Powered Up
Powered Up is LEGO's current control system, from 2018 on: battery hubs with sockets, and the motors, sensors and lights that plug into them. Every one of them is driven over Bluetooth on LWP3, and nothing in the system takes a command by light.
Reach
| Capability | State | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Drive motors, lights and sensors from a web page | works | nothing reflashed: a hub accepts a connection from any Bluetooth central, the same one the LEGO app makes |
| Blink VLL out of a hub LED | works | the hub runs a Pybricks program and does the timing itself — Pybricks VLL |
| Switch the 88005 Light | works | two LEDs the hub turns on and off; an output, never a channel |
| Read colour and distance with the 88007 sensor | works, untested here | six colours, and distance out to about 10 cm off the infrared reflection |
| Send Power Functions (IR) codes out of the 88007 emitter | works, untested here | the one optical output in the system: Port Output Command 0x81, WriteDirectModeData 0x51, mode 0x07, one uint16, write-only |
| Read proximity with the SPIKE and Technic Distance Sensor | works, untested here | the same reflected-infrared trick as the older WeDo motion sensor |
| Read colour with the SPIKE Colour Sensor | works, untested here | lights red, green and blue; reports colour plus reflected and ambient brightness |
| Hear infrared on any Powered Up part | out of reach | the 88007 has no receive mode at all — it can shout at a Power Functions receiver and never hear one |
| Program a hub by shining light at it | out of reach | nothing on a hub listens to light the way a Micro Scout does |
| Run other firmware on the Technic Move hub | out of reach | it stays an LWP3 peripheral |
What it hears
Bluetooth, both ways, and nothing else. LWP (Powered Up BLE) owns the service and characteristic, the message header, the port commands, and the hub-kind byte that names a model before you connect — including the two DUPLO kinds and the Technic Move hub. There is no second channel: light in this system runs outward, a sensor lighting an object and reading what comes back, and LEGO never published those emitter wavelengths. The community reads them as visible for colour and near-infrared for distance (Frequencies & wavelengths).
The specification has not moved since 8 February 2019, and no hub, motor, sensor or protocol revision shipped in 2025 or 2026. LEGO's current investment went to the closed SMART Play (SMART Brick) platform instead.
Reaching it today
- From the page. Flash Force connects to a stock hub and drives it — least effort, nothing installed and nothing reflashed.
- With no phone. The bridge connects to a hub itself and runs a stored layout from a gamepad.
- When you need the LED to blink VLL, put a Pybricks program on the hub instead of writing each flash over Bluetooth: Powered Up hub (Pybricks VLL).
- A second-generation DUPLO train base wants Bluetooth pairing before it will talk, and its ports are not laid out like the first generation's.
- The Technic Move hub takes no other firmware, so drive it as an ordinary LWP3 peripheral.
Links
- Hubs: 88009 City hub, available, $49.99 · 88012 Technic hub, available, $89.99 · 88006 BOOST Move hub, retired · Technic Move hub, set 42176, 1 August 2024, $169.99 — two drive motors, a steering servo and a Li-ion pack, hub kind
0x84; "Technic Move" is a Pybricks and community name, not LEGO's. - Sensors and lights: Colour and Distance 88007, the BOOST sensor, retired — lego.com shows it gone and it sold out during 2025 (Rebrickable) · Light 88005 (Rebrickable · LEGO.com).
- Bluetooth DUPLO trains 10874 and 10875, retired; a second-generation LWP3 DUPLO hub exists, and Push&Go 10427 / 10428 are still sold.
- Byte-level protocol: LWP (Powered Up BLE) · the specification repository LEGO/lego-ble-wireless-protocol-docs, last touched 8 February 2019.
- Reading the packets elsewhere: BrickController2. Tools spanning old and new bricks: BrickLogo · lego-blockly. Part numbers in one place: Sets & bricks index.