LegoDEI Receiver V4 Released!

[LegoDEI]

Had some free time so I combined the best parts of the V2 and V3 receivers.
These use the same IR receivers as the V2 versions for the same long range performance, but with the LED chips of the V3 version since a lot of people liked their brightness.
I've also added the adjustable height mounting system which lets you trim off spacers on the riser mount as desired.
They let me keep prices the same even with inflating part costs by reducing the amount of labor required for assembly!

Lights Demo:

https://youtube.com/shorts/YBl5c-xo8p4?feature=share

[SoCalBobS]

I ordered two v.4's from MRC. They aren't showing v.2's anymore. I'm not sure about the design of the v.4's. What do others think? A v.4 is on the M5 Stuart, the v.2 on the M8 Scott. I hope the v.2's will still be available.



The v.2's look good, almost like part of the tank.

[Rubicon99]

I ordered two v.4's from MRC. They aren't showing v.2's anymore. I'm not sure about the design of the v.4's. What do others think? A v.4 is on the M5 Stuart, the v.2 on the M8 Scott. I hope the v.2's will still be available.



The v.2's look good, almost like part of the tank.

They work fine but have lost their clean thin low profile fit as your photos clearly show.

Manufacturing cost went up on the V2 so LEGO made the V4 to offset increasing production prices. This is a trade off I personally would not have made. Raising the price on the V2 would have been a safer course of action given LEGO has no real competition for high performance HengLong IR receivers and similar performing ones like Tamiya cost well over $100.

At most the price of the V2 would have gone up $10 to $15 which would have still been a deal by high performance IR receiver standards.

I think since LEGO does not have a copyright on his V2 he might have opened the door to competition from the Canadian "copy" of his V2 which work just as well and at a similar cost to the LEGO V2. They did not sell it in the US because price was to close but now with no LEGO V2 available any longer the market will be more open to the Canadian option.

[LegoDEI]

Fun fact, V2 has been available all this time here: https://legodei.shop/products/v2-0-h...h-mounting-kit

Yall got so used to buying it from motionrc you forgot I have my own shop still. The price did go up to compensate, but only slightly.

The V2 and V4 both come with improved receivers as of last month and are superior to the canadian clones now with even more reliable reception at long range.
If you test the any of the older V2s purchased before last month, you will see that they do not receive more than 2-3 consecutive hits back to back reliably near maximum range (this was a bug that was difficult to notice during gameplay and we only recently discovered it), but the new ones will. The canadian clones have not fixed this issue and at longer ranges have a "cooldown" period after receiving 3 consecutive hits that makes them immune for ~2-3 seconds. It took us a long time to realize this was happening at all because it requires 3+ tanks to be simultaneously shooting at the same target 1 second apart at 70+ feet. Instead of depleting the 5 or 6 hitpoints in 5-6 seconds (there's a hard limit of 1 shot received per second), it will take 8-9 seconds instead (requiring a 3 second cool down after 3 hits received). This is why sometimes when a tank is running through the open and everyone is shooting at it, it takes longer than expected for it to die. It's a pretty minimal edge case impact on gameplay, but for fairness it has been addressed going forward.

[Rubicon99]

With all do respect your testing is flawed. If there is a "cool down" period while using HL MFU systems for long range hits it would should happen at close range too and it doesn't. That is because it is not a receiver issue it is most likely an MFU issue. It does happen with Clark and IBU MFU systems if using LEGO or Tamiya receivers, but not Tamiya systems when using LEGO or Tamiya receivers because Tamiya built in a time delay for receiving hit so not to "over load" the MFU. Nor does range effect a TD MFUs ability to take rapid hits. This is more an MFU issue with HL, Clark and IBU and most likely not an IR receiver issues.

Now what I do think you are seeing with the V2 not taking long range hits is something that has been known for a long time and exploited, but has nothing to do with a "cool down". It has to do with the orientation of the LED bulbs. The individual bulbs will deflect / block direct shots at them once past 20ft within an approximately 15 degree arc of the bulb being fired at. This makes for dead zones similar to Tamiyas deflection zones. So by simply pointing any of the four LED bulbs towards your advisory you can greatly improve your ability to defeat/deflect hits. I suspect this is more what has been being witnessed. I know because I have tested this extensively side by side with your V1 that do not have the same LED orientation, you know the ones that had the LEDs point up. At 70ft+ pointing an LED towards fire is highly effective at reducing the hits from incoming fire. Again not something important because it is a lesser unintended mimic of a battle feature Tamiya built into their receivers for realism. The improved V2 and V4 now loose this battle feature but the Canadian ones still retain it.

Missing at longer ranges has been an issue which us old timers with lots of expensive have known about. Not hitting every shot at 70ft+(20m) is more realistic then hitting every shot. It added the element of realism. The further a target is away the harder it is to hit and the misses increase. Especially with WW2 and Cold War era tanks. Hitting every shot is just not realistic. So we never mention or looked at the receiver needing to be perfect at long ranges. Heck even the $100+ Tamiya receivers can't accept 100% perfect hits past 70ft and often can't be hit past 50ft from many angles. This was intentionally designed by Tamiya into them to mimic the inaccuracy of long range shooting.

Now I applaud you for upgrading your V2 receiver (and new V4), but by doing so you removed elements of realism that now the Canadian receiver have over yours. You also increased the issues with both your new V4 and improved V2 that your older V2 have with receiving ricochet and friendly fire hits (IR beams bouncing off background objects or being hit by a teammate firing next to you) by adding more sensitive IR receivers. So by improving one area you made another far worse. And worse for the majority of battling because the majority (world wide) is at ranges less than 35ft where ricochet and friendly fire hits are most obvious.

I don't think those you are doing your testing with understand the ALL the actual nuances of simulated combat and are solely focused on their particular style of battling. Being perfect is not a simulation of realism and is actually a detractor. But we all have different standards.

Please don't misunderstand me I am and will always be a supporter of LEGO. I fear though you have opened doors for competitors to legitimately take advantage of.

[LegoDEI]

Actually everything you've said perfectly agrees with my findings, just not in the way you're interpreting, because there's some parts you're missing (through no fault of your own). I would also like to acknowledge that I will always be grateful of your club's continued support and crucial contributions and expertise during early development and testing of the receivers.
I want to first assuage your fears in the new receivers affecting game play negatively; the new receivers make it so clark/henglong systems behave more similarly to tamiya systems, and does not put tamiya systems at a disadvantage. I'm happy to provide you samples to test this if you like, that's how confident I am in this finding.
I know this will be taken with some suspicion, but I have really broken down and analyzed the system at the base electrical level and code level, and would like to share the details with the hobby and elevate all of our understanding on how our complex systems work. Let me know if any part of the following explanation is not clear.

First explaining this:

If there is a "cool down" period while using HL MFU systems for long range hits it would should happen at close range too and it doesn't. That is because it is not a receiver issue it is most likely an MFU issue. It does happen with Clark and IBU MFU systems if using LEGO or Tamiya receivers, but not Tamiya systems when using LEGO or Tamiya receivers. This is an MFU issue with Clark and IBU not an IR receiver issues.

I know you probably already know this, but we need to first be on the same page on the IR mechanism -

1. the IR signal is sent as a 1 second coded pulse (tamiya standard).
2. This pulse is received by the IR receiver, which performs both physical filtering for IR and electrical analog signal/noise filtering (this is important).
3. The tank control board takes the signal given by the IR receiver, and processes whether the signal meets its threshold for registering as a hit.

The reason for your observed difference is because Clark / IBU require a full ~0.9-1s of the IR signal to be received before it "accepts" the signal as valid, but tamiya only requires 0.2-0.3 seconds of the IR signal. So you are very correct that there is indeed a difference between the MFUs. This makes it so tamiya systems are perceived as more sensitive in certain situations.
However, this is only an issue because of how the additional signal processing the IR receivers do internally. The IR receivers perform electrical noise filtering in the internal amplification circuit (helps mitigate eliminate electrical and optical noise, such as from solar fluctuations, radio signals, light bulbs, etc). This filtering behavior changes depending on strength of the IR signal relative to background brightness, and hence changes depending on range.

• At closer ranges where the signal to noise ratio is better (if you're talking to someone in a loud bar, the closer you are, the easier it is to understand you), it behaves how you would expect, and provides you with full 1 second of IR signal as output to the MFU, this is all good and dandy.
• At further ranges where the signal to noise ratio is worse (they're now shouting at you from further away, and parts of the message get lost in the ambient noise), it starts cutting off portions of the transmission, so you may only get 0.3 seconds of the IR signal. The important thing is this only begins happening after two consecutive back to back signals. (you can imagine this as the difference between someone talking quickly where it eventually becomes warbled versus yelling single words slowly with a pause in between).

The Data:
The plot below shows the two differences described above. This is the measured electrical output from the receiver directly, and this is what the control board gets as its input. The top yellow squiggle line is the recorded signal of a "long range" shot where the signal is weaker (I simulated this with a larger resistor and hence an extra dim emitter), and the bottom blue line is with a close range shot.
The rectangular blocks in the graph that dip below the line are the very IR signals received. The longer range, weaker signal shot does not get fully transmitted; the filter after ~2.5 seconds cuts off the signal as it becomes treated as background noise (3rd yellow rectangle is cut short). This does not happen when this signal is much "louder" than the noise at close range.
What's important here is that this difference means the clipped, shorter time duration signal outputted at long range will still counted by tamiya, but not by henglong/clark/tbu, causing the hit reception difference at longer ranges. This makes the gameplay unfair between different boards, and puts tamiya users at a disadvantage.
The newer chips I'm switching to make it so both systems receive the full, unclipped signal, and fixes the reception disparity at longer ranges between the systems.

Missing at longer ranges has been an issue which us old timers with lots of expensive have known about. Not hitting every shot at 70ft+(20m) is more realistic then hitting every shot. It added the element of realism. The further a target is away the harder it is to hit and the misses increase. Especially in WW2 and Cold War era tanks. Hitting every shot is just not realistic. So we never mention or looked at receiver needing to be perfect at long ranges. Heck even the $100+ Tamiya receivers can't accept 100% perfect hits past 70ft and often can't be hit past 50ft from many angles. This was intentional designed by Tamiya into them to mimic the inaccuracy of long range shooting.

These newer chips do not make tamiya systems more sensitive compared to before (performance will be indistinguishable to before), they only level the playing field at longer ranges on Henglong/Clark/IBU so that they perform more similarly to Tamiya. You can continue using the custom printed shades that your club makes to adjust the optical reception characteristics and hence the hit chance, with blocked angles as you prefer. I think you can agree that the performance differences between the different systems has always been an annoyance to all clubs that allow interplay, and helping equalize performance across platforms will only lead to a more enjoyable experience for everyone - we've all heard veteran tamiya users shun henglong tank ir performance at one point or another, and this just helps mitigate that gap.

You also increased the issues your older version had with receiving ricochet hits (IR beams bouncing of background objects) by adding more sensitive IR receivers. So by improving one area you made another far worse. And worse for the majority of battling because the majority (world wide) is at ranges less than 25ft where ricochet hits are most obvious.

This doesn't happen because the new receivers have the same optical sensitivity as the older ones - how bright it sees a signal; it does not change the sensitivity to reflected shots. The perceived "improvement" at long range comes from electrical signal filtering, which only matters at long range, and does not increase optical reception of scattered signals from reflected shots.