freakwave

No. 2: 2 votes No. 13: 1 vote No. 31: 3 votes No. 19: 1 vote

So if I understand this thing right, it is basically a (big) receiver being able to control 8 PF-Outputs And this receiver is working not on IR but on BT or something else. Having eight outputs it will for sure have an issue with the power-consumption/distribution. It can have for sure have different electronics to deliver more current than the IR-Receiver. I think it would be a good space saver, compared to 4 x IR Receiver and the Battery pack fW

I found it on Brickshelf earlier today and was very impressed! This is a beautiful MOC with a lot of love for details!

Thanks for sharing that one! This looks very immune to balls getting jammed and it keeps moving the stock that balls keep coming. Very nice!

Very nice wheel! It is quite an efficient construction, the (double) rim looks sturdy, even if it is only axles and technic connectors. What is the weight of the wheel? 600g? When going bigger the constraints are the weight/tension the spokes need to bear, so a bigger number would be better, but even more the dirve will have problems powering a larger wheel. It needs to produce a lot of torque to start turning it! I did a wheel myself with a diameter of around 148 studs and a weight of around 1800g, I tried also to power it through the hub, with a axle up through the colums, that failed miserably even wen puting 2x2 roundbricks there to reduce the torsion, finally i settled for the common mode of drive, a small wheel against the rim. If you want to add more spokes I have a look at this sample here, it provides 24 spokes within a 4-wides space. I think more is not possible in this space. But if you find out, let me know! Center_AllSpokes4 by 1wave, on Flickr fW

Hi Mahjqa, Yes, snow was not that plenty this year! Just recently the heavens opened their doors...but at -15°C I did not take my LEGO out yet :-) Great vehicle with an interesting concept for the steering, like it a lot. When I first saw the initial picture after loading the page I thought, how can it keep its balance, but then I saw the skis on its side! How about traction? I saw that it moves pretty well, but do the thin liftarms generate enough "grip" to move ahead or will it start digging at one point? Putting the XL into the hub is a great idea as well as the construction of the actual wheel. It keeps much of the snow out. fW

Really an imppressive piece of landscape! (what an understatement!) It is interesting to see your MOC (my own countryside) growing, I love the bridges between the trees! I know the pain you had setting the trees up at Bricking Bavaria, but this really paid off! S many little scenes, still some more things to discover. I am looking forward to seeing it again and also on the next planned parts... What they might be, ..hm?

After getting my hands on a few of the fellows from Series 6 I had to swap the hair around to make the highlights match the suits...or vice versa! Misson completed! Where did they leave the pink S.H.I.P.? MF-S6_SpaceLadies by 1wave, on Flickr Also looking at the surgeons I felt they need a different job badly! So do away with the syringes, get your tools and head up to the clean-room to fix the solar panels. The surgeon is definately a multiple must-buy to seriously staff a Moonbase module! MF-S6_CleanRoom by 1wave, on Flickr Thansk for watching!

ups, fitzi, you just beat me by writing this review I got it today and wanted to post the review! What I need to add to your review: The box is preatty neatly filled by the bags, most is of course air, but the bag is as big as the box and thus the instructions are kept wrinkle free. Your's is built with parts as shown on the box -> Mine has the new technic triangle. Production stamp on the box is embossed as "46M1". What about yours? -> The part-list in the instuctions show the old triangle What is also interesting: TLG gives us this part in black! Thnaks!

I am still thinking hard on what the possible difference is between a Creator bucket (e.g. the 1600 bricks box) and this Minecraft idea. As mentioned before the idea behind the two seems similar. Basic bricks, build something. It looks to me like fast forward to the past. i.e. sets of the early '70s, where there was only a very limited set of bricks available. Minecraft has an advantage of building stability (although I never played it, so this is an assumption) One can stack bricks and they construction does not break. Or is there some physical model behind it? like balance, weight, etc. Please educate me... What it could be would be in my opinion an add-on to the Creator/Basic Bricks Buckest in "fancier" colors. ... and, why should there be a license fee from LEGO to MC? Didn't lego build first with bricks?

In my opinion it is an incredible line-up, so many different sets. I saw the complete line at the San Mateo LEGO store yesterday but unfortunately did not buy anything. Great colors are included and will make good use for some MOCs. As noted before it is pleasing to see that the price range is alright and not in the Belville range. well done!

You have mounted one of the differentials (front or rear) in the wrong direction. Take care where the large bevel gear is, left or right. If they are not according to the instructions you get this effect. The rotations of front and rear are nullified in the center differential... I have it myself, toooo excitet when building it, but havn't corrected it either... fW

hi, I can only tell you the view for Dubai as it was a few years ago. There was a franchise LEGO store in all the LEGO store beauty, but Jan Beyer told me that there was no official store there. Somewhere I read that this That one was at the ibn Battuta Mall. unfortunately it closed shop. It had a good PaB selection, but the stocking of sets was poor. It was never easy to get something. I remembered that I was waiting for the 8421 to arrive but in vain. Finaly I bought it abroad. Prices we more than Central Europe. The other location to buy LEOG were Toys'RUs which was pretty well stocked, got my 8288 there and then a local bookstore, Magrudy's. With a limited selection. For Oman I cna see that in Muscat there's TRU and Magrudy's as well. I can't tell you prices. and apart from the big cities there is very little chance to get LEGO. fW

Arrgh, another year I was too late for a submission, too much work! Looking at your entries it seems I have got the steering quite alright. Engine is another part :-) I will post pictures of mine hopefully tomorrow. The most intriguing part for me are the parts that you see in the B-model but not obviously in the A-model. e.g. the light grey liftarm bent. I did not include it in the model as I did not see the palce for it. The attachment of the steering to the chassis I did with a 3L liftarm, not the bent one. fW

The LED topic is nearly worth a seperate thread... I have the luck that I've got a big components store in my town so I have a bunch of different LEDs. It is not only the wattage of the LED that matters, but also the directional output of the LED. Usually you find this in the datasheet, but some electronic components let you search also for a specific angle. The angle defined here is usually where there is 50% of power left. For my case, I want to use stationary transmitters, so I am looking for wide-angle LEDs to cover as much space as possible. Currently I have got 45° ones (that's the most I could get over the counter) but I want to try also 120°. There are LEDs as narrow as 15° , so here you have to aim pretty well!

Congrats! That's good to hear, looking forward to that! One question though, are you repeating all commands 5 times like LEGO states on the last pages of their PF Specs or your sent a command only once? I am currently sending the switch "hypersapce" command only once, no repetitions.

you're welcome! Yes, RC adds definately some spice, have a look at this video what happens when you add a NXT to it! We had a central station and two MRs running, the NXT stopped them in the station and let them go again! Looked great! fW

Hi Matt, to your question: MR-Train: The parts you listed are right, that will give you the chassis of the train. You mentioned that you have a battery box, but do you have the wire to the motor? Like this one: 5306ac015 Track Pieces: - Cuves that attach to other track pieces are 90° - 45° Curves (1/8th) are only able to connect to each other to form either another 90° or an offset "S-Curve" of 16 Studs (center to center of track) or of course to the switches. - Switches are somehow difficult to source, respectively working switches. The MR is supposed to move the switch, due to age/wear the switches will loose the ease of movement making it hard for the train to change it. - Start/Stop Rail: If you want only a single line, no loop, then be sure to mount them at both ends and set them accordingly to make the train go back and forth. Bonus: To make a MR "interactive" you can add Power Function to it, ie. have a PF receiver on board which allows you to control the train. In this case you need a different cable (8886) to connect the motor to the IR-Receiver (and the receiver to the old style battery box. regards fW

Yes, the command is channel specific. So to set 4 receivers (each on a seperate channel with the orange switch) to the extended mode you need to send the command for each channel. (lower two bits of the first nibble select the channel, function nibble as you wrote) fW

Lucas is right, the "address" bit is available in each of the commands. So you can use those commands also for Channels 5 - 8. I used it in my sample command (Single Output Mode) for channel 5 (HTPFRawOutput(S1,0x00,0x0c,0x07);) The use of the Extended Mode command escapes my reckoning...Looks to me like they had some spare space and just got functions in... fW

Interestingly this question on the extra channesl for PF popped up over at 1000steine as well. The question rose because if you remote control a small trainlayout with a few extra functions you hit 8 possibilities pretty fast. For my special use case we had at a recent exhibition, Bricking Bavaria, two Monorails on our Moonbase. Those were running through PF-IR Receivers and we used the NXT to control station entry, stopping and resuming the journey, looked really really great. Now here comes the catch, another guy was showing nearby his roboter and sometimes we wondered why our MRs just stopped (even if the time-out of the PF-accu did not apply). Reason was he was using the same channels of course. Now to fast forward to Lucas' statement. It is right, from PF Protocol V1.10, dated Oct.28th 2009, onwards you have the possibility to control an additional 4 channels giving you 16 outputs! And yes, it works and I could already get it to work by myself. How to get it to work? IR-Reiceiver First of all you need a IR-Receiver compatible with the new protocol. Given that it was release around third quarter 2009, the IR-Receivers should be produced since then. How to spot them? Good question! At the bottom they have a stamp like "16K1" or "40K7". I posted this to LEGO support as well, but I still lack a (proper) response. Here's my theory: I have four receivers, three have an end-digit of "7" or "8", one has a "1". Only the one with the "K1" works, so it must be new (post 2009). -> first two digits: production week -> digit three and four: Production year K7=2007, K1=2011,... My theory might not be complete as I have heard of digit on and two being also "62"... enough on that. IR-Protocol There is a bit in the protocol called "address". It was described in V1.0 as "Extra Address Space", but given no further use, apart from mentioning that it needs to be "0" for "current" receivers. Looking into the PF Protocol V1.10 on page 7 there is an explanation of the "Extended Mode" and how to get there using the Toggle Address Bit command. The limitations you need to be aware are that: - once an IR-Receiver is switched to the Extra Address Space it cannot accept commands from the usual LEGO remote controls anymore. Those work on the lower address range. - once the IR-Receiver is powered off and on again, it will be in the lower address range allowing it to be controlled with standard equipment. How to switch and send commands in the Extra Address Space? The easiest way is to use what LEGO and approved suppliers have available, notably the NXT and a HiTechnic IR-Sensor. Other sensor may do the job as well. Now out of the box HiTechnic can only do the standard things the IR-Remotes of LEGO can do. Using NXC there is a possibility to send "raw" data to the IR-Sensor making it send basically what you tell it to send. So you can build your switch command (for channel one set with the orange switch) like: HTPFRawOutput(S1,0x07,0x00,0x06); From now onwards the IR-Receiver does not react to the remote set to Channel 1. Everything needs to have the "Address Bit" set. So you can send another raw command like: HTPFRawOutput(S1,0x00,0x0c,0x07); to get full speed forward on the red output (Output 1) How to make this more user friendly? I am in contact with Gus from HiTechnic who provided me a modified NXT-G block to control the switch over and the motors in an easy way (Thanks a lot!). The block works perfectly and we are just discussing how to properly implement this extra address space activation without too much hassle for the user. Final verdict: I think this offers great possibilities especially for exhibitions where you want to have certain moving things keep moving and not be prone to other PF-Remotes. Additionally a really big MOC with, may be individual lights, compressors etc. might also call for more that 8 controllable channels. The only disadvantage is the reset after power off, however that can be overcome in an fairly easy fashion when using teo power supplies, one for the "Extra Address Space" receivers and one for the common address space. Then simply switch on the extra ones first, put them into the correct mode and start working. Well a lengthy post but hopefully it helps you!

I am amazed that such a build takes you four days without any BL order. Something I can rarely achieve, I always run out of something. BTW your guide is great!

I think this is just the angle. My only doubts are how they achieve the very quick movements. That would imply that the cube itself has nearly no friction when moving. There was quite a ridiculous discussion over at Gizmodo on why not to compare the human record with this one and like "which is the better record". Where arguments like "the robot does not pick the cube up by itself" were flying around... Well, no comment. It is a great machine and I'm interested in the interface from the phone to the NXTs

Blake, this is fascinating scene! I do not know where to start, unfortunately flickr currently gives me a timeout so I can't admire more pictures! Where to start? ALright, the palm trees! they are simply great. How you achieved this dynamic look is stunning. The way the dry leaves are realized with the dark-tan bushes is wonderful! The details on the power-supply! ... and of course the waves! ure movement! I also like the fact that the seawall is not entirely closed, i.e. the tiles are not flush. So it gives an effect of the sheer power of the water! fW

We get lipsticks!!! Tools in blue!!!