Jan Johansen

There is a design on thingiverse: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5925450

I made a new revision with a JST RCY male plug under the HUB ports. It's not 100% there yet as the connector is a bit too close to the PCB, but I managed to remove(0,5mm) off some plastic standoffs/throughole clip on the HUB connectors just above the JST connector to get the lid to close. Will try to fix this issue later, as I still got 1 HUB to modify.

I have to agree 🙂 Thanks!

Not really invasive changes, just re-using some of the port pins on the hubs for other purposes. No physical alterations...

It's not really just the hub ports, but what we do with them. There are a lot of IO's on the STM32F030, and they are mappable. So if I want to talk to another device over UART/USART, I2C, SPI or so, I can easily do that in C. The STM32F030 is capable of 6 USART connections. So we are talking about sensors and other small things we want to do. Like blinking leds, color and distance sensor, RFID and stuff like that.

Yeah, there is nothing wrong with the original firmware. We just want some more options for our builds. We are not using the Lego Android software and don't want to use any other device than the remote to control them, but we want network connectivity between our trains, some more IO/UART/I2C onboard and a main ESP32 that is controlling the track switches, lights and so on. Pybricks would have been just fine, but without any IO/UART it's too limited for now.

I uploaded two versions with bottom holes now. My 3d printer is pretty dialed in, so tolerances should be okay. There is 1 version with 5.10mm holes which makes for a tight fit and there is 1 version with 5.20mm which is a bit more loose-fitting. More like original Lego, but they wear out over time. So 5.10mm does hold up better. Yeah, i have tried that code as well and could not get it to work. I have just written a basic python script so we can use the control as well. Nothing fancy, but a bit better feel that the original Lego feel when it come's to speed control. 20 steps forward/backward and you dont have to release the buttons to control the speed. We are on the way to drop Pybrics and just program the STM32F030 microcontroller with C instead.

Takk skal du ha 🙂

Yeah, exactly what we will do. Flat pouch lipo's in the trains with space constraints and 18650's in the one's with enough space. I was thinking the same about the connector in the base, but there is no way to get a connector in the housing without making it 1 plate higher. The same with the studs. The male studs from a mating brick will hit the screws, as seen in the image with section analysis below. So i'm just using flat tiles under and sandwich the hub between bricks. If you want to i can make a revision with studs that are one plate higher? There might be a revision with some connectors in the near future, as we want to get some UART/I2C out in a custom built firmware for it. We are using Pybricks for now, but there is no way to get UART working on the Powered up hub, even in the beta version.

No problem, will post a schematic and board there when its done.

Guess its nothing new with this, but we like to show off our trains 😄 There are 2x SMD leds in front and rear. 2x leds are connected in series with a 2.2K inline resistor. Sorry in advance for the licence plate 😁

No, i did'nt see it until now. We are on the same track it looks like. I really like the design of that tram 😍 We are using lithuim battery without any battery protection from our rc cars/drones/planes. With 2S 3000mAh lithuim ion's we get around 2-3 times the amount of running time as well. We have also designed a battery cutoff with a TL431 and a n-channel MOSFET(for the tech heads here 😄) that cut off the battery at around 6.2V to save our batteries. Will post a schematic here when its all done. Thank you, Thorsten!

My son and I, are building a short wheelbase train, so we needed to get creative when it comes to space. We removed the battery tray and "converted" the hub to use lithium polymer and lithium ion batteries. We uploaded the bottom case to Thingiverse if anyone is interested. The hub does take up 1 brick and 1 plate in height now. The biggest thing is we can now separate the battery and the hub. The hub/motors run so much better on lithium batteries. Much less sluggish in inclines and so on. The train we are building is not the one in the pictures, it just for testing 😄 Thing: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6262436