that this would work out that swiftly ... So this setup from 2021 with this code on the Speccy from 1985 and this code on the Arduino Uno R3 clone #include <CustomSoftwareSerial.h> // Declare CustomSoftSerial ports CustomSoftwareSerial* customSerial_2400; CustomSoftwareSerial* customSerial_9600; void setup() { // Init 38kHz pulse train on pin 11 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ pinMode (11, OUTPUT); // Pin 11: Timer 2 "A" output: OC2A // set up Timer 2 TCCR2A = _BV (COM2A0) | _BV(WGM21); // CTC, toggle OC2A on Compare Match TCCR2B = _BV (CS20); // No prescaler OCR2A = 208; // Original value: 209. // Original comment: "compare A register value (210 * clock speed) // = 13.125 nS , so frequency is 1 / (2 * 13.125) = 38095" // This results in 37.83 kHz on the Uno R3 clone board // Changed to 208 - this results in 38.01 kHz //Init Uno onboard serial (pins 0+1) ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Serial.begin(9600); // Just to sniff when necessary ... // Init CustomSoftserial ports ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- // By default (SS), the last initialized port listens! customSerial_2400 = new CustomSoftwareSerial(9, 10); // RX, TX customSerial_2400->begin(2400, CSERIAL_8O1); // Baud rate: 2400, configuration: CSERIAL_8O1 customSerial_9600 = new CustomSoftwareSerial(2, 3); // RX, TX customSerial_9600->begin(9600, CSERIAL_8N1); // Baud rate: 9600, configuration: CSERIAL_8N1 // Init IO pins -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- pinMode (4, OUTPUT); // from Arduino 4 to RS232 8 T2o (CTS) and from there to ZX 4 CTS digitalWrite(4, HIGH); // LOW: ZX 4 CTS +V enables sending from ZX. HIGH: Sendinfg disabled pinMode (5, INPUT); // from ZX 5 RTS to RS232 7 R2i (RTS) and from there to Arduino 5 } // end setup --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- void loop() { if (customSerial_9600->available()){ // ZX IF1 9600/1/8/N/1 data received customSerial_2400->write(customSerial_9600->read()); // Copy to 38kHz 2400/1/8/O/1 modulated output } } makes the RCX 1.0 Unit 092547 from 1999 beep every time you run the program on the Speccy Line 900 on the Speccy carries the actual beep code; line 901 just makes sure that the next time the code runs, the RCX beeps again (the RCX never executes a command twice, when you don't toggle the toggle bit ). Yes you can make that even less hardware intensive, but I am going full classic RS232 communication here. This is why the RS232 break out board is there. The stuff on the little bread board is a serial tower proxy. The 74LS02 (4 x NOR) is luxury; only one gate is used here to enable/disable the 38kHz output on pin 11 with pin 10 of the Arduino, the latter is the customSerial_2400 TXD output. Next up: Connect a second RS232 break out board to the Arduino to connect to the serial LEGO tower. (The USB port of the Arduino is just for power - it does not talk to the laptop. And remember: All this is just an RS232 communication translator: From 9600/1/8/N/1 w/ handshake on the Speccy to 2400/1/8/O/1 w/o handshake on the RCX) Best Thorsten

Swwweeet! 1488s ... oh my. Beautiful. Yeah, I know - the cool programmers in my group who are literally talking to each other in C++ (and of course JAVA - and of course Python) always just shrug, when I talk about my more than 10000 lines of VB6 (yes, VB6) code - no dot, no net, no express, no studio - just VB6). The thing though is: It works. It controls RCX trains, SCOUT switch controllers talking to MicroSCOUTS via VLL links, NXTs and recently yes, also PUp hubs. The latter is a bit shaky as I have no clue what I am doing - got the ActiveX control from n_software for free, no manual other than an example program, so no questions asked! But it all works. (Ha, for the VLL SCOUT - MicroSCOUT link I used the optical fibers from one of our labs dye lasers. Those are now in laser heaven, but the 6 m long VIS light fibers were too much for me, I saved them. LambdaPhysik (company is also gone) found it cool in the 1990s to control the electronics in their dye lasers with optical fibers instead of RS232 or IEEE-488 (HP-IB or GPIB) cables. Well these lasers were pumped with serious XeCl/ArF excimer lasers - and you can shield with cm thick whatever material - when 32 kV stored in a capacitor bank of some meters in size are discharged within 10 ns, this generates some electronic noise ) Let me know about how it goes with the SCOUT, I took several of them apart to fix them. I love them. Space for 396 bytes for LEGO byte code is all RAM you get! So programming them is total fun. Actually Dave Baum changed the NQC code, when I asked him (that was very generous): For jumps, he originally implemented always long jumps. That costs you three bytes more than compared to a short jump! For the RCX memory monster that is no issue, but when left alone with 396 bytes of RAM, it is something. Also, for the LEGO tower replacement - there is really cool Arduino code to generate the 38kHz modulation frequency. I found this here: void setup() { pinMode (11, OUTPUT); // Pin 11: Timer 2 "A" output: OC2A // set up Timer 2 TCCR2A = _BV (COM2A0) | _BV(WGM21); // CTC, toggle OC2A on Compare Match TCCR2B = _BV (CS20); // No prescaler OCR2A = 208; // Original value: 209. // Original comment: "compare A register value (210 * clock speed) // = 13.125 nS , so frequency is 1 / (2 * 13.125) = 38095" // This results in 37.83 kHz on the Uno R3 clone board // Changed to 208 - this results in 38.01 kHz } And this is it! This makes pin 11 oscillate at 38kHz, 50% duty cycle. Entirely hardware driven! (Comments following the last line are from me to remember). This is really cool. And works - the RCX beep was generated using this setup. However, just turning an IR LED on and off with one leg connected to pin 11 and the other to lets say pin 10 configured as output did not work - ther was always residual IR light flooding the scene. Oh well, one NOR gate of 74LS02 takes care of that issue. Well I am using the ZX Spectrum with Interface1 from my good ol'days, not the ZX81. The Spectrum IF1 one has serial communication routines built is - but with HW handshake and only 1/8/N/1 frames. So I will use an Arduino for translation purposes. Well, that is the plan. Who knows ... Best wishes Thorsten

I believe @Pendra37 meant the DC input line to the board? Best Thorsten

@camellia Thank you very much for your (very) kind words. I really agree with your assessment on 8bit computing and learning how computers work. Absolutely. It even works with the e.g. the 8/16 bit microchip PICs - and of course all small scale RIS brains from other vendors - at least for me. On the other hand, when I do program Arduino's and derivatives it is more or less a miracle to me, what they a) have on board and b) what they can accomplish. Usually I do import libraries without knowing how they work and copy code from the various forums etc. out there and stitch all that together with a couple of code lines (sometimes even a few more). And: When some programmer would look at my "C++" Arduino code, he or she'd say: "This isn't even close to the beauty of C++ - this is crappy BASIC style" . @dr_spock Oh - this is intended to be all about other things than LEGO. As I said: My goal is to have my Speccy talk to the LEGO IR serial tower - which is currently far, far away ... at least for me. I am working on it . The LEGO stuff was just for setting the stage - my workspace that is. As I haven't figured out a decent way of building a Speccy at this scale that suits me, I was going with the Zeddie. Back on topic: I just ordered three tiny SP3232 based RS232 communications boards to be connected to an UnoR3. Three because chances are that I'll blow up one or two things. These boards have 4 lines (lets call them RxD/TxD/RTS/CTS) at RS232 voltage level available. The IF1 interface of my Speccy wants CTS and RTS hardware handshake - or it remains silent. In addition, the serial input buffer of the ZX IF1 is 2 bytes. So it pulls down CTS to signal stop it, I have to move these bytes somewhere else ... and when done, 2 more bytes are allowed to flood the buffer ... if I get that to work, I will of course build an old school MAX232 based little breadboard circuit. Looks much better! Ah - and found an Arduino library for other than generating plain vanilla 1 start, 8 data, no parity, 1 stop bit frames! There are not that many out there I believe. And this is certainly because these C++ folks simply program their own code to accomplish 2400 baud, 1 start, 8 data, ODD parity, 1 stop bit communication. On my laptop, HTerm hooked up via USB/Serial converter (just using a 3-wire RxD/TxD connection) to the tower can make the RCX beep. OK, and all the other things. Making it beep is good feedback though. It sounds like the RCX is happy. Best wishes Thorsten P.S.: Just looked up what "shooting the breeze" means. Yes. This is exactly it!