3rd party battery/remote sets

[wower]

Hi all,

in my long struggle with Buwizz, BC2 app (I always hated steering anything via touchscreen or having to use the phone as intermediary to a gamepad) I finally landed with a cheap mouldking set (battery box and remote). Great - almost perfect.

While the complex settings from Buwizz isn't really missed  - the power is!

Long story short: May I ask you for your experience, what's the best available battery box/bluetooth remote set? From what I found, mouldking and Cada have identical looking ones (same size as Buwizz but worse positioned holes), but they are significantly weaker compared to 11v buwizz no?

PS: Not sure if that exists but has anybody ever found an oldschool (radio controlled) set compabible with lego? That would be even better I guess (less lag, more range, no?)

Thanks!

[gyenesvi]

2 hours ago, wower said:

Long story short: May I ask you for your experience, what's the best available battery box/bluetooth remote set? From what I found, mouldking and Cada have identical looking ones (same size as Buwizz but worse positioned holes), but they are significantly weaker compared to 11v buwizz no?

PS: Not sure if that exists but has anybody ever found an oldschool (radio controlled) set compabible with lego? That would be even better I guess (less lag, more range, no?)

I'm afraid such things don't exist, otherwise they would be pretty popular :) But let me know if I am wrong, I'd be also interested. I think radio controlled components (ESC, receiver, battery) only exist in forms that are not quite possible to build into your lego model, people rather just place them in the trunk/cockpit somewhere.. The best I've seen so far are the Geekservo motors, they have a lego compatible housing at least.

[wower]

PS: I just disassembled my mouldking battery boxes and

- the small one (4 ports) has a 7,4v 600mAh battery

- the big one (6 ports) has a 7,4v 550mAh battery

weird that the big one has an even smaller battery but anyway.. guess the chinese also save costs wherever they can.

-> Do you think I could simply buy a 9/9,6V battery and connect it to the circuits (using lego connectivity and bluetooth etc just having higher voltage, more rpm for lego motors)?

[m2fel]

I am also looking for simple, affordable Lego (compatible) RC components with a controller and proportional steering. The latest mould king controller/ receiver/ battery components look like a good solution (as Lego isn't supporting PF anymore I don't mind buying other brands). But there is some information on melting and burning mould King battery boxes thus I would not add a battery with high voltage... .

[2GodBDGlory]

4 hours ago, wower said:

Hi all,

in my long struggle with Buwizz, BC2 app (I always hated steering anything via touchscreen or having to use the phone as intermediary to a gamepad) I finally landed with a cheap mouldking set (battery box and remote). Great - almost perfect.

While the complex settings from Buwizz isn't really missed  - the power is!

Long story short: May I ask you for your experience, what's the best available battery box/bluetooth remote set? From what I found, mouldking and Cada have identical looking ones (same size as Buwizz but worse positioned holes), but they are significantly weaker compared to 11v buwizz no?

PS: Not sure if that exists but has anybody ever found an oldschool (radio controlled) set compabible with lego? That would be even better I guess (less lag, more range, no?)

Thanks!

I'm in the same boat, the MouldKing 6.0 box is great, but it doesn't allow for max performance! As for RC-based stuff, there were quite a few solutions from Russia, some of which were discussed in this thread recently: 

I'm quite intrigued with the "Leshy 2" system mentioned in it, which seems to be a great blend of RC components and Lego compatibility, but I don't think any of these systems are available outside of Russia, unfortunately.

 

1 hour ago, wower said:

PS: I just disassembled my mouldking battery boxes and

- the small one (4 ports) has a 7,4v 600mAh battery

- the big one (6 ports) has a 7,4v 550mAh battery

weird that the big one has an even smaller battery but anyway.. guess the chinese also save costs wherever they can.

-> Do you think I could simply buy a 9/9,6V battery and connect it to the circuits (using lego connectivity and bluetooth etc just having higher voltage, more rpm for lego motors)?

Back when I got my MouldKing 6.0 box, I really wanted to find a way to upgrade it to a ~12V setup, so I did a bunch of research, including watching a pretty involved YouTube video in which it was determined that the MouldKing 4.0 box (and presumably also the 6.0) couldn't be cranked much past 9V without damage. In the video he did crank it up that much, but it seems like little gain for the trouble. (I can't seem to find the video again, but it involved modifying their "Green Hound" set, the rip-off of the Greyhound MOC, which might help you find it if you're interested).

If anyone ever hears of a cheap, physical controller, ~12V battery, I want in!

[m2fel]

The mould king 6.0 tend to overheat at the metal contact of the battery box. Looks like the contact surface is to small or the contact is simply not good. When there his more power needed this bottleneck heats up (very simple description) if you add more volts, more power can be drawn and you get more heat. More heat and plastic does not work out. Don't add a more powerful battery without changing the other components which could cause trouble!

[wower]

Thanks folks - good to hear I'm not alone, dreaming of "simple, controller, phys. steering" :-)

I wouldn't go for 11v.. but do you think 9v (instead of the 7 currently with my mouldking boxes) would work? I am not an electric engineer really, don't know if e.g. the box wouldn't (fully) charge a 9v battery connected or some other unforeseen side effect :-/

[FriedlS]

I use also the MK batterybox and controller and i am very satisfied with it. I also bought these MK buggy motors and removed the overload protection. So it is possible to build models with higher gearing without stalling. You can see it in my topics here on eurobricks or in my yt channel.

[wower]

hm i got some cheap chinese buggy motors.. not sure if MK? where did you buy yours?

PS: bit off-topic but on my model I have to connect two buggy motors to one port (only way to accelerate both with one remote stick no?) does that mean each buggy motor gets only half power?

[FriedlS]

10 hours ago, wower said:

hm i got some cheap chinese buggy motors.. not sure if MK? where did you buy yours?

PS: bit off-topic but on my model I have to connect two buggy motors to one port (only way to accelerate both with one remote stick no?) does that mean each buggy motor gets only half power?

I  bought them by aliexpress. 
I also use two motors at one port. They have got the same power, but the current increases so you have to be careful that the load isn’t to high. Or the weight of the car isn’t to high.

[aFrInaTi0n]

@wower with the 4 channel remote you can hit the left shoulder-button, this will combine channel B with A (if one of the channels needs to be reversed, do this for channel B separately by pressing both direction-buttons until the led shortly blinks).
FYI: Right Shoulder-button combines Channel C with A also..

I would not recommend to put two motors (esp. buggy motors with their high starting currents, above 2A in some situations) on one channel - this can easily burn the driver of that channel. Better combine them via different channels.

Whan one wants to use the MK app, the only way of binding more then one output channel to one input control, it is needed to bound them to the same BT channel (unfortunately this will make all 4 ports of both receivers of the same channel have the same functionality..)

Edited August 23, 2022 by aFrInaTi0n

[Gimmick]

On 8/21/2022 at 10:32 AM, wower said:

Hi all,

Long story short: May I ask you for your experience, what's the best available battery box/bluetooth remote set?

Thanks!

My experience:

For driving: Buwizz + BrickController2 app + gamepad

For multifunction/robotic/complex things: Lego PoweredUp app + Lego PU remote or mindstorms app + gamepad

[wower]

@aFrInaTi0n Thanks! If I get that to work, that'd be awesome!

@Gimmick Well as I said, driving with touchpad is shyte and connecting phone and gamepad is sometimes laggy and always cumbersome (and especially with my rc boats, I do not want to give my kids the phone as well as the expensive gamepads.. rather a cheap chinese remote.

If I may ask for electric experts once again.. just for fun I ordered a 9,6V 700mAh battery, but for some reason it is not slightly bigger than the 7,4V 600mAh battery (as I'd have expected) but it's like 5x the size (so way too big for my model). Not sure if that idea of mine (to connect a slightly higher voltage for increased speed) is realistic, when I can't even find a small enough battery :-/

 

[aFrInaTi0n]

Uh, do I remember that one video where one put two Buwizz together to double up their voltage? This shouuuld be possible to do with MK batteries too - but as we hopefully all know if one wants to play around with such things as an adult its fine, but never let your children get your dangerous things in their hands..

[2GodBDGlory]

18 hours ago, aFrInaTi0n said:

Uh, do I remember that one video where one put two Buwizz together to double up their voltage? This shouuuld be possible to do with MK batteries too - but as we hopefully all know if one wants to play around with such things as an adult its fine, but never let your children get your dangerous things in their hands..

I suppose the difficulty would be to control both boxes simultaneously. I guess you'd need two remotes coupled? If I ever tried it I think I'd make it an outdoor-only setup. Burning down buildings could be inconvenient...

[Giiba]

I just took delivery of a Pomok brand motor+controller+battery.

see: Pomok Power Functions Motor set

First impression is quite positive as they are basically identical to the PF motors, but with a rechargeable battery and proper 2.4ghz controller.

It feels like this is what Lego should have made, instead of the app-dependant mess that is the PoweredUp system.

[aFrInaTi0n]

22 hours ago, Giiba said:

I just took delivery of a Pomok brand motor+controller+battery.

see: Pomok Power Functions Motor set

First impression is quite positive as they are basically identical to the PF motors, but with a rechargeable battery and proper 2.4ghz controller.

It feels like this is what Lego should have made, instead of the app-dependant mess that is the PoweredUp system.

You paid ~100 € for this? Ouch.. 

[gyenesvi]

23 hours ago, Giiba said:

First impression is quite positive as they are basically identical to the PF motors, but with a rechargeable battery and proper 2.4ghz controller.

Can you elaborate on that first impression? Just the looks / quality of material, or have you also tried it? For example, how precise is the servo?

Is there a receiver integrated into the battery unit? Or does it need some other component to work with a controller?

[FriedlS]

On 8/26/2022 at 1:44 PM, Giiba said:

I just took delivery of a Pomok brand motor+controller+battery.

see: Pomok Power Functions Motor set

First impression is quite positive as they are basically identical to the PF motors, but with a rechargeable battery and proper 2.4ghz controller.

It feels like this is what Lego should have made, instead of the app-dependant mess that is the PoweredUp system.

Looks nice, but it looks like there is no proportional controller just on/off.

[Giiba]

3 hours ago, FriedlS said:

Looks nice, but it looks like there is no proportional controller just on/off.

That's correct, it is a very simple controller.

The hub can connect to an app, so that may or may not offer proportional controls; I have not tried yet.

 

I bought it so my 6yo and I can motorize our creations; and it is perfect for such so far. Turn on hub, turn on controller, play. No messing with bluetooth, which is too much trouble when you're 6, lol.

 

Our first creation with my decades old technic collection.

14 hours ago, aFrInaTi0n said:

You paid ~100 € for this? Ouch.. 

CAD, not €

[Giiba]

13 hours ago, gyenesvi said:

Can you elaborate on that first impression? Just the looks / quality of material, or have you also tried it? For example, how precise is the servo?

Is there a receiver integrated into the battery unit? Or does it need some other component to work with a controller?

Built the one contraption for unikitty transport above.

Servo seems powerful with near zero play. Coming from an RC background I'm impressed by it. However my testing is hampered by my complete newbness at mounting the servo... what I cobbled together leaves a lot to be desired

The motors seem fairly powerful, in a quick gearing up test with a propeller the motor pushed a reasonably impressive amount of air. I plan to test this better at some point.

 

The battery and receiver are integrated in the one unit. The lithium battery would be replaceable easily as it uses a proper connector to the board (not soldered).

[wower]

Interesting, thanks for bringing up all those products. I agree though, without prop. steering it's again useless. Every product has a major flaw, why can they not simply combine it and create something that everybody would buy in an instant? I don't get it.. :-(

[Toastie]

1 hour ago, wower said:

everybody would buy in an instant

I believe the "everybody" bit is the issue. 

It is not that straight forward (but surely not only doable, but out there) to having a device that precisely tells you where "0" is when powered up. The electronics is always fuzzy at that point; the hardware is somewhere, i.e. where you left it operating it the last time. One solution would be to "calibrate" for the HW position each time upon powering up. Customers need to know that though, as it would take time. Any interference would screw up the calibration over again.

We are talking devices for playing, from TLG or other brands. Essentially for kids. That's where the market is. These folks usually don't care about absolute "0" and don't want to wait for the electronics to figure that out.

I believe that this is the main reason why this is "not done": Not worth the effort in this context. Because "everybody" is possibly a comparably rather low number.

But who knows ...

Best
Thorsten

[wower]

On 8/23/2022 at 12:01 PM, aFrInaTi0n said:

@wower with the 4 channel remote you can hit the left shoulder-button, this will combine channel B with A (if one of the channels needs to be reversed, do this for channel B separately by pressing both direction-buttons until the led shortly blinks).
FYI: Right Shoulder-button combines Channel C with A also..

I would not recommend to put two motors (esp. buggy motors with their high starting currents, above 2A in some situations) on one channel - this can easily burn the driver of that channel. Better combine them via different channels.

Whan one wants to use the MK app, the only way of binding more then one output channel to one input control, it is needed to bound them to the same BT channel (unfortunately this will make all 4 ports of both receivers of the same channel have the same functionality..)

sorry can you explain this more idiot proof please? I find nothing anywhere online about that procedure (and whatever I do, nothing happens). Also please specify once more which remote/receiver we're talking about? 6chan or really 4 chan (which from what I experience has no functionality in the shoulder buttons).. thanks!

PS: For the record, I connected a 9,6V battery to the 6chan mould king receiver and it works (fully charged i measured 11,xV output towards the motor - good speed upgrade). But I still have 2 buggy motors on one channel, that should probably be fixed for longevity reasons..

[Giiba]

On 9/6/2022 at 1:10 PM, wower said:

Interesting, thanks for bringing up all those products. I agree though, without prop. steering it's again useless. Every product has a major flaw, why can they not simply combine it and create something that everybody would buy in an instant? I don't get it.. :-(

Does anything offer proportional control over the servo?