Control+: more information
Posted by Huw,
At the recent fan media days we had the opportunity to talk to the designers of the two Technic Control+ sets, 42099 4x4 X-Treme Off-Roader and 42100 Liebherr R 9800.
We have yet to transcribe the interview but we can now publish the photos that we took of them and the new elements.
Hopefully you will be able to glean some fresh information from them.
New elements
The combination of more powerful motors and the size of the Liebherr has necessitated the introduction of several new pieces that can cope with the increased torque.
In particular, the old universal joint has been replaced with a much sturdier version which can be seen in the bottom of this picture.
The light grey half with ball on the end is also used in conjunction with a new wheel bearing containing planetary gears used in the 4x4.
The new 28t gear is also shown here.
The existing clutch gear, used to prevent damage to motors should mechanisms stall was also found to be totally inadequate when used with the new Powered Up components so a new two part assembly will replace it where needed.
There are teeth on the inside of the white piece that mate with spring-loaded teeth on the dark grey piece. If the white half stalls the spring-loaded teeth will slip and allow the dark grey half to continue to rotate, thus preventing damage to the motor.
A new bucket has been produced which is, of course, modelled on that on the real vehicle.
A new, longer, linear actuator, was also needed.
42100 Liebherr R 9800
The Liebherr was designed by Markus Kossmann.
It was difficult to get decent photos of the model, but hopefully these will reveal some new details.
The vehicle contains two Control+ hubs and seven motors. I believe 3 are used for the tracks and rotating the body which are controlled from a hub built into the chassis, and four are used for controlling the boom and bucket which are connected to the second hub at the back of the body.
The pipework is all for show: there are no pneumatics. Looks cool, though.
Underneath you can see one Control+ hub inbetween the tracks, and the second one at the back of the crane body, under Markus' hand.
The two motors driving the tracks and several of the new cable-clip element can also be seen here.
42099 4x4 X-Treme Off-Roader
This is an awesome model, but one that was overshadowed by the Liebherr in the interview so I didn't pay as much attention to it as I should have.
This is the Control+ app for the 4x4. The Control+ hub feeds back a lot of information which is displayed here: rpm, and angle ot tilt of two axis.
More information
Andres at Zusammengebaut has published more pictures of the models and parts and also this excellent interview in which both models, the app, and the parts are discussed and demonstrated.
42099 4x4 X-Treme Off-Roader will be available in August, 42100 Liebherr R 9800 in October. I can't wait!
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49 comments on this article
That 42099 4x4 X-Treme Off-Roader looks awesome!
So many great sets at once, I can't tell if this is a dream or a nightmare.
The Liebherr looks stunning but probably will not be a very technical build. There isn’t a complex gearbox and most functions are probably almost directly linked to the motors.
^ That's a good thing, right?
Technic isn’t my cup of tea but I might not be able to resist that off-roader
Liebherr is absolutely massive. I’d still plump for the off roader.
Wow!! I’ve steered away from Technic for the last couple of years (style over substance....yeah Chiron I’m looking at you!) but I think these might just reel me back in. Might need to hold off on the 75936 purchase (I wont name it in case people shout!) and get one, or both ;-) of these
So what colour is the off-roader? It looked orange on the official pictures, but here it looks flame-yellow.
Bright orange?
TBH, I'm not sure! The AWB on my camera may have been confused by the black background and orange is always difficult for digital cameras to capture accurately.
In Andres' video it looks flame yellowish orange, https://brickset.com/parts/colour-Flame-Yellowish-Orange, too.
^^^ Oranje
markus needs a new shirt.... cringeworthy watching the videos
@Huw not really. I like building gearboxes like 8043, 8258 and 42009
Any Idea how many pieces the 4x4 has?
While I like the complexity provided by gearboxes, I also like being able to operate multiple functions at the same time with reasonable speed, so I welcome the difference between the Liebherr and the BWE.
Markus Kossmann is probably the best Technic designer! So many legendary sets designed by him!
I watched the video with excitement, the 4x4 looks great and the excavator is massive, but the actuators are so slow, why cant they make them a bit faster or can that be done yourself ?
I really didn’t appreciate the shear size of the Liebherr until I saw it sat next to the 4x4 in the video. It really is a beast.
The more I see of the 4x4, the more tempting it gets. It may be this year’s Chrimbo build!
Every so often I will post a comment that disappears. Huw, just fyi. I don't feel like typing it all over again so I'll just say thank you for this article and video.
This is definitely a personal preference, but I also prefer the older "one motor does ten things using gearbox magic" way of doing things :P I appreciate that most people will want usability over a fancy mechanical system, though, and the newer, beefier joint, clutch, and bearing are all very welcome in my world. They may even overcome my dislike of all things that require a smart-device.
@rslotb - I am fairly certain the model was flame yellowish orange.
Sorry for adding more negativity to the site, but this is a firm “no” from me as well. I just dislike the direction that technic has taken in the past year or two. It’s now more focused on aesthetics and function, as opposed to how the function is achieved. Also, controlling these from your phone isn’t for me. It’s usual the worst experience. For the price (as well as future redundancy) I’d expect a controller.
The posts I type keep disappearing too, if you take too long.
What I notice is they were asked directly if the train remote could drive the truck and they ducked the question! And the interviewer let them get away with it!
also the green pieces that hold the cables underneath the liebherr are new
So no controller for these sets? How does one operate these in 5 years once all the current smart phones are obsolete?
Perhaps it would be too much to ask for, but a split-screen video simultaneously showing the controller screen and the moving model would have been very helpful. Maybe LEGO would consider doing something like that as a promotional piece for the new system.
I was originally thinking the Liebherr was a definite purchase and the 4x4 a maybe, but seeing this has caused me to flip the priority. Both are impressive, just in different ways.
Neat to see new non-electric parts being developed to complement the Powered Up motors. It really gives us a good taste for how powerful they are. I'm sure there are plenty of MOCists who have already bumped up against the limits of the existing clutch gears and universal joints when building MOCs that feature greater torque or heavier weight than existing Technic sets, so these will probably be greatly appreciated among those builders as well.
In general, I look forward to seeing reviews of these sets (preferably with video so I can get a real feel for the functions and how they look in motion). But I don't expect to get these sets unless I find them marked down. That tends to be my general policy with Technic sets these days, since they don't really complement my collecting or MOCing preferences so well. They are mostly something I enjoy for the complexity of putting together insanely elaborate and complex models I can't begin to imagine being able to come up with on my own. Mostly my interest will be in seeing what new possibilities they will bring to the Powered Up system.
Overall, I have the utmost respect for builders with the engineering smarts to come up with elaborate functional models like these and understand all the technical considerations that go into them!
@Cindipool: I wonder if perhaps the reason the designers included more motors instead of switches as we've seen so often in the past is that the app will be able to run multiple operations at different speeds simultaneously. That would certainly be a great way to show off the more flexible capabilities of a programmable Powered Up "smart hub" compared to simpler Power Functions receivers and battery boxes or even a standard "Powered Up" hub like we see in City trains.
Could well be tempted by the off-roader. Has it been tested outdoors/ off-road? What sort of speed can it achieve?
Very tempting purchase! I'm a sucker for high-end Technic sets.
The Liebherr has been on my must have list since I saw it (will need to get a discount of some sort as I cannot afford MRSP price though). When I saw the picture of the 4x4, my initial reaction was 'meh'. But now that I saw the video, I kind of like it - very powerful! And planetary gears!
I was also not too impressed with the control hub via phone for the reasons that everybody talk about - that said, phones will evolve but bluetooth should remain bluetooth (just faster). But I am happily surprised with the one touch function - this allows you to potentially move all 4 parts of the arm at the same time which makes for a very realistic use of the model (and MOCs). I think it's good their release are separated by two months - gives more time to get the fonds for them - for the lucky ones who will buy both!
@Aanchir I hadn't considered that. Certainly as a flagship set for the Control+ system they would want to show off its capabilities.
@aanchir the one touch function will allow for different motors to move at different speeds all at the same time. On the video, if you position the arm in a given way, it will go there automatically - some section of the arm needing to move faster(or for less time) than the others to achieve the final result.
But this brings another question. In the app for the Liebherr, the arm is pictured and I suppose its overall range with every degrees of freedom has been calculated. How do you do that, with your own MOC? I would assume that to achieve this level of programmability, you would need a very powerful program(CAD) much better than LDD.
Then again, it will be interesting to see what the brilliant minds of the community will do to make this system somewhat "user friendly" to get the most out of the hardware. Fingers crossed!!!
Not a Technic person, but I can see why some people are frustrated by the "fake" pneumatics/hydraulics.
The one-touch controls though...thats amazing.
I do not know how to reply to a post or if it is not possible at all, but for the question of the color of the 4x4: the designer calls the color "dark yellow".
Oh man. I wasn’t sold on the 4x4 from the box image. But this article and the video really makes it shine. It’s pretty awesome. And the Liebharr? The sheer size of the thing is incredible! I still haven’t decided if I’ll buy it though. It’ll take up a lot of real estate in the LEGO room.
Geez, if I had the dough; the Liebherr would be a good excuse to buy a few thousand 1X black bricks of all sorts (I live in a big coal area). Now, we just need a huge licensed dump truck to go with it. Liebherr's T282B would be a great companion set.
The model itself is epic, and fits in well with my interest in construction/mining machinery. Not exactly within my budget (and it falls in at quite a lot), but I don't think they couldn't have done much with anything smaller. Powered Up is something that will take some getting used to. I'm probably going to stick with using it, as cheap prepaid smartphones cost less than what the amount of Powered Up! train transmitters to run all the motors will cost.
The orange colour is way off in the photos. Are you using a Canon camera?
In my experience their digital processing has a lot of trouble with reds and oranges, they got too much yellow. Other brands (I had also a Nikon) get much better the difference between yellow, orange and red.
The great thing about the Liebherr is that it's almost minifig scale. Probably bigger, probably microfig. But I'll put a construction minifig on it. I can't wait! ;-)
I can't believe how many people think that the fact these are controlled via Bluetooth on a separate device like phone will be a problem in the near future. Where do you all get the idea that Bluetooth is about to fade? This protocol is doing very good since the beginning, there are absolutely no sings of it becoming obsolete in any foreseeable future. Stop obsessing about it so much, there is no reason for such feelings. But even if BT will go away there is soooooo many smartphones on the market that within another 20 years you will be able to buy another device for a dollar.
The 4x4 would be a yes. The Liebherr, although impressive, I imagine will be priced high, so would be a no.
As soon as they become available, I'm ordering some of those new parts. The inline clutch could be a life-saver, and I've seen several Lego fan videos lamenting the lack of strength of the current u-joints.
@thor96 The fear isn't Bluetooth going away, it's the app becoming deprecated and unsupported as smartdevices continue to be updated in the future. A dedicated controller will always be there - at least until the wiring gives out - but an app can be broken by a system update.
@Cindipool: For the official app, perhaps. But once this is out in the wild I doubt it will take long at all for the community to create their own custom apps. Programmers have already done so with the System-based "Powered Up" hubs from the trains and Batmobile sets, as well as the Lego Boost hub: http://www.picaxe.com/LEGO-Boost/
Exciting sets and exciting new components for sure!
I wonder how do these Zusammengebaut guys get so much access and attention. I don't like their style and calling that interview excellent feels like a stretch. I wish either you, TBB or BtB have been doing these interviews instead.
I WANT MY PNEUMATICS!!!!!
@ALFIE22. I want Pneumatics too but remember.....
Lego Pneumatics is just for "show"
Not for you, Not for me.
Just for "Show"
These are both really good looking sets, but I'm still unhappy that TLG made the new system app based. It really starts to limit the potential audience or market for these things. I was all into the new City trains until I discovered that Powered UP and Control+ were incompatible. Makes me a bit sad, really.
I really want to see the inside of those planetary gear wheel hubs that include 5:1 ratio to increase torque.
I really want to see the inside of those planetary gear wheel hubs that include 5:1 ratio to increase torque.