EyesOnly

Your welcome and yes for that price it sure is worth it.

Nice car. BTW what is that inside the wheels, the wheel hubs? Looks almost like half a turntable.

Wow that is really fast and strong.

That is murphys law in action.

Well since asked about it i though i would share a old marble machine i made years ago. This is not in anyway a GBC module since it was made for a circular flow instead of a linear one. Anyways the pics don't look so good due to crappy camera but i hope it's still enjoyable. The machine did not as i claimed in another thread use the newer thread links. It's to old for that. Instead a long chain build from small chain links ran in a loop and on it was link threads with 1x4 plates on them that grabbed hold of the marbles and pulled them up. Good thing i looked at the pictures more closely for when i started writing that last sentence i didn't even see the plates having only seen the small pictures of the machine. It is embarrassing to know that i have forgotten so much about this thing. The motor is clearly way to fast for its own good. This becomes more apparent when you see the video. It stalls a lot. Luckily it is mounted in such a way that when it stalls it separates slightly allowing it to spin without getting damaged. http://www.flickr.co...N06/9547648350/ http://www.flickr.co...N06/9547639466/ That second video should show marbles going up. It's kinda hard to see them. http://www.flickr.co...N06/9547639054/ Now we get to the exit where the marbles leave the pump and hopefully find their way towards the flip flop. It also shows the two paths the marbles can take depending on where the flip flop sends them. One rolls over some ribbed hoses until they separate forcing the marbles to fall down to the collection area. The other path is made from studded plates and just leads the marbles through a bend before it ends and the marbles fall down. Whilst using studded plates instead of tiles might lead to balls jumping out of the trough, i will find out what it sounds like with balls instead of marbles. It will likely make a nice sound. Here is the last picture showing the flip flop One thing i quickly learned and that everyone who is into GBC will agree on is just the insane amount of ways a machine or module like this can stall or otherwise fail. If you think about 1001 ways it could stall and prevent them, the module will gladly think about 1002 more ways and demonstrate every last one of them. And this thing wasn't even that complex. Just imagine what someone like akiyuky most go through. Anyways moving forward i'm not likely to build any more marble machines, from now on it's GBC for me. The dropping the ball thing might not work so well with plastic balls that will likely bounce all over the place, but balls guided by troughs made from studded pieces is definitely something i will try. I like the sounds it makes. Oh i almost forgot. While this was made about the same time as the GBC standard came out i'm not sure if i had heard about it. What i did know about was a Lego marble machine made by Mattias Wandel. This page contains more links to his wooden once which seems to be the material he prefers. Ok time to post this long post.

Do the spheres have to have much friction to them? There has been a lot of talk of using plastic beads as a replacement for lego balls in GBC modules. Maybe a few beads of some size could help here. The have holes in them that wont fit pins but could if drilled out. But being hard plastic they wont have much grip but if sandwiched between tires it doesn't matter as much as when using a wedge belt.

A tutorial would be great. BTW i just compared the price of balls to about what my beads will cost and i would get about 25 balls, not including shipping for the same cost as 100 beads, which at least for me had free shipping. Prices need to go way down for me at least to pick up some official balls.

How did you tilt the zamor balls? I though that whatever used as a sphere had to have an hole in it.

dr_spock see above for answers to your question. I wont have any Lego balls for a long time to compare with. Ok just had another look at my old marble machine. The pics aren't good but i'll make a new thread once my flickr has been properly set up. I wanna make subfolders and stuff.

I'm stumped at the moment for solutions but it would be nice to have someone else building it. Balloon tires, even larger ones seem like a good idea.

Nice to see it in action. Well it looks to me like you need to scale it up a bit. Not sure what you would use as sphere but getting larger tires would give more torque through the gearbox. Maybe larger tires but the same spheres is all that's needed. How about Tire 43.2 x 22 ZR. They are just slightly larger but has a nice grip and are pretty common.

Oh sorry you meant in the scale model. I thought you meant that even the real thing doesn't work although it clearly does.

The fact that real thing exist that use this suggests that it does indeed work. Yet i too fail to see any actual gearing taking place.

Those balls only have 31 and 36 bricklink lots respectively so while they might be a good source eventually, right now buying 20+ of them would cost a lot. My should be here in a few days i hope. BTW year ago i made a marble machine after reading about them. It used marbles instead of Lego balls due again to me not wanting to buy any. Anyways while it worked about as reliably as any such machine does, it was very noisy due to the weight of the marbles. I have separated the marbles that were to large to fit (16+ mm)into a smaller bag. The smaller marbles are 15 mm something so still bigger than what's recommended. While that machine wasn't based on GBC and i only have crappy pics of it, i plan to use marbles when i begin testing my GBC if the beads aren't there yet or even if they are to see the difference. The weight difference alone will make it interesting. BTW if you are in the market for balls, don't use marbles. Due to their weight, anything built for beads/ plastic balls will probably struggle a lot with it and most likely fail. Simpler modules would probably work but i don't even want to think about all the weight posed by 20 marbles trapped inside the same module on their way up. Just look at the more advanced modules to see what i mean. Oh since i've talked so much about it. The machine i built had a conveyor belt using the newer track links that pushed the marbles against a wall as they went up. If i build another conveyor it will use some sort of scoop to lift balls. 2 friction pins seems to be used a lot for this. The motor powering the machine was mounted so when the pump stalled, which of course it did at times, it separated from the machine slightly so that the gear on it could continue spinning without harming it. While this was due to bad mounting from me i really liked the effect. Sadly i doubt any machine i build now will have that feature so i've better fit a clutch gear somewhere. The model wasn't really that much fun but now i feel confident that i can build something better. Since i will need a few modules to get a loop i while have lots of practice.

Ok my mistake.

Weight and center of gravity is most certainly important factors.

Well having tried several games without it i must say that it sucks. Well the steering wheel is not something i have room for near the computer anyway and i only started using it to see if the adapter could work so i wont be bothering with it anymore. Maybe someday i'll buy a new or newer used one but for now it stays in the box. I've been looking around regarding adapters and will wait until monday before ordering. I did find one that has 2 serial plugs and uses the prolific driver linked to earlier but it's not the cheapest choice and i only need one plug anyway. I know i said i would wait but i'm curious to get my rcx working again even though i can't remember what kind of GBC module i was gonna build for it.

While fitting the crazy krawler tires to the rims i decided to check the weight. Here is a table showing the tires and rims measured. crazy krawler: 69 gr 84 with rims 44772: 15 gr power puller: 182 gr new: 16 gr As you can see the power pullers are more than twice as heavy as the third party tires. I also measured the new rims and they weigh 16 gr compared to the old ones 15. BTW i fitted one of the CK on a newer rim at it looks to be working. There was another thread regarding the new rims not working with third party tires and i don't think that all third party tires are affected by the change. But i haven't and wont at the moment test drive them. Maybe something changes then.

Well that is exactly what i'm using and thanks for giving a good explanation of why it doesn't work. So the compatibility is in the steering wheel? Makes me wonder if buying plugs would work or do i need to go for adapters with a cable. Here are 3 links to various adapters at a swedish retailer. Just to show the difference in design. http://www.webhallen.com/se-sv/hardvara/66437-deltaco_usb_till_seriell_adapter_rs232_db9ha http://www.webhallen.com/se-sv/hardvara/128053-deltaco_seriell_adapter_rs-232_db9ha_till_usb_20 http://www.webhallen.com/se-sv/hardvara/55117-deltaco_usb_till_seriell_adapter_rs232_db9ha_dongle After looking at deltacos own website i found a mountain of converters. Look here. I looked up the ones that store sells and all had drivers so i guess they all work. Funny how a cable that adepts a serial plug into a usb plug isn't really a adapter. Well i guess a chip really is needed and without it all it does is change the plug without really offering any compatibility. This has been really educational. I'll still wait a while before ordering, if only to have a change to see if any local stores sell one. Not that i think so. Those kinds of adapters aren't exactly common to use nowadays.

Oh there is truly something just waiting to end up in a GBC module.

I found some videos.

I have ordered from the this ebay store that sells plastic beads as linked to from another thread. I will post back when i have them and what i think about them.

Well after several hours trying to get my steering wheel to work i know a bit more. I need a new steering wheel, at least if i want force feedback. Or at least a newer windows game to test it on. The fact that windows even finds it proves that the adapter do work, at least when connected to something that has its own power supply. Here is a picture of it. I tried some linux games but still no force feedback. This has nothing to do with the subject of this thread but when trying to make my Logitech Formula Force work in windows xp i stumbled upon this guide that worked just fine. I'm just mentioning it just in case someone else ever needs that information. As for mindstorms i need to find an adapter that has a chip in it, something i don't think mine does. Or go for a usb-tower. Any ideas on how i can spot the right kind of converter? I'd hate to buy the wrong kind.

Ok now i have officially given up. I tried installing first RiS then BXCC and none would find the tower. Funny thing is that before i rebooted the computer RiS worked. Afterwards it didn't. Still not sure why. Then i tried installing the other tower drivers and the xp patch but not difference. Looks like i need to look into a usb-tower or a controller card with db9 plug. I'm thinking about the controller card since it will work for more than just one thing and it would probably be cheaper too. In any case i'm dropping this until next month at least. I've got a ton of ideas so i wont need this right now. I even have at least one more GBC idea but you wont hear about it if it fails. Any ideas on what i could try other than switching hardware would be appreciated. The choices as for as operating systems are concerned are xp on the main and win7 on a laptop. Maybe i should go for another usb-adapter. The one i have is really old, the steering wheel it came with has win98 drivers, so perhaps a newer one would work better. I'll upload my own picture tomorrow of what the adapter looks like.

Ok i'm close to giving up now. I've tried several reinstalls under linux using the guide linked to in the last post and all for some reason crashed with the same error message. I think those patches are the cause. The program ran fine before. Well the installation went on a little further. I know you guys can't help me with linux, i need to figure out where those files went and delete them, i just want to state what i have been up to. There is use trying a virtual install again. If linux can't find the adepter then i can't enable it in the virtual machine and therefor it wont be found. Well the only thing i can try now is restarting into windows xp and hope that works.