hrontos
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Everything posted by hrontos
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That's great. This means top 100 most popular entries will get the prize and not only those fully conforming rules. I wonder if they filtered completely off-topic entries. -
I have just received an email from TLG asking for my postal address for the shipping of the winning model. So it looks like they really will ship the model to the top 100.
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TLG style or full body style?
hrontos replied to piterx's topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
"Lines only" is better if you plan nice interior working details to be seen. If you focus more on being RC without taking care how nicely the interior will be done, full body would be better. -
Some interesting info on this issue can be found here.
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Yes, that would act as a powerbackbone. But you have to connect input cable of the PF switch to BB and output from the PF switch to powerbackbone. And then connect PF motors using extension cables to powerbackbone. As you said, you will need 5 PF switches, all of the operating in the same direction they will supply the powerbackbone by 9V, 5Amps max. It is not possible to connect PF switch input to powerbackbone, since 8886 cable connects only 2 of 4 wires to old 9V system parts and unfortunately PF switch need on input those other 2 wires. Output of the PF switch can be connected to old 9V system parts.
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I am sorry, you are right. I knew that 8886 has this limitation and did not know that also 8871 have it. You could possibly overcome it by an old style 9V extension cable, but it will not work in combination with PF switch or receiver until you will use solution like this which is probably more than you originaly intended.
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Co Connection is parallel not serial. This means, that voltage stays 9V but power will sum up and you will be able to draw 5Amps at once from this big battery box and not about 1Amp as is common for the standard BB. This means, that you could theoreticaly power a motor that need 5Amps. Standard BB cannot power device that need more than 1Amp. Just make sure you switch them on in the same direction. BB has protection against short circuit which activates automatically, it better to prevent it.
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First of all the source of the problem probably is the fact, that 10 years ago they used precolored plastic so the batches were much bigger. They received colored pellets from the plastic suplier. And they mixed different batches of pellets to get better color consitency. Now they color transparent plastic so batches are smaller and therefore differences appear more often which makes it more anoying.
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Battery boxes can be linked using 8871 extension wire. Just make sure you switch on all of them in the same direction to avoid short circuit. You will need 4 of them to link all 5 boxes. You should get one huge 9V BB that will be able to give you 5x more power than standard BB.
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I am not sure that this is true. Source of plastic is the same, but in last years they switch to transparent platic, that is colored later by adding pigments and that results in batches you see. Each part is done by different machine and therefore also color mixing may vary. Of course it is acceptable only to a certain level. There are many bussineses facing this problem. My daughter built a beach house from the creator series and it has also this problem with the blue - it is very visible on those flat walls. But it is supposed to be a building toy and not a perfect modeling set so the level is still acceptable - and not even spoted by kids. To get closer to this unavoidable reality, we have added this as an automatic feature to LDD to POV-Ray Converter - differently shaped bricks have slightly different shade of the same color.
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This "I am not making money out of it so I can copy and use it" issue is very common mistake. I work in IT and people are using illegal software just because they think that since they use it just for fun, they can use without buying a licence. Of course, it is a matter of personal taste of each author, if he will tolerate such behaviour or not. But at least attribution is something that should be always there. I am pretty sure, that he is pleased, problem is that nobody knows that those words are actually Blackbird's. It is not that dificult to write the description of an eBay item starting with words like "according to Blackbird's Technicopedia this set is ....".
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It's always disapointing when somebody uses work of somebody else without any attribution. It's normal that it makes you a bit upset. In today's internet and "download everything" world people somehow lost the feeling that informations from the internet are also work of somebody and there should be some kind of reward for their usage. At least in the form of attribution. But I also see many times that it is not ignorance or any intension, ordinary people just do not know or do not have that habit. I can imagine mother or father selling old sets of their kids, and since they do not know anything about that, they take what they find on the internet, without mentioning the source. I do not try to appologize it. This kind of copying is partially acceptable in these individual cases and when I compare it to people which create their website based just on copying from other websites or when I saw somebody selling on eBay instructions created by designer Han. It is unacceptable for me, when somebody makes his regular daily bussines based on such copying.
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If you do not have a voltmeter this should also work (suitable also for purists ): 1. Take PF switch and fix it in neutral position using some axle and bricks to make sure you will not activate it accidentaly during test. 2. Apply cooking foil the OUTPUT connector of the switch just like you want to apply it to the extension wire. 3. Connect PF motor to the switch. 4. Connect switch wire to battery box. 5. Turn on the battery box (it is not important in which direction). 6. Motor will rotate in a certain dirrection. Turn off the battery box. 7. Now disconnect the motor and connect the same motor to the extension wire with cooking foil. Connect extension wire to your old style power source. 8. Activate old style power source. Motor will rotate and if your source polarity is correct, it will rotate in the same direction as in the point 6. If direction is wrong, your source has wrong polarity and you have to reverse it. Although battery box has resetable fuse protection against accidental short circuit and switch and motor also cannot be damaged when you make some mistake during this test, I still consider voltmeter being better way to check it, so use this method only if you do not have other option at your own risk.
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Any standard voltmeter will show you +9V or -9V, depending on which voltmeter connector you will connect to which of the outer pins of the new PF battery box. The same value (sign is important) you should get when you will measure the voltage on that cooking foil. Voltmeter connector has to be connected exactly the same way as when you checked the battery box.
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Although it is written that reversing polarity will not harm the receiver I would suggest to check the polarity and make sure you will not reverse the polarity of the power source. Receiver expects 9V with a certain polarity on the outer connector pins. Otherwise it should work without problems, since the cooking foil just connects one used and one unsed wire.
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What I do not like on RC-izing everything is the ugliness of the result. For example RC version of the 8265 is nice, because model looks like unchanged. RC version of 8069 was just ugly. Battery box in the drivers cabin, wires everywhere. Of course, also professionals like TLG sometimes make not so nice motorization (like for 8070, 9395 or 42000).
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Sometimes RC version demostrates better some problems of a real car. It helps to learn that gears have to be synchronized to change gears under the load etc. I am not sure what is default by others, but I do not expect speed or huge power from any LEGO model. Power functions do not provide enough power and friction in LEGO parts is high. On LEGO I like all those gears and realistic representations of the functions and do not look for the speed.
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There is also written: Hi Everyone - Apologies but we have small correction on this announcement. There will NOT be a pre-order beginning on July 1st. It will instead be available for purchase on August 1st.
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Let's Roll....
hrontos replied to Alasdair Ryan's topic in LEGO Technic, Mindstorms, Model Team and Scale Modeling
Nice little model. Our road workers probably got inspired by your threaded design and used something similar to make all those holes on the roads after the winter. -
I am more optimistic.TLG always distributes many copies of a new set to many people and LUGs just for testing and review purposes, to catch some possible errors etc. So may be they really decided to distribute part of the production dedicated for this purpose to the competition participants. And this competition was always presented as PR action for the fans and not as a money maker, so they could have decided to invest 0.5% of the income from this set into participants. Of course, in money it is a lot of money, but as 0.5% it is not that high percentage. After all, they will not sale it through traditional shops, so whole profit from the sale will go to TLG. I am pretty sure, that traditional retailers get much more than 0.5% of the recommended price.
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First option would be really funny. There were some guys who commented and also probably voted for each entry. Of course, top 100 entries with most votes should be rewarded. What is not known is if they will take into account only valid entries. And imagine that crane crawler that Alasdair made as a joke is a perfectly valid entry and probably made it to the top 100. :-)))))
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I think this is a compromise, so that the model can be grabbed by holding just the roof.
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Another competition? rm8 will provide us a part list and we can start. May be TLG will then include it.
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@rm8: Will TLG include there also some B-model?
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Yes, it is dark blue, so it is different from the pins. It will be sold as a whole set, as you see it, not just the new top.