What is inside the Technic Move hub of the set 42176 Porsche GT4 e-Performance?

Question

What electronics are inside the new Control+ Move Hub with motors (103479c01) that is used in the set 42176 Porsche GT4 e-Performance?

Answer 1

This hub can fortunately be opened without completely destroying it. The first step is to remove a few screws on the sides hidden within a couple of the Technic pin holes. The front cover can then be removed:

We can then remove a couple more screws to slide out the front motor. We can also carefully pop off a couple of pieces of plastic to expose the main PCB:

The front motor is geared down using a planetary gearbox and includes a magnetic rotation sensor to accurate encode position allowing it to be used a servo.

Removing the PCB is a little tricky. There are screws under it that hold the rest of the assembly together, and there is not enough slack in the motor wiring to wiggle it out to expose them. I desoldered the drive motors in order to remove this.

The above photo shows where the motor wiring attaches, the location of the motor drivers, and the 6 primary LEDs. The LEDs are visible externally thanks to internal light pipes:

The primary MCU is the TI CC2642 visible in the top middle on the PCB. It is a relatively modest part compared to other hubs in the Powered up and Control+ line. For example, a similar part is used just for Bluetooth in the City Hub, but in that hub it is paired with a more powerful primary micro controller. This simpler hardware makes it unlikely that third-party programmable environments such as Pybricks will ever be fully featured on this hub.

The other side of the PCB houses a few additional components including the USB C charging port:

With the PCB out of the way, we can now see the main drive motors. The black wheels on the right are used to encode rotation of the motor shaft optically.

Here's a single drive motor completely removed:

The drive motors interface with a pair of planetary gearboxes:

These ultimately drive the pair of drive axles at the back of the hub:

Unlike most other hubs, this one does not provide any way to connect external motors or sensors. It does include 6 controllable LEDs and 3 individually controllable motors making it flexible enough on its own to drive a variety of creations.