Repkovsky

To clarify - better new electronics, than PU in the state of decline. PU is ideal in terms of having a lot of options for people able to use them, but it might be just too much for most of applications and since versatility comes at the cost - also too expensive for TLG to maintain.

I would be astonished if LEGO Group was secretly preparing new electronic system, but I'm afraid this assumption does not have to be true. More pessimistic perspective is: Lego sets are becoming more and more 3D puzzles with instruction, designed almost solely for display and not to spark creativity and build MOCs. Sometimes motor would be nice to have in some sets, but it isn't common requirement. Recent years in Technic come with overwhelming wave of technically uninteresting cars, where the only possible need is simple, reusable motor assembly, with unified functions, for one-per-year motorized set - and that is exactly we got with new Technic "Move" Hub (present in 42176, 42214 and coming 42239 sets). No sets with complicated mechanics, where motor would be needed to power it up. On the other hand - no need to develop complicated control programs, completely new app profile for each new set - just new interface in the app, done. New system from CS&AI fits well this very application - independent pieces with wireless charging and communication, intended for this almost only one remaining theme where Lego wants you to tear down what you build and build something else (however, still with their instruction). For Technic wireless charging would be pure pain in the megablocks, since if we had each motor with its own battery, they should be all accessible for charging - this is not going to happen. What do we miss in PoweredUp which would be nice to have in new electronics system? Maybe Power Functions' simplicity and compatibility with new USB plugs, but not much more. Is it worth building new system? For me end of cooperation with FLL and progressive phasing out PoweredUp is sign of TLG giving up electronics, apart from few exceptions: CS&AI, Trains and cookie cutter Technic cars. The only hope is that the current weakness in Technic lineup is rather result of Powered Up end-of-life and some new electronics systems will bring renewal of Technic.

Yeah, that would be great, but Lego just abandoned Mindstorms, discontinues Spike, there is no developed studdless robotic system, so hopes are rather low :( .

Apart from that: first, all remote controlled non-car sets are excluded (unless Lego introduces new motor system, as Powered Up seems to be discontinued). Second, all frame-like cars are excluded too, as only limited number of customers would be interested in such "ugly" (for today's standards) model, and reworking them into fully panelled version would make them totally different from original version. What is left are famous sets like 8868 Air Tech Claw Rig, maybe 8480 Space Shuttle, 8110 Mercedes-Benz Unimog U400 (but we just had something similar), maybe 9397 Logging Truck. Others might be to recent and not so much "historical" to be part of the 50th anniversary. So being very optimistic, I would guess we can get renewed 8868 Air Tech Claw Rig.

I suspect in development process it takes some time from conceiving new element and using it for early prototypes to official release of the set containing it.

The problem is not about the space in the superstructure (one more motor is probably possible to fit there), but in cable connection between tracked chassis and superstructure - to allow free rotation it must be avoided. Then you need 3 motors in chassis and 3 in the superstructure.

Thanks! I thought about this, and it may be possible but it would require some substantial changes. Powering the forward actuator is totally doable, but to get 3 motors in the superstructure for 3 actuators, the motor powering superstructure rotation must be moved to the base, since there is one free slot in the Bluetooth Cube there. With the current model size, there is not much space down there to fit it in elegant way, but I think everything could be solved by slight enlargement of the model, e.g. like the one proposed by @mpj earlier in this thread.

I have motorized the excavator using Circuit Cubes - 5 Cubit Motors and 2 Bluetooth Cubes. Free instructions available at https://rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-248486/Repcovsky/motorized-ec230-electric-excavator-circuit-cubes/.

While the numbers are far from exact, on https://brickset.com/sets/theme-Technic/ you can sort sets each year by the number of people who own (by their declaration) given set. Clearly in recent years cars are on the lead.

Here is stud.io file of the normal set https://fogeyman.tistory.com/1629

Great construction! I happy that my app was useful for you :). For now it is not possible, but these are good ideas for future extension. I hope I will find some time to implement it.

Hi, I just want to thank @Asper for this code, which inspired me to write my own remote to Circuit Cubes in JavaScript, and @Cornelius for his Legoino project which is the cleanest implementation of Lego Wireless Protocol and allowed me to understand and implement myself communication with Lego remote. My remote is designed to control cars but can be also adapted for trains - more about the project in the thread on Technic forum.

Hi! I want to share with you results of my recent works, which you may find interesting/useful: Motorization of 42164 Off-road Buggy with Circuit Cubes Web-browser remote control for Circuit Cubes supporting return-to-center steering. Controlling Circuit Cubes using Lego remote with smartphone as hub. 1. Motorization: Despite the small size of Circuit Cubes squeezing Bluetooth Hub and two Cubit Motors into 42164 Off-road Buggy was quite a challenge, but it turned out to be possible - you can see results below: In case you wanted to build the model (free instructions available at rebricable.com) or use CC to drive your own MOC here are some notes about challenges and their possible solutions: A. Rear drive for 42164 There is not much space at the rear of 42164 - initially I hoped to put hub and motor symmetrically but it was impossible. Transmission of power from the engine to the wheels can be done using 3x 16-tooth wheels, but the resulting buggy speed was a bit low (wheels with small diameter do not help here). The solution that kept neat arrangement of the hub and motor was to use new 20-tooth and 12-tooth gears and chain to gear up the drive. It might be possible to swap hub and motor and move hub 1 stud to the bottom, to use 24-tooth and 8-tooth gear for further speed-up, but this reduces access to hub on-off switch. The power of cubit motor is absolutely sufficient (someone used CC to drive 42128 ), the only thing which can stop the buggy is extremely poor grip of the wheels. B. Return-to-center steering Fortunately putting motor in the front of buggy was quite easy, contrary to making working return-to-center steering. As this can be useful for somebody, here are a few approaches that didn't work, and the final one, which does: First idea was to keep original way of steering 42164 by leaning it left or right with use of the motor directly moving the front axle. This does not work, as the rear spring in buggy is too strong and rotating front axle to one side rather moves the entire front of buggy up, than leans it to the side. Fixing front axle horizontally (no more leaning) + 1x4 gear rack +16-toooth gear to steer the wheels and two rubber bands to return them to center. But Cubit Motor when not powered is practically impossible to rotate even by hand, so no rubber will make it move. I tried to use 16-toooth with pin-hole instead of axle-hole to make clutch, this would, however require to have rubber bands weak enough to allow running motor to steer the wheels, but strong enough to return wheels to center, when motor is not powered. I don't know if this is possible even in theory, but even if it was, finding proper rubber bands would be probably hard. As the mechanical return-to-center was hard to implement, other option is to do the steering to remote control side. Since the original CircuitCubes app does not have this feature, I decided to write custom remote control application using HTML/JavaScript, which would allow to use in in the web-browser in smartphone. But here comes another problem: Cubit motors do not have rotation sensor and rotating the motor by given angle requires powering it for precisely determined time interval. The required precision is of order of a few milliseconds and... it some times works, but sometimes not exactly. To reduce impact of this imprecision I used 8-tooth gear instead of 16-tooth, but still there were annoying situations where centering failed. So the question was: how to make return-to-center which would ignore small errors of the motor rotation angle? Solution is to make some part of the rotation idle and affect the position of wheels only when the angle of the motor's axle is big enough. The motor has attached thin 3-beam, which after some rotation touches the tip of , moving the wheels (see picture below). When it retracts towards middle, two elements center the steering rod. Misalignment due to rotation error sometimes happens, but it is rare enough to not to spoil the fun. 2. Web-browser remote control for Circuit Cubes supporting return-to-center steering The app allows to control 2 motors using Circuit Cubes Bluetooth Hub, the code is available in github repo. You can select channels where motors are connected, revert the direction of rotation (as it also depends on how connection was done), and adjust the speed of motors. Default setting of steering motor speed (125) make it strong enough to move the wheels steering rod and counter the rubber connectors, and slow enough to allow precise movement for the defined return time (90ms). 3. Controlling Circuit Cubes using Lego remote with smartphone as hub. As you can see the application has additional button to connect Lego remote. It turned out to be possible to implement small subset of Lego Wireless Protocol, just to receive button events. This allows smartphone to be a relay for communication from Lego remote to Bluetooth Cube. The only drawback is small delay, but it is not very noticeable. I am mentioning this topic separately, since my adventure with programming Circuit Cubes started from a thread on Lego Train Tech forum, where such relay was made using C++, Legoino and M5 Atom microcomputer (thanks for sharing your code @Asper!). It wouldn't be much work to expand my current application to control trains, and smartphone as a main hardware is more accessible than M5 Atom. If somebody would like to do it I am open for cooperation.

I am not mistaken, lighting is realized using optical fibers or (less likely) new kind of electrical connection, with at least 6 ports available.

Excavators of comparable scale have around 1000 parts (8043 - 1127 parts, 42006 - 720 parts), same about trucks (42112 - 1161 parts, 42024 - 948 parts).