Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

Here's some ideas for 12 volt battery based packs:

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index ... Id=2062242
or the version which is configured as a long pack
http://www.radioshack.com/product/index ... Id=2062251

I was thinking of spoofing it and plating with balsa. But not on this copy. Its supposed to be the right size for some trucking containers. My plan is to take it to Hobby Town USA store within the next couple of days to tryout whatever they have there. Also I need some stock balsa or styrene for the...

Didn't know where else to put this, but I used the laser cutter sticky in this forum to get the parts made. Special Note: This is not my design or plans, the files came from someone else, the credit goes to Andy Miller of starshiphulls.com. Though the site is gone, I was still able to contact him wh...

That power supply has a nice switch on it... If you need a switch closer to the model, like in the stand/base, there will be some wiring involved. You will need a connector in the base to mate with the connection from that power supply, then you can wire to a switch. and then a mating connector set ...

any luck whipping one of these up?

From a component view it takes 3 components not including the LED, one resistor, capacitor and a jumper.
two connections for power Positive and Negative battery connections.

When your ready to try for strobe pins 5 and 6 as mention before.

Ok its on its way got to the PO 5 mins before they closed. But I sent it cheapest so week to 10 days...

I have some 30 AWG solid if you can use that, 5 feet of each?

I think the smallest I have is 28 AWG and its solid.

setup c) 'top' side the component on its side from the view of the camera is the 470K ohm surface mount resistor used in place of the 500 K variable zog shows. its on its side cause its a wide 1/4 or 1/8 watt resistor, either way its bigger than it needs to be. big file! http://www.kc6sye.com/images...

Hey got 3 circuits setup, to show the options. One would be what I call experimenter's setup. setup a) you can quick plug an LED(s) to try out the effects, experimenter's setup setup b) solder in a standard 4060 DIP(ackage) and then solder LED wires to the pins that you picked out in setup a) setup ...

Still working on this, hope to have something by Friday.

I used Zog's circuit too, I just added the header pins to make it easier to try out different connections till I got an effect that looked good. The other thing on that board is just a voltage regulator with some filter caps, its the thing the blew up at wonderfest, cause there wasn't a reverse pola...

also note the dual pin headers i used, the row that appears unused is a common ground connection. Using this would yield the simplest FX lighting option. It would light for whatever the clock period is then be off till the clock count caused that bit to toggle again (its a binary counter). its a div...

http://www.kc6sye.com/techmages_11_10_06.html

I can provide some more info on this if you like, like which of Zog's circuits I used, but basically it is the 4060. The outputs go to a pin header since you mix and match till you get an approximate flash rate that you want.

Ya you're gonna want to off load the driving of LEDs from the chip, completely. you don't want that thing trying to do any power driving requirements. The internal wiring just can'a break the laws of physics ;) the MOS FET solutions will be the best idea, those things draw almost no power to drive (...

Wait I think the strips are meant to run at 12 volts, and everything else needs 9, the voltage regulator is the simple way to go and is all you need. Check it in use though they tend to get hot, inside the model that heat build up will cause yellowing of decals and paint and softening of plastic if ...

http://www.powerstream.com/9V-Alkaline-tests.htm Not that he mentions his test is not to test the batteries under normal discharge loads, but to characterize what happens when you over discharge the batteries. His lowest discharge rate is 100 mAmps. I'm betting you only want to use a 9volt battery b...

Stepping up has to be done with a circuit, a simple regulator cannot boost up a voltage. There are plenty of circuits for doing this but its a micro chip and some other components to make this happen (switching power supply is basically what you'll be getting). Also if the strip is designed to run a...

Its a good idea to leave overhead in the power supply too. Sometimes you see a power supply says 500ma what they mean is that's the max power it can put out for short periods of time, running it at that level for say an all day contest will cause it to loose regulation and start to fail. If it fails...

That's a parallel circuit, so you will be wasting a lot of power as heat! Power is calculated by Voltage * current. assuming 3.3 volts for the LEDs we can find how much over voltage must be consumed by the resistor: 9-3.3 = 5.7 volts Since the resistor must pass all the current that then gets divide...

A variable cap won't do the job unless its a really big cap, since you are using the cap as a battery/energy source and most variable caps don't have much electron storage capacity (they mainly are there to provide a frequency constant).

Yes its probably your power supply doesn't have enough current for everything, so that when the flashing LED tries to power up the voltage sags on the rest of circuit causing the dimming effect on the other LEDs. A cap might not help if the flashing LED is not off long enough to store up enough extr...

Source for FPGA type components, this basically a chip that can be figured to act like a bunch of counters AND,OR,etc flip flops and a lot more I'm really simplifying here. If you prefer to design in hardware rather than writing in C code on a micro-controller this is the option. some generate their...

I think the 'running hot' he referred to is the electronics idiom for running with slightly higher power (current and or voltage) then specified.

that's a Xilinx part. Worked with them before.

What program are you using to write the code for these?

Also please let us know if you find a [small order] source for them.

The only thing to remember for daisy chained LEDs is that current in a loop must be equal through each element in the loop, that is you can mix LED's that want different voltages so long as they want all the same current. This is for serial LED connections (aka daisy chains). parallel does not have ...

Don't know of any that small, the smaller fpga's out now a days are hybrids with a microcontroller/RISC core, Like the Spartan. I don't know of anything with 12 GPIO pins. Look at digikey though or
http://www.newark.com

SPLD, GALs, PALs do have some hits at newark.

The solder iron you linked too has to be prepared to be used as a soldering iron, this procedure is simple but requires a specific product: 1) let the iron heat up to normal operating temperature 2) plunge the tip into tip tinner for a moment (regular solder will not do the trick) 3) iron is now rea...

note the 'tinning' of a part prior to soldering is not the same thing as tip Tinner. they share the name. I can find a pic of a little dish of tip tinner.

If you use brass rod, you can get that to solder to the strain relief in the 1/4" jacks. You must be careful, the brass rod will want to get very hot to let the solder flow, but that much heat will start to melt cheaper jacks. you help avoid this: 1)clean the brass rod with fine grit sand paper...