LEGO® Technic™ Move Hub · 88019
Thirteen bytes
and your car moves.
This is the frame that drives it. Plug in an Xbox controller, open this page in Chrome, and the browser writes these bytes to the hub over Bluetooth — no app, no account, no install.
01 The hardware
| Drive motors | 2, planetary geared, optical encoders |
|---|---|
| Steering motor | 1, planetary geared, magnetic position sensor |
| Lamp outputs | 6, individually addressable, on internal light pipes |
| Status LED | RGB, 10 colours |
| Motion | accelerometer, gyroscope, tilt, gesture |
| Controller | TI CC2642 — Bluetooth and motor control on one chip |
| Motor drivers | DRV8411 dual H-bridge per motor, bridges paralleled |
| Power | USB-C, rechargeable |
| External ports | none — everything is on board |
Sets that carry it
- 42214 Lamborghini Revuelto Super Sports Car The hub this was built and tested against — the revised version, which is the one shipping now.
- 42176 Porsche GT4 e-Performance Race Car Where the hub debuted, in its original revision. Not tested here, but the same hub and the same protocol.
Models rebuilt from those parts work too, as should newer sets carrying the same hub.
02 How it was worked out
The hub speaks LEGO Wireless Protocol 3.0 over a single Bluetooth characteristic. Ports are not hardcoded here — they are discovered at runtime from the hub's own inventory of what is attached.
The drive frame took longer. Four separate attempts to find it by writing bytes and watching for movement produced nothing at all, because this port acknowledges anything well-formed whether or not it acts on it. What settled it was asking the hub to describe its own port modes — and then noticing that the lights field carries two initialisation commands the hub requires before it will accept any drive frame.
An earlier version of this code masked those exact bytes out, on the grounds that a published note called them dangerous. That safety measure is the reason nothing worked for a day.
Benedettelli's reference notes LEGO's protocol documentation
03 What you need
| Hub | Technic Move Hub. It advertises as “Technic Move”. |
|---|---|
| Browser | Chrome or Edge on Android, macOS, Windows or ChromeOS. Safari and Firefox do not implement Web Bluetooth; on iOS every browser uses Safari's engine, so an iPhone needs one such as Bluefy. |
| Controller | Optional. Any pad the browser can see — Xbox, PlayStation, Bluetooth or USB. Fully remappable. |
| Setup | None. No pairing in system settings, no app, no account. |
04 Before you drive
This moves a real machine. These three were earned, not imagined.
- STOP ALL is always on screen. It never sits behind navigation, at any window size.
- Connecting calibrates the steering. The hub sweeps the rack to both end stops, so leave the front wheels free to turn.
- Losing the gamepad stops the car. So does hiding the tab, and so does any error inside the control loop.