Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

Damnit... After all the time I spent designing this thing, I finally ordered some boards, then went to Mouser to get the components... They no longer sell the voltage booster IC I used in small quantities. Now I've got to move my whole bill of materials over to another supplier or find a substitute ...

Matt1982 wrote:All these fancy smancy micontrollers! Just remember, my little board is cylon virus proof! They can't hack it!

So really a 555 board should be used for Galactica... Other Battlestars should use microcontrollers. :)

If you redesigned it as a microcontroller board, you'd probably pay more for the IC (maybe $3 instead of $1) but you'd be able to do away with a lot of the other components (timing resistors and caps in particular - really everything but the current limiting resistors for the LEDs), and dramatically...

What you want to do with your microcontroller / LED widget is familiar to me, but you will need to write very much code to make all those things happen. That's OK, I'm awesome at code. Though I guess I'll have to see how much program memory that code will take up... If you choose this route, you wa...

I have a grill inserted in the model that's made from brass etching, and although it isn't the actual grill shape usd in the show, it's a good representation. I just can't seem to get the shadows to cast just like the show, and when they do cast well, they hardly photograph at all. Perhaps a smalle...

I've been working on this lately and just kinda want to talk about it a bit I guess, since I haven't got anything else to show for it yet... Basically, Bandai has experimented with including LED lighting with some of their kits in the past, usually by providing the parts and making electrical connec...

The madman lighting kit will do most of your effects for the same price that it will cost you to purchase and program a chip. Pre-built lighting kits have their uses, but this is flat-out crazy talk . It does not cost $65 to buy and program a microcontroller or even (when necessary) build a more el...

How are you with programming? My suggestion would be a little Arduino plus a few resistors and a bit of coding. You've got few enough LEDs that you could probably drive the whole thing without adding a dedicated LED driver IC - but adding one if necessary wouldn't be a huge issue.

A higher voltage rating on a cap is fine: the voltage rating is just how many volts you can put across the terminals before it explodes. It's hard to diagnose just what's going on with the circuit, but it helps to understand how the circuit is supposed to work: The 555 is being used to generate a cl...

Anyone know of a small programmable electronics microprocessor board, like the Arduino, only a bit smaller? Do they make a smaller version of their board with the same functionality? Is that the nano? Can it be hooked up and programmed the same way as their regular size one? I'll break it down for ...

Christian- The problem with the Arduino by itself is that it's limited to supplying about 200mA on all the pins at any one time. Assume that's 10 LEDs each drawing 20mA. There are two typical solutions: One is to use charlieplexing (something like http://uzimonkey.blogspot.com/2009/01/charlieplexin...

I'm actually doing a project right now with Testor's enamels, after years of not using them. Mostly Model Master, but I used at least one of the little bottles after I realized I didn't have any black... I did run into the "tacky paint" problem on a couple parts, which I basically had to s...

Here's the deal: Several years ago I was working on the PL 1:1000 Enterprise - doing a two-tone color scheme using aztec dummy masks - and some of my paint lifted when I removed the masks. This wouldn't be a huge problem except that the colors I was spraying were custom mixes. I might have a tiny bi...

Yeah, that'll happen. Roughly every half-volt increase in the voltage across the LED doubles the current through it. So that would kill a LED pretty dead, I expect.

Perhaps some consideration should be put into making joints replacable (e.g. like in Revoltech figures)? I would say so. Those Hobby Base ball joints for instance: I love 'em and they're useful for all kinds of things... But they do crack apart sometimes. In general I'd say it's important to have a...

Probably the smallest circuit you can get to flash an LED is a "blinking LED". Blinking LEDs have the flasher circuit built-in. A blinking LED doesn't pass current when it's "off", so you should be able to wire a second LED in series and make them both blink (if the first blinkin...

I am pretty good with circuits but not so experienced with lighting ship kits - so I feel like my value to this discussion is somewhat limited. However, I have lit a 1:1000 TOS Enterprise, including nav flashers, bussards, and window cut-outs. So I'm not entirely in the dark here... One simple thing...

Steam, I tried your suggestion with 8 LEDs at 20mA each, 3.6 power supply and 3.2 forward voltage. I got as a result a 2.7 ohms resistor. Is that right? I don't know much but doesn't that mean that a resitor might not be necessary after all? Whether you need a resistor depends on the "equivale...

Yes the answer here it's to add one large resistor to the negative post of the battery box. This will drop the voltage from 3.6 to 3.2. A problem with this approach is you're dropping a relatively small amount of voltage (0.4V) with a fairly large amount of current (20mA for each LED - I don't know...

Well, the thing is that I have been using 2AA batteries for a total of 3V. That is a bit below the 3.2/3.4V suggested for my LEDs. But it works. The problem is that as I add more less I am noticing that I would like a bit more light. I don't have a 3.4V power supply and I would like to know if ther...

If the circuit inside your sealed model is built to work at a specific voltage, and your supply doesn't provide that specific voltage level, get a voltage regulator. That'd be the best way.

For me - the way I see things - the outputs effectively go POSITIVE and NEGATIVE. Your explanation is accurate, if a bit over complicated. I think we both mean effectively the same thing. When terminology is imprecise or improperly used, the meaning gets lost. When I was starting out with electroni...

If you can make a chaser with a 4017 chip - reverse the connections on the LEDs. Outputs on a CMOS chip like the 4017 go POSITIVE and then NEGATIVE. So connecting the LEDs "backward" gives you a moving Dark spot rather than a moving Lighted spot. Close, but not quite. The 4017 doesn't tak...

I'm not entirely sure what the various layouts are that you're describing. It's a bit hard to convey a circuit layout without pictures. Basically, what's best when you're wiring up multiple LEDs and regulating the current with resistors is to have a resistor for each individual series strand. There'...

Hi, for my current project I need some fairly large sizes of tubing (between 16-28mm probably) Plastruct has stuff in that size range, and I got some stuff that will probably fit my needs - but as a rule I prefer to work on a metric standard. Are there any good sources online for this kind of stuff,...

I need a connector. Specifically, one which I can use to connect two two-wire cables together. I've got a model that will serve as a model for drawing, and it has lights as well. It will mount from five different locations, so I need a way to disconnect the power supply and move it to another locat...

I run all my led wiring in parallel. Otherwise when one bulb dies it takes the entire circuit with it, correct? I have heard that when LEDs die, they turn into short-circuits. That would mean the opposite is true - a series chain would survive the death of an LED (as long as the other LEDs didn't w...

I have tossed around the idea of getting one of these machines.

Unfortunately, apart from the limited printing resolution I also get the impression that owning and operating one of these is a hobby unto itself.

NEVER use Grain 'O Wheat bulbs when you can sanely use LEDs. And I'd add that you can always use LEDs. LEDs can go places small incandescent bulbs can't, in fact. White LEDs used to be very expensive - these days they're quite cheap. The color quality has improved quite a lot as well, the so-called...

Another possibility might be to use a fluorescent rod and illuminate it with a blacklight. The advantage is that it would be easier to uniformly light the "beam", since you could just flood the whole area with the light - though it might be hard to get exactly the color you want.