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While @allanp's Control Center+ idea sounds interesting (and the kinds of motors you describe for PF 2.0 is similar to what I'd like to exist), I agree with @lcvisser that there would probably be no consumer market for it, only 1% of consumers would actually appreciate it, so there is no real incentive to produce such a thing. Especially that a quite similar system can be achieved by enabling a configurable BLE gamepad controller, which would have zero production cost. Interestingly, there is an existing 2.4GHz wifi alternative to the IR controller, that looks exactly the same. https://www.greengeckoworkshop.com/products/wifi-lego-rc-combo-100m-range-2-4ghz That's a simple and nice product, wonder why it never took off, I have never seen it used, maybe it came too late when other options were around. Also, the controller seems to have only on-off input, wonder if it would be easy to turn it into a continuous joystick, and how people would like that as a product. I also don't know how it's paired with the desired receiver.

Well, that's the problem :) Unlink them.. I was able to do it on my models ;)

Cool model, I have seen this in real life and I believe Jantayg still keeps experimenting with new variants of it. For the really final renders, can you fix the tire threads to point in the same direction? :) Just looks a bit weird this way..

Thanks, I'll try that!

There's at least one more, I have just recently been contacted by the owners of lesdiy.com website to license some of my models to be sold in physical form with instructions. They told me that they source their bricks from alternative manufacturers like GoBricks. But I have read some reviews that the bricks are not that good quality and that electronics are replaced with alternative ones and don't always work as the original MOC was (for example replacing a Buwizz). When I asked what they would replace PU components with, I got no answer. I think they only recently started, I could not find known MOC-ers who actually have experience with them, only one that started working with them very recently. Also, they have some obviously megablocks statistics on their website about how many models are being sold (changes inconsistently every time I view a model)..

Is there a way to filter for those novel parts? Your list above seems to contain mainly interesting new elements, which would be pretty useful..

While this topic has been discussed a lot, it's because there is a need for it, so it's never discussed enough, so good to have a separate thread for it. I have been thinking a lot about this problem as well, so I need to chime in :) While many ideas of @allanp are quite interesting and similar to my ones, I do have to agree with the observations of @Mr Jos as well unfortunately. For example the physical blocks are interesting idea, but I guess some of them would be hard to implement (or even infeasible) on one hand, while take up a lot of space in the builds. And space is never enough, so I don't think that's would be a good direction. The controller question is an obvious yes vote for me, every hardcore fan wants it, but I am not sure about whether the general public would actually appreciate it (with their wallets) and if it would be worth producing a lego specific one. I agree that the simple and feasible solution would be to make it possible to use readily available BLE compatible PS4 and XBox Series controllers. I believe all the technology and HW is there, it would be just a matter of writing FW. Obviously, an app would be needed to configure the hubs once (hubs in official sets could even come with preloaded configs), and it should be a just a few clicks to swap official configs on hubs. I also agree that it is a good idea and simple solution to have the app control as default, so no need to buy controller by default, but it should be an available add-on option. I think it should all be doable even with the current system. I agree with @allanp about at least 3 (significantly different) types of motors, and also about the need for a small servo and a more powerful motor. Not sure about the separate gearing module though. As @Mr Jos notes, it could be dangerous to the plastic, and also the separate block would take up more space. Though I agree that somewhat faster (about 2x) motors would be useful (without reducing torque wrt current ones), while still not problematic. At least one type could be fast, as it was with the buggy motor (maybe not that fast). But let's step back one step to think about the big picture first instead of getting lost in details. The first question that needs answering when designing such a system is what means of communication to use for control. In the PF system, IR had some advantages of being simple and easy to pair/configure, but it had too many drawbacks as well in terms of communication and limitations in fine grained control, so it definitely needed to be replaced. The alternatives that come in mind and have been experimented with even before PU are Bluetooth and 2.4Ghz radio. So which one is the better choice? As far as I have heard, RC toys mostly use radio, so why not use such a system? I guess the problem is that they come with their brand specific controller-receiver pairs, so in that case Lego would really have to develop their own (as I guess they did 20 years ago already with the RC line?) and I think they wanted to avoid that as it did not seem to go that well? Anyways, Bluetooth does have standards around it and implementations of low level communication protocols, so I guess that's why it makes sense to go with that. On the other hand, it automatically brings the idea of app control with it, as that's a simple way to avoid the controller problem. So I think we've got to accept that, there is no simple satisfactory physical controller solution here, unless Lego produces their own, which would be expensive to add to each set and limited in capabilities, or would mostly look/work like existing gamepad controllers. All in all, I think really the right way would be to provide support for those gamepad controllers along with app control. The second key design issue I think is the hubs; whether to separate power supply from the receivers. I really liked the PF system, where they were separate, it felt more in Lego spirit, more composable, multiple receivers could be connected to a power supply without bloating the build with multiple big hubs. This is not possible with PU and is a big problem. Even a single hub is a big space burden on many smaller models. And such a system is actually possible with bluetooth as well, because Sbrick has done exactly that, though there is a caveat here. The PF system had a very simple motor controller chip, while the PU system has a more complex chip I guess, so it would probably need to be bigger maybe? Not sure though. Maybe it was simpler to put the two together (just like Buwizz did for the PF system). Nevertheless, separation of the two would also open the path for easier (official Lego or 3rd party) rechargeable battery versions, without the need to duplicate the control electronics and the firmware/app code. I think this is a big missing feature of the system, especially if we consider that PU plugs are not stackable and available 4 ports run out easily, or we need to use huge 6-port hubs. Where to put the motor controllers is another interesting question. I guess putting them inside the motors would make those even more expensive and even bigger, neither of them is desirable. And I guess the hub/receiver would not get too much more simple, as it needs to have a programmable chip in it anyway. This is because the hubs/receivers need to be configurable, so there must be a fairly complex chip in there that runs the FW, including the BT communication. Whether all motors need rotation encoders is another design question. I'd say not necessarily. Maybe enough to have angular motors with encoders, and linear motors without encoders (smaller and cheaper for driving vehicles, which is a significant percentage of models). Especially if a proper separate servo is available. In short, if we depart from the IR communication (which I guess most of us would wanted to get rid of), then things get much more complicated.. So it's not trivial, and some decisions of TLG start to become understandable. But I agree that there's probably room for improvement :) I do have to say that I initially was very enthusiastic about PU and its programmability, whose introduction coincided with when I got back to lego, but when I saw its problems and started to try old PF stuff as well, it was a much better play experience (of course using Buwizz as power source and BC2 for control).

It’s nice to see in @Unbrickme‘s video how much the crane relies on regular frames as well. I’d actually be tempted to think that the 3x19 frames were also developed with this model in mind, but were used earlier in other sets, especially if the crane was originally really scheduled for last year. In other sets the 3x19 frames come handy, but I never felt that they were actually really irreplacable. In this one I could believe that much more. Another interesting thought I had is if the booms had a 5x5 cross section instead, the whole crane could become more proportional at the current height (of course the base itself would have to be thinned down as well). Now for a 5x5 cross section, something like the new 5x11 frame plus the 3x19 frame could be used maybe. I wonder if that’s how it all actually started with such better proportions, and then that proved weak and they widened it to 7x7 to make it stronger. I could actually imagine that to be more plausible than startig a 1.5m height and then reducing it, because such a height would be impractical as an official set even if it was stable, they’d probably know that beforehand. Do you guys think that a strong/stable crane with 5x5 cross section could be built from the existing frame parts?

Really cool model, nice functions at this very small scale. As for the video, what I nowadays do for such presentations, is that I record continuously, in a way that I keep moving my hand in and out of the picture (just like you do here in the beginning naturally), showing each function separately (and also rotating the model in between if necessary), recording each function multiple times if necessary (for example the bucket closing took a lot of time here, could have been recorded again), and then cut the video at points where my hand is out of the picture and the model is cleanly visible, removing the segments when nothing interesting happens (hand is out of the picture, model is just standing there) and the ones that I screwed up, adding fade transitions between the remaining segments that have the actual action (hand is in the picture). This way, the result can be quite dense / short and to the point (as if you'd be teleporting from one side of the picture to the other), without lengthy parts where nothing really happens. Some boring segments can even be sped up, such as when a linear actuator is being moved for a while. In the end I add captions for explanation.

Thanks, that's what I suspected, and I guess the same would be true for the one with the new plug, and most probably the rest of the system (battery/control unit) also supports precise control. I'd be interested in buying a model where the whole system is in one package with a proportional controller, and which was actually designed to function precisely. I suspect that in the Arctic Cat model even if I'd change the controller to a proportional one in the future, the whole system will not be precise anyway, because the steering mechanism is sloppy and has a lot of lag due to two gear meshes involved. Guess that's what happens when it's designed to work with a non-proportional system, all the imprecision does not matter, only the two end points.. Otherwise the model seems promising, for example the top speed is quite good with a single drive motor, and I like the tight overall placement of all the electronics. Yeah, it was a bit hard to find the relevant part, it's toward the very end around 8:12 where it shows the continuous functioning of the servo.

I wonder why Cada is sticking with this weird form factor for the servo when they departed from the PF-like electronics line and made it RC system based and changed the plug. Why not make the servo shaped like an RC servo? The same strength can be achieved at a smaller size, as the GeekServo shows. Would love to see such a product compatible with controller and battery. Finally I found some reviews of the Arctic Cat. Unfortunately it seems pretty hard to control, the steering has a lot of slack, and even the speed is hard to control as it's really fast and only on-off.. But it has the motors with the new plugs, so still wonder if those are actually capable of fine grained control with a proper controller.

There were no such rumours to begin with. Somebody posting a sentence jokingly is not a rumor. But people still continue to talk about it, and it was getting pretty boring. Finally the reviews end the nonsense talk and we can discuss the actual product.

Yeah, that's exactly the problem. And moving to a specific step is also very cumbersome if you have a large number of steps, and also if you forgot to create a new empty step before selecting parts.. But let's not derail this topic too much.

Grouping parts into submodels while building the model certainly does help with managing parts (such as hiding) and later making instructions, but ordering parts into steps while building would be pretty hard for me at least, since I don't know the proper sequence until I see the bigger context (especially in heavily form locked builds, that can have a long reaching consequence in terms of steps). And unfortunately Studio is lacking heavily in this respect, it does not have good commands to order parts in the main building mode (such as moving parts to previous/next steps, only in instruction builder mode, where you cannot add parts), so this sucks, and hence this is one of the most cumbersome part of making instructions.. I have already filed issues about this long ago, but they never bothered to fix it.

I like the idea of a size-limited non-branded non-supercar contest. Just make sure off-roaders are also included :) I'd like to build something inspired by small Suzukis, they have a cool retro vibe (for me).. And I like when a model flows well with available lego parts instead of trying to hack parts to match a real-world shape. That entry looks pretty cool, never saw it before!

Actually, older sets did that exactly. But then you have the dilemma of whether to take them off at some point. I still have some pieces of my 8880 with the stickers applied to those multiple parts (the mirrors), I never wanted to take them apart, just in case I rebuild it... I think Lego got rid of this solution because of that, and while it looks worse, I kind of understand it. But I'd still do a sticker over multiple parts in a MOC :)

This is looking awesome so far, really curious about its functioning with that mini pneumatic system!

I liked the video, it's nice to hear both of your opinions about these topics in one discussion, even though things have been discussed elsewhere before, not everybody have read thoset. And of course I suppose the video is originally posted on YT, this thread is just to draw people's attention to it, so it's fine here as well (though agree that a simpler title is enough here).

Thanks for the info. I guess it applies to throttle as well then if the temote is just on-off. Next question is then whether the servo itself is capable of proportional control, if the remote is replaced later on to the new one. Wonder though how precisely such seemingly fast car can be controlled with on-off steering.. Guess I'll have to wait for reviews to see more.

Just came across this new Cada set, just the RC off-roader of my taste: https://decadastore.com/products/cada-wildcat-atv-c62006w For $99, I am quite tempted to give it a try. If anyone has tested this, please let me know. Haven't really found any reviews yet on YT, just this promo video. It seems quite fun to play with. Wonder what the electronics is capable of. It seems to be the new system with non-PF plugs. Wonder if the steering servo is proportional. Anybody knows that? The tires also seem quite nice (75mm).

Did you add round 1x1 tiles on top of the half pins? Those give them more weight and help them get stuck less often. But it's not a critical thing, so no big deal even if it skips a few strokes.. Glad you like it btw.

Some progress in between two holidays.. :) I have added the fake engine. It has to be a really flat one to fit under the hood, as there's not much vertical space, only about 1.5 studs. I made a V6 engine that relies on the 112 degree connectors and half pins. Those connectors just fit into the 7x5 frame, the piston rows cannot tilt sideways, but is loose enough to let the main shaft spin without friction. Due to the use of the half pins as pistons the whole engine is not super smooth, but good enough, doesn't jam, I have built it in real life to test it. Here it is inside the chassis; it just fits in between the shock mounts (tested that as well, tight fit, but okay). The other thing I did is the bull bar and the winch. I wanted to make the mounting of the bull bar similarly triangulated as in the original, which uses angled liftarms in a smart way. On a smaller scale, angled connectors can be used similarly. The winch is functional with a ratchet mechanism and release lever (also built it in real life). Also, I have realized that parts that hold the top are not DBG (as I thought based on the official instructions) but black in the original, so I have recolored them to black. I have also given this a try, but not so many thin liftarms are available in dark blue (the key 4L is missing for example), so I could not even build a structurally weak version of it. Also, the thin stripe would be different from the rest of the stripes (especially the cross stripe on the tail), so I think it would not end up any better than now, so I won't pursue this any more.

Glad you like it, and of course I am okay with someone else shrinking the same model, as long as it's not a copy of mine :) I can see your chassis is quite different, though I wonder how different you can make the body at the same scale.. Do you already have plans?

Exactly :D I am actually thinking of sacraficing some Buwizz motors to try it out some time..

Sure, I know, I have used them, but they have a very bad form factor, difficult to integrate into (smaller) AWD vehicle, without putting it into the middle of the cockpit.. Having those motors in a better form factor would be great. I heard that the motor itself can be hacked into the L motor..