allanp

Do you have the motors built into the car yet? The steering motor usually runs a calibration step first, where it finds its mechanical limits of travel.

There used to be a pattern of just after Christmas we'd see "leaked" images of the second half sets but now there doesn't appear to be much of a pattern to it, other than being about a month before release at the earliest.

Edit: nevermind, I'm being dumb!

To be fair, your test used 4 buggy motors which is quite a lot if power, probably more than is ever intended for a Lego model. You also used a 28t diff which might not be good for the overall stability/rigidity of the gearbox. I think where these new gearbox pieces really shine is in their increased realism and much lower friction, meaning you can transmit more of the motors available power to the wheels without much power loss due to friction in the gearbox. So you might not need quite as much of a powerful motor, as it's power can be used more efficiently.

Ah yes, forgot that one.

This is what I've been saying. Yes people use their phone/tablet screens but I think it's something they put up with, not something they actually want. And most MOCs are not stationary, certainly every Lego PU set has been mobile unless I'm forgetting something.

You also have to pair each hub which you previously made out to be simple. I might end up making a prototype if I can get my embedded systems expert friend on board, I'm pretty sure he could do it if anyone can, but we're not being paid to make prototypes for Lego and we have other non Lego projects on our plate at the moment. Regards the need to use a smart device, I think this is something that people tend to "put up with" rather than saying "oh goodie, it doesn't come with a proper remote, my phone is already full with other apps and crap and might not be compatible and the use of my phone will be a no go while I'm playing with my Lego, how wonderful!"

Mine wasn't like that, it ran smooth and free before going into the frame of the bike.

@PG52 I agree with you. But now that people have tasted the fruit from the tree of PU it's not easy to come up with something that pleases everyone, but still that's what I hope to do with this thread. We need an upgraded remote which has levers and separate stackable Bluetooth receiver's to make PU as simple, plug and play and easy as PF, while the CC+ I'm proposing enables most of PU advanced features while never needed a smart device, though it would remain compatible with one where desired, it's not needed.

If anyone does compile a list I could update the first post on the powered up hints tips and requests threat if we want.

Don't really care what it is, although a non supercar would be nice (like a dodge ram trex or something), so long as it is a mechanical step up from the Sian/Ferrari, which I guess it will be with the Yamaha gearbox parts.

Appears to have worked quite well!

I dreamt there was orange rubber tyres! Probably cos of the orange rubber pieces in the Yamaha.

@grum64 Do parallel jaw forseps exist? Hmmmm. Now that's got me thinking also, can I make some? I'm thinking of a few different tools of my own creation. I already use a depth gauge thing I made, it's basically a bunch of holes at varying Lego depths (8mm, 16mm, 24mm and 32mm) so if I see that I need to put a piece 4 modules along an axle, I put the axle in the 4 module (32mm) deep hole and press the part all the way down and it's perfectly positioned along the axle. It's easy enough to make one from stacked Lego beams with connector pegs actually. But there's a few other ideas I'd like to have a bash at.

@gyenesvi I think people might then argue over the categories and voting criteria, kinda like how I do with Sariels scoring system which appears to focus on the looks more than the mechanical aspects. For example, what if the criteria for the shrinking contest was "how much have they shrunk it?" and "how much does it look like the original?" but there was no criteria for "how many functions have they kept" and "how many functions are still mechanised as opposed to just being manual?". There would rightly be complaints that the categories are insufficient and lead to a bias towards looks over functions. So if it matters what the categories are, there's bound to be complaints about them. Some would say there should be no category for looks, as Technic is about functions. Others will say that the looks are just as important so there should be just as many categories for looks as there are for functions. The problem here is that both opinions are valid opinions and I don't think it should be up to us to decide how you should be casting your votes. It's up to you what is important just like it's up to each individual voter or jury member. What benefit are you looking to achieve? Maybe there's another way to get it?

That would be tricky, like for this past contest a few entries would have scored 10 out of 10 in every criteria, or maybe an equal mix of 9s and 10s, so there would be no way to differentiate between them. These are contests, especially when there are real prizes involved, and you can't avoid having someone in first, someone else in last, and everyone else somewhere in between. Wether the people judging are made up of a jury or they are the wider forum, you just got to make the best model you can based on feedback from the WIP topics. But this time with the jury we actually got full paragraphs of explanations for the top 3 explaining exactly why they were the winners, which is more than we got before.

This has me thinking, is it possible that I could I make some custom tools out of stainless steel (I'm currently in the food industry so everything is stainless steel) to make assembly and disassembly of Technic sets easier? I have some ideas in mind. I need to get on the lathe at work without anyone seeing me to try out a few things

Blimey Grum, sending prayers for a speedy recovery!

You certainly didn't fail! You succeeded, other contestants just...suceededer! Congrats to everyone!

I guess that depends how you store your Lego. I have the majority of sets sorted disassembled with parts organised in storage bins, which seems to take up way less space, well over 100 sets (probably well over 200) and a few thousand parts bought separately all sorted by type in a roughly 7 feet by 4 feet area which includes a build table. I also custom made my own bed frame to be a bit taller to house all my most valuable sets, such as those legendary boxed 90s technic sets and some boxed 90s era pirate and 9v train sets. I have room for all the Liebherr crane pieces and some empty bins ready for the new truss and large frame pieces. Just waiting on a good deal, and it'll hopefully be a Christmas present from me to me! The sorting of a few hundred thousand pieces by part type took months and months, and takes effort to maintain. Every set you build, you have to disassemble and sort every piece and never let it get out of hand, sort one set before you build the next, but it's worth it.

Hmmmmmmmm. How's this for hypothetical?! You might need to zoon in a bit!

From someone on the outside looking in, this feels most accurate. It's not that they can't do it, they just haven't. The resources you mentioned are surely human right? These things aren't being developed by AI as far as I know. Is the team they have working on it really really small? It feels like they are drip feeding us with not very much happening, like the individual members of the team could be very talented, but they need more talent in the form of more members on the team? It seems an odd choice not to hire more talent when it is available (I can even recommend someone if they want!) and not doing so is having a detrimental impact on their product. I also agree with your concerns over the reliance on programming in PU. Lack of documentation is of course problematic, but there's also many that just don't want to program even if they did have full documentation, and would prefer a system that can be as simple as PF with separate battery boxes and receivers, while there are others that, now they have tasted from the tree of PU, would see it as a regression if they went back to PF. My "lets fix powered up" thread is an attempt find a solution to this, but it is very difficult to even come up with the right concept before it's even designed and prototyped, so I certainly have some sympathy for TLGs current position, but I think I might have hit on the solution, probably.

@Lok24 correct me if I'm wrong but I think Lok24s booster idea involves keeping the Technic hub with the same electronics and then having smaller boosters (with motor driver chips inside) to increase the number of ports beyond 4 where required. The advantage of this is that the program can be stored and potentially run inside the model itself. I assume we could also have higher power boosters with better driver chips for more powerful motors. The downside of that is cost, as we are doubling up on main processor chips by keeping the more expensive Technic hubs, and where a model has two sections separated by a turn table we may still need multiple hubs. So while I'm not sure I would recommend it for sets, as Technic hubs are already available and will remain so on the second hand market, you can still do that with your own creations if you wish. My idea is to get rid of the Technic hubs altogether and just have PF style BLE receivers, which would have the motor driver chips (although I would probably prefer it if they found space inside the motors itself for their driver chips, as then you can have a better pairing of driver chip to the motor) and BLE communication. The program is stored and run on either the smart device or the control center +. The downside of this is that no program could be stored directly inside the model, the receivers are "dumb" in that they just relay data from sensors back to where the program is actually running (either smart device or control center +) and drive the motors as they are told to. You would also have to bind each receiver to the device the program is running on, like how you would select one of the 4 channels on PF receivers, you bind the PU BLE receivers in order of the number you have designated to them in the program. The upsides is that if you don't want to use a program, or if you want to make an electrically simpler MOC, then it is much more similar to how PF was with the separate battery box and stackable receivers, the only difference is that we are using BLE instead of IR and there's a better remote (as the train remote would be updated to be proportional also). So we are trading having the ability to have the program run in the model itself with bringing back the simplicity of PF when it's desired, while keeping the rest of PUs capabilities where it's needed. As the receivers only need power, and data is sent via BLE, they could be easily stackable to have as many as you want. Getting rid of the more expensive Technic hubs should also help to reduce costs for smaller to medium sets, while freeing up some budget for the CC+ in the biggest sets. There could also be 2 different receivers, one with 4 low power ports (like we have now on the Technic hubs) and one with 2 high power ports (good for buggy motors). Or, if we could move the motor driver chips to the motors themselves then we could just have one with 4 high power ports.

Interesting, I wonder what pre-pressurization would do. instincts would say that the force is equal to the difference in pressure from one side to the other, and increasing the pressure both sides wouldn't change anything. However, if they were pre pressurized then maybe there would be more of a solid, liquid feel? Hmmmmmm.

Another way to look at this is, from which would they benefit most from expert tuition? I play guitar and I love it, but I found that I got better faster when I played alone for 15 minutes a day, instead of when I was being tutored for one or 2 hours a week. I didn't have many questions to ask, I just had to be better. I also started to play to a metronome, set to a slow speed and practice till the piece I was playing got close enough to perfect, then increase the metronome by one single bpm, and continue till I could play it pretty well at a bit faster than full speed (live rock gigs tend to be a bit faster than the album due to adrenaline). Robotics on the other hand, it's less skill but more knowledge, I think I would have a lot more questions to ask of a tutor. And while a career in music doesn't really require much formal education depending on the career, a career in robotics certainly will. Lego Education is very expensive, maybe you could ask Santa for a keyboard or a guitar!