Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

Make a little male/female adapter cable with a resistor in it that you just install between the 12v supply and 5v model to reduce the current when necessary, remove it when it's not needed. A resistor won't regulate 12V down to 5V. If I hooked up a microcontroller that way I could fry it - or send ...

I'm thinking of setting up various models of mine with a common interface: set them up to take the same voltage power supply and give them a data interface so I can control the lighting effects run by the microcontroller... There's various issues I'm trying to solve but one of the more frustrating o...

Save yourself a lot of grief. Build it fixed-pose. That would tend to be my suggestion as well. I've spent large amounts of time on various projects, replacing moving parts with aftermarket polycaps and so on, either for looks or for improved mobility - and for what? I don't often re-pose a finishe...

This is just another one of those posts based on some idea I recently learned about and thought was kind of neat... Basically I have a project I'm working on that uses a large number of LEDs to be controlled by a microcontroller... So the question is, how many LEDs can you drive from a microcontroll...

Incidentally, if anyone was interested in their "Pla Plate Set Small Size" and wanted to know what's in it, the Japanese item page is here: 300x120mm, two sheets of 0.3mm thickness, two sheets of 0.5mm thickness, one sheet of 1.2mm thickness.

Has anyone else noticed the apparent battery cover on the bottom of the Nebulizer body? Needs some work to make operable, but not that much. Now, putting in a switch on the trigger might be a problem. How so? It seems like there's plenty of room in the grip for the trigger to move if that's how it ...

What I need to find first, though, are engine bells. Anybody know of any sources of them? I don't mind picking up cheap kits to get some, and my needs for quality aren't terribly strong, but if there's something like...a box or bag of these things, I'd love to know about it. Gundam modelers are cra...

Hi, Would anyone have a link(s) to a DIY photo etch system. I've seen the one at Micro Mark. Being in Canada I would need the export version and then find the chemicals here. Just wondering if there are any other solutions out there. Can't seem to Google much. Thanks. I haven't tried it yet but the...

Hermes Trismegistus wrote: That weird fringe community that uses stationary as office supplies kinda scares me, you know?

It's stationary. They can't move it.

I've never actually made a mold this way - I always pour one half and then the other. Any advantages to pouring the whole thing in one pass?

Not sure if this is a good idea but to create more 'randomness', one could interface any EPROM (especially from old machines) and read from it. The data that comes out, is quite random methinks. I did something somewhat similar to get random number sequences on a PIC before - more precisely I ran a...

If I use a different voltage wallwart and rearange the led's in series can I lower the heat output by using less resistors? That's correct. There are advantages to matching your load to your voltage source - wasted energy is converted to heat, so if you reduce waste, you reduce heat. But waste can ...

You gotta know (and tell us) the forward current of the LEDs. He's asking us to provide that... kenny: imple question: what color LED are you going to use? That's an easy way to get a feel for the sort of power characteristics the LED is likely to have. Assuming it's white, that's usually a 3V drop...

ScottV wrote:I'm looking buy some very small LEDs (red and clear), maybe 2 - 3 mm in diameter.

What? 2-3mm? I thought you said ultra small LEDs... XD

I was going to recommend buying 0603-size LEDs (1.6mm x 0.8mm) from Mouser or EBay...

What kind of blinker driver were you using? I'm trying to think how I would solve this problem, short of tearing the model apart...

MillenniumFalsehood wrote: 1mm Red LED x4 wired in parallel to a solid-state blinker.

I'm confused... Why would the LEDs be wired in parallel to a blinker circuit? That sounds kind of messed up. Can you give me a schematic or something?

Dang, sorry to hear about it... Yeah, short circuits break things. :) Anything touching anything that's not supposed to is a potential danger, though usually circuits are tolerant enough to deal with a certain level of mishap... The CCFL has a rather higher voltage, though, so it's not too surprisin...

Practice makes perfect and Aves fixes a world of poor practice. I must be doing something wrong. In my experience, if I don't get something right the first time, Aves is a terrible way to correct it... If I apply Aves to something, let it cure, and sand it, the Aves has a way of coming off in chunk...

The wire-wrap for LEDs would be how I go...hate soldering. I won't do individual surface mount LED soldering, not for this project anyway. But that's a good tip with using rigid steel wires.. Well, some of that last post was also me trying to brainstorm how I might tackle your particular challenge....

I don't really know about where to get strip lights - I never use them... Is there another option besides soldering? For surface-mount LEDs, not really. You have to solder something to them, or them to something, before using 'em... For regular, leaded LEDs you could do wire-wrap - but then you're l...

2) Surface Mount LEDs This solution would give you a better light intensity and you can choose from a normal bluish white to warm yellowish white LEDs. But here is where the problem starts as these LEDs, although tiny, costs quite a bit and also, you would need to make a circuit board for them. Fal...

I think the main issue with the LFSR is that the 555 is producing a regular clock signal. Well, the clock interval is consistent but the output changes - So even though it's just deciding, every clock interval, whether the LED is on or off, you get stretches of time between 1-7 clocks long where th...

The question came up on SMA Nerd Herd about how to make a random-looking light effect. I didn't really know a good answer (and this is something that has bothered me in the past) but I found a good answer online so I thought I'd share it here, too. "Fire" effect flasher circuit This circui...

Hi all, I think I saw a thread on here at some point about this, but can't find it now. I want to have some random thruster effects on my Star Trek ships where I want it to look like the ship computer is trying to maintain the ship's position. Anyone know how to do this? It seems to me like a fairl...

I wouldn't. Soldering to a battery pack usually means soldering to tabs sticking out of the pack, not to the cells IN the pack. Why not just use a 3 Volt coin cell, and a coin cell holder? I don't know if my space requirements are typical of most - but I haven't seen a lot of good off-the-rack solu...

I was using an old Campbell Hausfeld compressor with 3 gallon tank for roughly the last eight years... It died in the middle of my most recent project, at the moment I'm relying upon a can of propellant I happened to have sitting around... I'm still trying to feel out my options for the next compres...

On January 7th, starting at 9AM mountain time, Sparkfun will be giving away $100,000 worth of their merchandise in their Free Day event... Basically it's first-come, first-served, you can order anything you want up to $100, and you pay for shipping... I don't know what they've got that's specificall...

Yeah - Eagle is what BatchPCB and Sparkfun recommend... I'm kind of a bit inclined to stick to the software libre options, though, so I might give KiCAD a whirl, or just see what the gEDA PCB auto-router can do...

More new "Raven" design versions... I'm getting ready to order another run of boards: I've made a few attempts to rework the board design to include more features while making the board smaller: I had done some 9mm-wide versions of the design but it's been very tough to make these work, s...

Do you guys think that this would do the trick?: http://kipkay.com/videos/laser-flashlight-hack It's powerful enough to light a match, which to the best I can figure out is around 325 degrees. I don't know if that will do the trick for heat shrink, though. Well, I think the (ratio of risk of damage...