Improved LEGO Power Functions RC Receiver & Protocol

The LEGO Power Functions RC reciever and RC protocol has been updated. The official announcement came from the LEGO PF product manager, Gaute Munch:

The LEGO Group has released a new version of the LEGO Power Functions RC Receiver (identified by a short blink on the green LED when power is connected).

The new version of the RC Receiver supports all functionality of the LPF RC protocol and we have added a command to access the extra address space.

We are hereby offering you an updated version of the LPF RC protocol documentation.

Please feel free to use any information from the protocol document for personal, non-commercial use only, provided you keep intact copyright, trademarks and other proprietary rights of the LEGO Group.

Gaute Munch
The LEGO Group

The LPF RC Protocol document can be viewed here.

Gaute Munch also confirmed that:

- Orders through LEGO Shop at Home for #8884 will provide the new version of the RC receiver.

- The new RC receiver supports all the LEGO PF RC protocol functionality including ‘single pin mode’.

The 'single pin mode' is especially good news. According to Conchas, from the Technic Bricks blog, says:

The single pin mode (both timeout and no timeout), would allow individual control of pins C1 and C2.

This way we could with an eventual and appropriate PF remote (not yet released) or through the NXT and one IR Link sensor to control these pins. It would allow for instance to independently connect one LED or another on/off element, to each pin.

Thus allowing to control 2 devices per port, 4 per receiver and 16 considering all the 4 channels.

Very exciting for all of us LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT users!

via Technic Bricks.

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