[rheide]

I've been playing around with the Lego and Raspberry pi combination on and off through the years [1], with the goal of building a standalone tracked vehicle (pi on board) that can move around my apartment. There were various ways to do this already, mainly by using off the shelf motor controller boards and later the third party Bluetooth motor bricks. This was all for the old "power functions" system though, Lego has since revamped their lineup with a lot of new parts that all use a different connector. I'm really looking forward to getting one of these.

[1] https://www.colorfulwolf.com/blog/tag/raspberry-pi/

[jacquesm]

Lego has the bad habit of not extending their 'systems' thinking to their electrical and electronic components. New connectors are introduced rather willy-nilly and supply voltages and communications protocols change with potentially every model year.

This allows them to quickly follow trends but it is totally contrary to the mechanical interface which is backwards compatible for over 60 years.

The same goes for the train sets, the track width is more or less the same for ever but the track interconnects and the way the trains are powered have changed often.

Fortunately for the trains there is a solution (subset of track, only use the old 12V system for the track it will also support battery powered trains giving a reasonably broad coverage), but for the electronics and the various motors the situation is quite a bit more complex. Note how the article essentially limits compatibility to a single one of the 10 or so systems that Lego has over the years used to connect electrical components.

Anybody remember the very old style electrical interconnect plates?

Someone ought to cook up a compatibility kit that allows you to connect older and newer stuff at will.