Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

You mean Robbie the Robot from Lost in Space.

I had to look it up.... I never knew he was the "B-9 Robot"

I make a kit for that model that does what you want and its pretty easy to use. http://www.starshipmodeler.biz/shop/index.cfm/product/1807_92/fighter-with-engine-effects-lighting-kit.cfm You wont have to calculate anything or solder anything, except maybe the power supply. That can be a generic Radi...

A guy's gotta keep trying.

Neat! a 555 timer with a decade counter. Really simple. I'm surprised they sell it for so cheap, but then again they are using some pretty old parts. Oh, I make a runway effect kit too: http://home.comcast.net/~johndavidcook/runway.html Mine does four lights in sequence and it gives a wad of fiber o...

Ummm.. thats not such a good idea. LEDs are really current mode devices which means that they may happen to have X volts across them while running, but that can change with temperature and other things. For a really simple circuit, add a resistor, even if its just 100 ohms, to limit the current to a...

You could use my generic Starship Lighting kit, here:

http://home.comcast.net/~johndavidcook/ ... hting.html

Its designed to work with most Federation style starships.

Hope that helps.

I have some eye candy for people:

Keith Sullivan used my New Enterprise lighting kit and Paragrafix photo-etch on his JJ-Prise to come up with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BP_GQIi ... e=youtu.be

Very, very nice work. Thanks Keith!

If you know enough to build the circuit, you should be able to simulate it in LTSpice. It has a 555 model in the built-in libraries.

What you want is SPICE, a circuit simulator programming tool. A free version is called LTSpice, from Linear Technology (www.linear.com) You will have to know basic electrical engineering to use it, which means to do what you want, you will have had to understand about junior level EE coursework in c...

We have several new kits since our last post. Runway Lighting Kit: General purpose runway FX kit. Features a standard runway pattern in either white or blue LEDs, two sizes of fiber so it works for any scale, and an alternate mode where three lights are on steady and the fourth is a slow red warning...

Welcome to the wonderful world of standard vs custom products. The only way I've ever found to make real money is to have as much common to all your products as possible, keep your parts count as small as possible, and do all the "customization" in software. Even in software you have to ap...

Wow.... I don't know anyone who does stuff like that. Imagine, a microcontroller being smaller and more versatile than a 1970's era analog timer chip? Wow.


Neat little board there. Nice job.

I have a few kits for models:

www.madmanlighting.com

For Ent-D try the Starship Lighting kit.

Ours are the only kits featuring plug-n-play hookups, using wire-wrapping instead of soldering.

I include heat shrink tubing in all my kits and its what I usually use. I tell people to gently warm the ends of fibers to "mushroom" the ends. This smooths the ends into a lens that brings in more light. Generally I tell people to put the fibers up against the LEDs, just because its easie...

Hi George, Sounds like an interesting project. I've used KiCAD for several projects and its a good beginner Schematic / PCB package. I find that at its current level of development its functional, but clunky. However, for a free tool, its pretty good. What you want to do with your microcontroller / ...

*Up Periscope* Hi Mark... Sorry I didn't get those emails... dunno why. Yes, I will sell you more wire if you want. Twisted pair red/black wire wrap wire is $0.25 per foot. Yes, you can put more than 3 LEDs on those outputs (for any kit!). You can put up to 6 LEDs on any output of my controller card...

Well, if you are really going to be fussy about colors for things I _can_ make a semi-custom kit for your Yamato.

PM me and let me know if you're interested.

What? Someone call my name? I do produce a kit for the big 350th Refit Enterprise, have a look at it here please: http://home.comcast.net/~johndavidcook/bigstarship.html And the kit instructions here: http://home.comcast.net/%7Ejohndavidcook/BIG%20Starship%20Lighting%20Kit.pdf It runs on 18VDC and t...

Well I have a lighting kit for that model. Its easy to use and good for newbies.

http://home.comcast.net/~johndavidcook/ ... ghter.html

I'm very sorry, no.

Any card of mine with special FX has extra parts to make the special FX happen, where a plain Delux-24 card has only the parts to regulate LED current.

Well I finally got my "JJ-Prise" project lit up. Thanks to a client for loaning me his model as a prototype, here's the test-fit video:

http://youtu.be/e4PIUUHRgs0

Constructive criticism is very welcome, I'm trying to make sure this one is really good.

Thanks!

-John

Hmmmmmm.. Sounds challenging. Yes I remember that car from the movie well and yes, it did have very many lights on it. I hate to get people's hopes up so I'll say for now the truth: Its too complex a lighting project for the tools I have now. It may be do-able with things I have in mind, but I have ...

Hey thats nice work with those LEDs there Robiwan. And thanks RedShirt5 for the compliment, its very nice to hear I have satisfied customers. Now I has a question: Just what is this Fujimi Spinner? A quick Google shows it's the police car from Blade Runner (one of my favorite movies). How big is thi...

Ah. OK. There are two kinds of regulators for electricity. Voltage and current. Everyone knows about wall wort power supplies that make 12 volts. These regulate the voltage to 12V and supply UP TO their rated current, usually a few hundred milliamps. A current regulator controls how much current flo...

Everything you guys said is absolutely true but I think you're missing the crux of the matter. LEDs are current mode devices, not voltage mode devices. For those that are not engineers, that basically means that the way to control LED power is to control the current flowing in them. When you guys pi...

Hi all, Well little by little I'm catching up with the 21st century. My online store now has proper "add to cart" buttons so when you buy multiple items from me, Paypal figures out the shipping for the whole lot instead of you guys having to pay shipping for each item again. This also work...

Madman Lighting now has Power Supply Kits available. We have a USA and International variety. Both come with a "Hydra adapter" to connect the wall power supply to up to 3 Delux-24 controller cards. See it here: http://home.comcast.net/~johndavidcook/ourproducts.html And here for a YouTube ...

Like I say, there are no dumb questions. (At least not here.) If you want to turn off some of the lights, but not all, yes that is exactly the way to do it. By adding a simple single pole single throw (on-off) switch between the controller and the LED string you can turn off just that string and it ...

Well I'll take that silence as good news. Over the past year or so I've gotten just one field return, for an older design that had a known flaw which has since been fixed. Thanks guys. And now: some updates: We now have a Power Supply Kit available, in USA and International variants. Both can power ...

I'll tell you a secret of modern switch mode power supplies: They all take the input AC voltage and boost/rectify it to about 300 VDC which is what the transformer runs on. This high DC voltage is pulsed through a high frequency transformer into a secondary rectification circuit with is then monitor...