AndyCW

Wow nice. I'm with ZBLJ. Please show us the pic of the underside. Did you have to wax the floor for it to do that? v/r Andy

I love it. When can we see a video to get an idea of the performance? Your photography skills seem petty awesome. I wish my presentations looked half as good. v/r Andy

We also shouldn't forget that some of us have been "playing" with Lego for 30 or so years. What is common knowledge and experience to us isn't to everyone else. It is not just technical aptitude, but experience that matters. We all have different levels of the two traits. v/r Andy

Holy cow!! This thing is great. I had to laugh about the other thread and your entrance into it. Poor Horace probably feels pretty bad about that. v/r Andy

Before you contact customer service, ensure that the remote isn't the issue and that the problem is repeatable. v/r Andy

Higher voltage would be awesome. 4 cell lipo would really make the truck fly, but I'm drawing an artificial line in the sand at 3 cells. I don't know whether the servo could take it. I know that the motors could take it, but I'm worried about how much they will be degraded by the additional voltage. They are a lot harder to replace than the servo. I also already have a good supply of 3cell batteries in my RC plane stash. TL;DR 12v is a far as I am currently comfortable going How long before you jump on the TrexDMC RC Lego wagon? v/r Andy

Wow! On your rebuild try using a longer axle through the hub and through the wheel to add stability. v/r Andy

Swap receivers and see if the issue follows the suspect receiver. If so you can narrow down the failure to a receiver, if not then you need to troubleshoot further. v/r Andy

The servo sees voltages from 0 to 12 in this setup. The motor driver applies a proportional voltage depending on the pulse width from the receiver. The servo gets its power directly from the battery and the proportional voltage from the driver. The two channels on the motor driver are indistinguishable from each other. From what I know of regular servos, the Lego one isn't like them. Perhaps the servo compares its source voltage from the outside wires to the proportional voltage on the inside wires to determine position. The servo does seem more powerful than it was on the PF architecture. Disclaimer: I am not an electrical engineer or technician. v/r Andy

Here is a link where instructions of a sort are presented for the RC system and servo interconnection. http://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=88960&hl=z32drive I used an old lego battery box as my enclosure. v/r Andy

This could be the birth of a whole new genre of GBC style devices. Each stage of the device does a different step in the baking of a cake or cookies. The oven stage is going to be troublesome though. v/r Andy

I love the look. It reminds me of a Morgan Aero Eight minus the cross eyed look. v/r Andy

VK, You're kinda right about the price. The motor driver was not cheap. The Traxxas components were donated by a friend with spares. The battery is actually cheap and came from my RC planes parts stash. This one likely costs less than some of my other trucks. My other creations have had multiple Lego rechargeable batteries and multiple PF servos. You're onto something with a proper Lego RC system. This would also require more powerfull motors to rationalize. Who really needs RC for a MOC that is as slow as a racing snail? Darksheep, I'm not likely to make instructions. I just don't have the time or inclination. I can take more detailed pictures when I disassemble it though and will post them here. v/r Andy

Here is a link to my picture folder over at Imgur. https://listener79.imgur.com/all/ These are all of the pictures that I currently have. Is there something else anybody else might want to see? The truck is still assembled and another picture is easy to take. v/r Andy

Jim, Thanks for fixing me up with the embedded video. Doc, Other than the portal hubs and associated u-joints the entire driveline is Lego. The non-lego parts are for the supporting systems. The green crawler was a SCX10. It was faster and better at crawling. Hopefully my next version will be more equivalent. The response from other people at the park was much more interest in my truck than the other one. Gzzig, Thanks for the compliment. Hopefully V2 will be even better. v/r Andy

Hey gang, Here is my most recent creation. This was good enough to make a video of, but I have numerous improvements to make. I hope the above codes embed the video. I'm still having troubles with this forum and embedded media. If the above does not work, how is it done? 5292 Buggy Motor x2 PF Servo motor Efferman's Shapeways portal hubs and heavy duty U-joints RC4WD Rockcrusher H/T 1.9 tires Zippy 3 cell Lipo 11.1v 45c Pololu Trex dual motor controller Traxxas 2.4 gHz transmitter/receiver package 1.6 kg total weight Triangulated 4 links front and rear Caster, Kingpin, and Ackerman on front axle 8.3:1 axles run off of fast output Ultra heavy duty driveshafts Jeep like body Portal hubs like Unimog Double reduction center section like Rockwells The 12bevel gears acting as the pinion gears started to grind after a couple of days of abuse, but it took that long for them to cause problems. I also had heat issues with the motor controller. Prolonged high load driving would cause the motor driver to shut down. I'll need to add a fan, heat sink, and/or change the enclosure. Efferman's shapeways parts held up quite well. I was initially skeptical of the portal hubs strength, but they never let me down even if a wheel became blocked. They also kept the portal hub within the tire. This stopped them from eating leaves and grass. The rear stock lego hubs ate quite a bit of debris. It took several iterations of driveshaft before I found one that would withstand the shock loads of full throttle obstacles. My telescoping designs all failed so I needed to redesign the geometry so that the need for the telescoping feature was minimized. An hour of wheeling at the park only drained half of my battery. Next step will include more motors and less gear reduction. Questions, comments, concerns, or relevant war stories? v/r Andy

Wow that looks amazing. The complexity and uniqueness are definitely selling points. v/r Andy

The upcoming S-Brick is supposed to be good up to a three cell Lipo. The motors can definitely take it, but their lifespan may be impacted. Make an adaptor cable and go to town. Zoom-Zoom. v/r Andy

I love the brick built snowy field set. Especially the tracks the vehicle left in the snow along with the snow on the tree. v/r Andy

Wow!! Looks great. You make the rest of us feel like idiot children in a school for the gifted. v/r Andy

Looks entertaining. I hope those drive shafts hold together. I had a problem with the torque forcing, a similar design, to twist apart with shock loads. I had to redesign the geometry to avoid the need for telescoping drive shafts. The weight of the two RC modules and their batteries is going to put a hurt on your drivetrain. Good luck. v/r Andy

Watts are the unit of measurement for power. The amp hour rating on a battery tells you how long it can deliver a certain load. A 1,000 hp car with a 20 gallon tank makes the same power as a 1,000hp car with a 5 gallon tank, but they do differ in how long they can deliver that 1,000 hp. Yes, batteries are measured in more than just how much current they can supply, but that is the relevant metric when determining whether the battery is a choke point in the power system. ---------- The distinction between simplicity for playing and complexity for demo is quite relevant. I don't show my projects and tend to play with test them. Hopefully; I'll be attending an RC crawler event this year. I'll probably be the only truck made out of Lego. ---------- One of the things that I have found is that it I not how much power goes through the drivetrain but how abruptly that power is applied. The shock loads are much higher than any of the sustained loads. v/r Andy

Damn that's awesome.

The power that a pair of buggy motors can deliver with an S-brick and an unrestricted power supply is going to change the way people build. I tend more towards the performance side of the spectrum. Each feature or mechanism must pass the winnowing process. I have built multi speed transmissions and air lockers into my models and those capabilities have not made it into subsequent iterations. Right now I am working on a 2x buggy motor crawler that use some non lego parts and some of Efferman's Shapeways parts. Building at these power levels changes the whole paradigm. 9398 has less than 10 watts of power depending on battery. My new creation has over 70 watts of power. Finding weak links is a constant revision process. If a feature doesn't improve the performance, then it is hard to justify. v/r Andy

I also really like that rear end setup, but am skeptical that it can withstand the power of a buggy motor. Sudden direction changes will result in suspension movement. The 3l axle will retreat into the cv part and only engage half of the 12t db. This in addition to the bearing surface of 1 stud will allow the gears to come out of mesh. Trapping axles is also important. They tend to "walk" out when exposed to high rpm. You always seem to pull it off though, so I'll wait and see. I'm sure it will look great when it is done. v/r Andy