allanp

So we have two rumours, "most powerful yet" and "battery with USB c connection" I guess the simplest way to connect those two dots is that there's no new hub, just a new battery that plugs into the existing hub that has an 11.1v lipo rechargeable battery. I'm not convinced that 11.1v would actually equal more power in the real world, as the current motor driver chips are weak sauce and can cut out even with 9 volts, unless they have been upgraded to beefier driver chips. But this would also help with the question of "what happens when the lipo battery fails?". As there are already battery holders for the AA batteries, you can just swap out the lipo for a standard AA battery holder. It's not a perfect solution, I would still much rather have separate battery box, receivers (and a programmable physical remote!) and more powerful motors, and I'm still only speculating, but this hypothesis seems to make the most sense of these two rumours. Of course, it might be something else entirely, like the next system after PU/ control+ for all we know. Not likely I know, but given it's lack of love from fans from day one, expense, supposed difficulty adding support for physical remote and lack of development for both hardware and software, I really wouldn't be THAT surprised (and perhaps more that a bit relieved) to see the next system after PU/control+ introduced this year, or a soft reboot of it anyway.

I don't mind not having inverse kinematics. It's a novelty that wears off after a minute and I don't see real excavators using inverse kinematics.

Any time an axle is used to transmit torque, like in every Technic set, it will be under the same stress, and it will twist slightly. The only difference here is by how much and for how long. Under full articulation, with one wheel all the way up and the other all the way down, the anti roll bar will visibly twist but will also bend back as soon as the obstacle is cleared. As long as it's not twisted too far (within the bounds of elastic deformation), and as long as it's not held in that position for too long, it'll spring back like any other Technic axle being used to transmit torque. Just don't display your model in a fully articulated pose! I would be more concerned about the pieces used at the end of each axle. A pair of stacked thin lift arms will crack where as a full stud width cross hole (such as in the 2x4 L beam) will be fine. It'll likely not have any noticeable affect to someone pushing it over obstacles, but it would be nice to have for the sake of realism, if the real vehicle has anti roll bars if course.

We don't know the colour of the UCS car yet but I am not a fan of purple at all. But, if it comes with a new, much more realistic gearbox then it can be purple for all I care! I wonder if it would ever be possible to get a metallic colour again, like 8466 or the silver champion. A metallic deep green, metallic dark red, metallic dark blue or gun metal grey would be amazing! While a regular purple wouldn't look good IMHO, a metallic dark, like really dark purple could be very good. I guess that depends on if the real car has them, although didn't the real GT3RS have 4 wheel steering? We have still yet to see some good handling improvements, such as more realistic suspension geometry and good feeling steering. The much older technic cars from the 80's, with their 8 tooth pinion gears and longer steering arms with Ackermann geometry had great feeling steering even without a HOG, but all these newer cars have very heavy and spongy feeling steering, it feels like a wet noodle in comparison.

I'd also be surprised. It feels like they abandoned it a couple years ago TBH. But yeah, it would be nice to know where brick clicker heard this original claim before getting our hopes up.

To be fair, I'm only going of a comment I heard in brick clickers video so I should probably wait to hear this claim from Lego myself, but to me, power is not just speed as power is equal to speed multiplied by torque. They'll need new motors for that, and a beefier power supply as the motor driver chips used in the current smart hubs are pretty weak. And the most powerful "yet" also implies most powerful of all time, not just control+ era. So the way it's worded in the brick clicker video makes this a very bold claim, more powerful than the twin buggy motor RCs of the early 2000s. Does anyone know where brick clicker might have got his information from so we can see for ourselves what Lego is actually claiming here?

Maybe it's a Dodge Ram or similar large American pickup truck, or the classic Defender?

Thanks for spotting that, I've ammended my post.

Yup, according to brick clicker... 42172 McLaren supercar 3893 pieces 450 dollars August It's a car. Hopefully will have the new Yamaha gearbox pieces, with a few more sizes of clutch gear that would be great! 42175 Volvo truck and electric excavator 2274 pieces 200 dollars No thoughts on this yet until we know more about it or see pictures A few 800ish piece cars 50 dollars They are more cars. 42182 NASA Apollo moon vehicle 1913 pieces 230 dollars Another car, might be interesting though. 42177 licensed 4x4 2891 pieces 250 dollars And another car sorted of. This could be fantastic but will have to wait and see. 42174 licensed water vehicle 962 pieces 120 dollars No thoughts yet. 42176 Porsche gt4 e-performance race car 838 pieces 170 dollars "promising to be the most powerful one yet" And another another car. Most powerful one yet? I mean, we had a buggy with 2 buggy motors, is it more powerful than that? More powerful than two buggy motors? Hey Lego, is it more powerful than 2 buggy motors?

Great contest, congratulations to the medal winners!

Yeah, not sure what a Technic ISS could actually do, unless it had the nifty Canadarm V2 that can move itself to various different docking points around the station, but that would be huge!

Front view of 42171 is in this video

Or maybe they want any possible JCB licence to be a nice big surprise, I mean, if we're talking about a JCB licence, I wouldn't say that a pull back is top of the wanted list, so maybe they're saving that for..... something else. Or I could just be dreamin!

Just cast my vote, some very good and creative entries, well done everyone! Also like the new voting system, it's easy to compare and put the vote in order, and I like that we can't see how the other voters are voting.

Nice MODs, though the original instructions shows 4M axles being used.

This is fantastic! Creative and fun, very nice job

Yeah but we do get a set list with prelim prices and piece counts about now don't we? Are they coming out for the other themes yet?

It's only my opinion but I'd say that's a good deal.

If I'm paying anywhere near full price then I don't want to have to expect some enterprising programmer to step in where Lego buggered off from! The old control centers from the early 90s are still just as functional and reprogrammable today as they were when they was first released, same with the code pilot from 1997. The programs of today might be comparatively more complicated and require a small screen to make, but small screens and a few buttons really aren't that expensive to incorporate into a new "control center +" type remote nowadays. The original control centers and code pilot haven't left anyone stranded at all. They have been discontinued for at least 2 or 3 decades at least but will never be useless landfill as they still work perfectly. They never needed support from third party devices, smart phones, computers, fan developers which can come and go or anything. You might have to clean the contacts for the wires but that's about it. The wires themselves unfortunately had a habit of degrading but even those can be replaced fairly easily, and modern wire coatings don't rot nearly as much if at all.The thing is, Lego is priced like quality, heirloom items that can be passed down through generations, the bricks made in the 50's still fit with the bricks of today. Longevity over many decades is very important FOR Lego but doesn't seem to be very important TO Lego anymore. But (to bring things back to the LR13000 for a moment), the quality of the rest of the set still seems very good and will last a lifetime. The rest of it is heirloom grade Lego as far as I can tell. The design and build is excellent and you get so many large frames and truss pieces that if you can find one for a price that's about what you would pay if it didn't have any PU components then it's a really good deal actually. It feels about as big and strong as a fairly large Meccano crane if anyone remembers Meccano! This thing has an enormous overhang from the front of the tracks to the hook, and most of the power from the hook winch motor is very efficiently directed right to that hook. So the fact that, given enough counterweight, you can stall the hook winch motor without breaking anything on the crane is a testament to how solidly and authentically engineered this set really is. The tracks could do with some D11 style tensioners but that's about it. I do think there are AFOLs out there that are willing to pay 700 euro for a truly spectacular set. This thing could have been it, if it wasn't for the afore mentioned PU issues and shortcomings. If it had a physical (maybe even fully programmable 90s control center size) remote with dual, twin axis joysticks and so on, then the value would have been much easier to see even if they couldn't actually afford to spend that on Lego. There's 20 dollar kids toys that come with some form of physical remote, for 700 dollars there's really no excuse to replace it with an app!

This is a can of worms, but in short, we really don't like using a phone touch screen to control the model, we want a physical controller with real buttons and levers and such. Replacing a proper, physical controller with an app is cheap and nasty even if the app was well developed, which it isn't. Then there's the reliance on the need to code if you want to make a MOC. Lego is about building and playing in the real world, not coding in the computer. But now they have given us that ability, it would be regressive to remove it now. Besides, that's what mindstorms was for, and now it's dead! Then there's the whole being reliant on third party smart devices in general. Smart devices and their operating systems go obsolete in no time at all. By tying their products to smart devices they have given their expensive products the same short lifespan. While some may complain that a physical controller would be expensive, I had to buy a new phone because my old phone couldn't run the powered up app. How on earth can someone be excluded from buying a Lego set because their phone isn't new enough?! I bought this phone when the Liebherr excavator was released, it was the very latest and quite expensive smart phone at the time and will likely be obsolete soon. Lego should be a way to get away from our screens, not push us more towards them. And kids lives today seem dominated by the bloody things, either they spend too much time on them, face real online dangers from them, get mental health issues from them due to seeing everyone else's lives through the edited highlights of social media, or they can be bullied if their parents aren't rich enough to spend their money on buying a smart devices for their young kids. We are in a cost of living crisis, and the last thing parents need is even more pressure to buy their kids a smart phone, and definitely not from Lego of all places. But Lego, instead of caring about any of that, just assumes every kid has one and if they don't, tough because they want even more profits then they already have. It should be said though, while I think most of us here would agree with the need for physical remotes, and many would agree with a lot of it, some of the points I have mentioned here (namely the point about children's mental health and safety online) have only been brought up by me afaik, these are my views. I can't speak for the whole forum on anything.

If you can ignore the whole control+ thing it's a actually pretty great model. Ideally, you'd want a discount roughly equal to the cost of the two hubs at least, then you don't feel like you're paying for them! @kbalage has a good price breakdown on it in part 2 of his review.

Merry Christmas everyone! After not building the Technic flagship on Christmas day for the past three years (a new record for me!) I gave in to this one for a decent price and saved it for today. If we ignore the already much discussed cons of control+, I gotta say, this so far has probably been one of the most enjoyable Technic builds since the studded era ended in 2003! I can only imagine how repetitive the boom sections would have been without the new boom pieces so that's a big thumbs up for those! And the thing is solid, absolutely built like a tank. Yes the price is high but at a good discount it feels not too bad for what you get.

Of course you might be right, it gets even harder when you remove space from the 3x3 to add holes to connect to it. Buuuuuuut, if we made the holes only half a stud deep, and increased it to 3x3x4? One of the 3x3x5 GeekServos has two outputs which makes things easier as you can sandwich the servo between two valves, and as the valves axle hole has fairly low friction, you could slide the servo left/right to interface with either of the two valves directly at the axle hole for a pretty much slop free engagement. You'd also program it so that the mode switching is disabled and greyed out if the servos aren't centered (like if you are still holding one of the other pneumatic functions). A line of 5 of those would be 25 studs long by 7 studs wide, or 21 x 9 studs depending on configuration. So here we have a 25x7 stud valve block that has to go along the length of the chassis. I still think that miiiiiiiight be possible with the hubs either side of it. However, if they are to try to usher in a new age of RC pneumatics, what if they had a pre built servo valve block thingy, each with two servo motors and two valves (totally enclosed with no manual lever) in a single block powered from a single port. Is that even possible? BTW, all of this is assuming that they insist on every flagship being fully RC. It also assumes that they even want to continue to develope PU in it's current form, I am having doubts!

Hydraulics is the absolute dream! I don't think you need to worry about absolute positioning. You only need that for inverse kinematic control which isn't really needed or realistic for a backhoe.

It would be a massive challenge to say the least. It's a white whale of a project. But the problem with pretty much every RC technic set to date (maybe with the exception if the Zetros and this year's Liebherr) is that RC was implemented at the cost of mechanical authenticity. The same is true for the PF days as well. So instead of adding play value to authentic mechanisms, RC replaced them. Having individual motors power each individual mechanism isn't realistic and would be wasteful, as you would need at least 10 pumps, but each function is only getting power from a single pump, which is pretty slow and weak. Better to have somewhere between 4 and 8 pumps working together, with every function having access to the power of all pumps combined. But I do think it miiiiiiight be possible, if we get a new micro servo that's probably about 3x3x3 with a massive internal reduction, 5 of these to nicely control the 10 valves and another in the front axle for steering. Then you need one large motor for the main engine for drive and the multi pump compressor and one more micro servo for the mode switching. The main motor and compressor would be under the narrow hood and the hubs would be maybe mounted vertically Infront of each rear wheel? Or mounted under the rear axle perhaps. But yeah, with the current parts it's next to impossible, but with micro servo motors I think it becomes doable. But if the flagship absolutely has to be control+ and fully RC then that's the only way to do it for me, unless you make it truly monstrous in size which would require all new wheels and 3 stud diameter cylinders, which is even less likely! Besides, I really want this thing to play and function well, with lots of speed and power, not slow as molasses and with barely enough power to move itself. This thing if done with gearboxes and LAs would be more complex that 42009, which had so many spinning gears and axles that there was barely any power left to lower the outriggers, 95% of the motors output power was wasted on moving all it's gearing. The PF excavator barely had enough power to raise its own boom and the Liebherr excavator, whilst being quite powerful and very well engineered, moved way too slowly for a JCB backhoe. With pneumatics, it really doesn't matter how complex it is, or through how many joints and sliding (side shift) parts the power has to go through, to maintain the same speed and power right to the function. No need for overly complex, power wasting gear trains which limit the number of functions you can have, just run the hoses to where the power is needed and it's job done. Think of it another way, if the completely unloaded compressors internal friction uses 20% of the motors power (I don't think it would use even that), and you have enough pumps to stall the motor at maximum pressure, that's 80% of the motors power routed directly to the function itself. Lower the front bucket and rear stabilisers and watch all 4 wheels reliably and easily fly up off the ground.