Another Big Pie In The Sky...well slice anyway :)

[erospawn]

I recently purchased the Anigrand ISD... and decided to start on it now. The Voyager kit is still a work in progress. I cannot guarantee I will finish this one before the V'ger comes in, but here it is,well part of it. I have been working on cleaning up the bottom peices and getting things to fit nice and even. In particular, Im working on the Engine parts.. I need to do my research as to where all the lights are to go etc etc.. but I'll bet the new Engine lighting effects I've been working on would look pretty awesome here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RelcAfwntBY

[JAWS]

I like it. Star Destroyers rock! Wheres the Coke can for scale....

[directorcass]

Glad you got one. I love mine and have made a bit more progress. Are you lighting it with fiber optics? Even though it has some internal molded ribs I think it still needs some internal support. Looking forward to your progress.

Oh, and have fun drilling windows!

[erospawn]

Yeah.. Im just working on figuring out all the placements for the windows.. I broke out my Star Wars movies for reference last night..also, I have a cool new effect I am going to implement for the engines.. Its in the you tube link posted in first thread.. I think it will make the engine lighting really cool looking If you're interested, Pm me.

[dbhs]

This is cool. I wish I had gotten one of these. From the few photos I've seen of it it seems that the added surface detailing (the little chips) are pretty thick. Could be the lighting in the photos but it seems kind of goose-bumpy. What's your take seeing it in person?

Kudos for lighting this up - going to be fun to watch.

[erospawn]

it's got a lot of raised details that compliment it I think, not really bumpy at all. Overall its a nice kit... a little warpage here and there.. but not bad at all. Just got to clean up some flash....

[directorcass]

(04-27-2010, 12:09 AM)erospawn Wrote: I have a cool new effect I am going to implement for the engines.. Its in the you tube link posted in first thread.. I think it will make the engine lighting really cool looking If you're interested, Pm me.

That is a cool effect and think it will look good. For me though I already have my whole light system wired up. I'm running 18 LEDs all together. But if I build another one...........

[erospawn]

How were the seams on yours? I had to clean up a lot and the seams don't fit perfectly, as I expected.. The trick is to get then nice and cleaned up which...I only have the bottom part done. I think I know what Im going to do with the Large hanger area.. I want it lit, but won't be able to due to thick resin...Soooo, Im going to make a copy of it and "modify" it a bit to work with what I want to do.. There maybe some other areas I'll need to do, but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it..

[directorcass]

(04-28-2010, 01:47 AM)erospawn Wrote: How were the seams on yours? I had to clean up a lot and the seams don't fit perfectly, as I expected.. The trick is to get then nice and cleaned up which...I only have the bottom part done.

I used my razor saw in my Xacto handle, and my Dremel with sanding drum and sanding sticks to clean up all the mating points on the hull parts. Oh, and lots of test fitting. I tried to get as square of an edge as possible. Gluing the upper fore and aft sections is easier with two people. Trying to keep hem aligned while applying glue and waiting for it to set or shooting accelerator with only two hands was a bit nerve wrecking. I had a small gap to fill on the upper and lower sections. a styrene strip and a bit of filler took care of it. I replaced lost detail with bits of strip plastic cut into chips.

[erospawn]

I haven't posted much on this lately..but I have been working on it. I finished up the engines and got the lights mounted.. Now, I also added the lighting effect I was talking about. Here's the video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQHnPBmcM2U . I'll post up some pics soon.

[427 Cobra]

OOOOh! I love lights! I can't wait to see the rest of this in its' finished form. Did I say I love lights?

[erospawn]

I've been working on the ISD.. I just haven't posted anything yet. I do have pics up on my site. Work on it slowed down because of stuff at work and training I had to go on.. Plus I ran out of FO. I ended up using 1mm because it fit better in the holes I had already drilled. The bottom half was .75mm so it was a little loose.. you can't even really tell the difference in the size.

I wired up the engines with my patented Fadedinneroutter program and posted a video on U-Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQHnPBmcM2U

[dbhs]

Cool - looking forward to your next update.

[JAWS]

Yep that does look good. Can you share more pics with us aswell as your links please. I really would like members to post pics at the site. The posting of links to pictures is fine but would be nice to have an associated picture posted in the Thread.

[erospawn]

I have not had a lot of time lately with all the things going on .. At any rate here are some pics of the progress so far..

[erospawn]

   

The pictures below basically show the top part glued into place... and all the holes drilled in... it looks a little like swiss cheese at this point! I used a dremel with a 1/16 drill bit to drill all the holes.. I broke one bit by accident, otherwise I didn't have any problems drilling a million holes Each hole fits a 1mm FO.. SO, I had .75mm which was very very loose.. I went ahead and used .75mm in the sides, but Im using 1mm everywhere else.. The last time I messed with FO was when it was still glass and shattered if you didn't handle it right, 20 yrs ago.


                   

[erospawn]

   

So I started placing the sides in place.. the thing is pretty big so I had to use clamps to hold the pieces in place...Also, they were a bit warped as well as the top side.. but after gluing and clamping down, the warpage seems to have been eliminated.

                           

[erospawn]

SO, I painted the exterior of the whole ship "Gunship Gray" ... this fills in all the scribe lines etc... so, when I go over it with a light coat of Camoflage gray, all the details will be brought out..

Also below, use see the bread board I have for the fader circuit and the engine lights are in place and wired up.. Thats a single PIC 16F676 ...the users manual for that one chip is 192 pages long.. So, it took me a while to write the program that controls the lights. You can't do that, at least not very easily, with traditional electronics components. It uses something called Pulse Width Modulation... some PICs have a hardware version of it.. but I wrote a software version of it as a matter of understanding how it works..

You also see I've begun running the FO... basically, I just cut out a bunch of tubes and glued them into place... then, I ran each strand of FO into the tube until it was full. I used Super Glue to glue the ends of the FO into the windows.. and used Elmers glue to seal the all the FO in to the tube. That tecnique worked for me as just running all the FO at once and then adding each strand in to the tube became cumbersome.. I tried running all the strands of FO in to the tube first and then pulling the FO through the holes.. but that ened up wasting a lot of FO... The way I ended up running the FO was the mose efficient without wasting alot of FO. It may be more time consuming however.

                       

[dbhs]

These are great progress shots. How does the programming of the chip work? Is it like DOS or in another language? How do you upload the program into the chip? It's very cool that you are able to program the chip to get exactly the lighting effect you want. The possibilities are endless for you now.

[erospawn]

Thanks for the compliments!! Well.. I'm writing the code in assembly language which is the basis for all programming languages.. Basically, you write it in notepad, wordpad or your favorite editor..then you have a program that compiles the code in to hex language ...finally, you have a programmer attached to the computer... the programmer is designed to handle a large majority of the PIC chips out there... So, you plug your chip into the zif socket .. and download the program into the chip...

The possibilities are endless for the most part.. whatever I can concieve of can be done.. My intensions are to start doing some custom lighting and control cicuits etc.. These chips are what controls cars, remotes, stop lights, thermostats whatever..Im just using them to control lights. So, yes, I an do the Jupiter II lighting effects ...

Sample code that sets the registers in the chip to make certain pins inputs or outputs etc..Doesn't make much sense... but it does if you understand what the commands are actually telling the chip to do.. the movwf osscal command says to set the clock to 4 megahertz as an example.

PROGRAM CODE
main

call 0x3FF ; retrieve factory calibration value
bsf STATUS,RP0 ; set file register bank to 1
MOVWF OSCCAL
movlw 0x00
movwf TRISC
movlw 0X03
MOVWF OPTION_REG
bcf STATUS,RP0 ; set file register bank to 0
clrf TMR0
bsf INTCON,5
MOVLW 0X0F

[erospawn]

       
And the lighting test! I was no where near finished with FO, but I just wanted to see what the lights looked like. Look pretty good to me!
           

The gray piece which is the hanger ... I made a mold of and cast it so that the top part actually separated from the rest of it.. This way I could raise it about 1/8 inch and put 4 leds on each side... I didn't want really bright lights.. just a sort of white glow coming from the hanger bay.. That picture's later on..

   

[dbhs]

Do you have a separate chip for each string of lights on a circuit? So if you wanted running lights flashing at one speed and thrusters at a different pattern you would need 2 different chips?

I might be interested in purchasing some chips with custom programming sometime in the future if you're interested in selling this service.

[erospawn]

Well, yeah, the program that dims the LED's is very time dependant..the program moves down line by line, so in the case of the dimmer, it would be difficult to to have two separate speeds of dimmer..I do have that program polling one of the pins I configued for input to check to see if the switch is closed or open.. If its closed, the fader fades in.. if its open, it slowly fades to off. A chip with a hardware based PWM has an independant ciruit that functions on its own once initilized, leaving the chip to be able to process other functions.

Here's an example of the double flash from the newer StarTrek movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv6kXKGMt...re=related

[erospawn]

(05-23-2010, 11:49 AM)dbhs Wrote: I might be interested in purchasing some chips with custom programming sometime in the future if you're interested in selling this service.

Thats the direction Im heading... custom lighting etc..let me know..

[JAWS]

Beautiful Ron. This is going to be great build. Your lighting skills are going to take this to another level I think.

[427 Cobra]

You should make a tiny blockade runner for the docking bay!

[erospawn]

I've got the blockade runner .. I've also got the medical frigate and the MC-80 all in the same scale as the ISD. Speaking of which here are some more pics of the progress... I've already used 150 feet of FO in the bottom section and another 100 feet I believe in the top section and still going.



                           

[JAWS]

That is really kool!

[427 Cobra]

Good God, Ron - Those fiberoptics are great, and the correct colour too! Damn this is so cool, and I can't wait to see this in all its' glory.

~ Cobra Chris

[directorcass]

Looking good Erospawn. I estimated on mine there will be about 2,000 feet of .75mm FO altogether. Hvae you counted your windows yet? I have 800 drilled on mine. I'll post pics of my wood base I had custom made for mine on Monday. Keep up the good work.

[erospawn]

I haven't.. and Im not sure if I want to.. I just know its an aweful lot of windows! I've been working about a week and a half just threading the FO through the holes and getting them glued in with plenty more still to go!

[directorcass]

Are you going to be doing the flood lights that are scatered along the trench? There seems to be more than just lit windows.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech...royer.html

[erospawn]

(05-28-2010, 11:15 PM)directorcass Wrote: Are you going to be doing the flood lights that are scatered along the trench? There seems to be more than just lit windows.

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech...royer.html

Hmm, I hadn't noticed that..thanks for pointing that out. Now is as good a time as any to add the flood lights considering its not put together yet.. I did modify the hanger bay though. I made a mold of and casted it in resin so that the top peice was separated from the side peice. I made it so the top peice of hanger is raised about 1/8inch from the side peices..this way light can get through without me drilling out the whole thing and thusly damaging it..

[directorcass]

I drilled at the base of each rib, on each side of each rib, for a FO. Then I drilled a 3mm hole at each end of the hanger for a 3mm LED. I may only use one of them though.

[erospawn]

I've Been away on vacation.. decided to go to the beach and get some fishing and crabbing in and to see the white sands and blue waters while they are still white and blue..I did manage to get some work in before we left though...

                       

Im going to run all the lights off of 2 9 volt batteries. I plan on placing the batteries in the coning tower and covered with the panel shown. The lower battery is going to power the engine lights and the lights in the bottom section. The top battery is going to power the lights in the top. I put an meter in the circuit and measured about 30 mA's being pulled for the entire circuit, top and bottom. A 9 volt battery is capable of sourcing about 500mA (1/2 and AMP) with about a 10mA current drain per hour.. So, at that rate, I calculated approiximate battery life at 14 hours. Ofcourse, theory vs real world are usually very different.

               

[JAWS]

Hey lookin real nice Ron! Where'd you go for your holiday?

[erospawn]

(06-05-2010, 07:04 AM)jasonwright.1972 Wrote: Hey lookin real nice Ron! Where'd you go for your holiday?

We went to the beaches of North Carolina.. they say that the oil from the Gulf could reach our beaches by July.. I hope that isn't true! But, we decided we better see them while we still could..It was short vacation though.. We plan on going to "Yellow Stone National Park" for our wedding aniversary in August though.

[JAWS]

That oil situation is really bad. I hope they get it sorted & protect all the animals. Unfortunately alot have probably already died... Yellow Stone will be nice for a wedding Anniversary. The ISD is looking really good mate. Im a bit jelous actually.

[erospawn]

(06-05-2010, 07:15 AM)jasonwright.1972 Wrote: That oil situation is really bad. I hope they get it sorted & protect all the animals. Unfortunately alot have probably already died... Yellow Stone will be nice for a wedding Anniversary. The ISD is looking really good mate. Im a bit jelous actually.

Its worse than bad... It's destroying the lives of the Gulf Coast and our economy.. Fishing,shrimping, oysters etc. and tourism has been a BIG part of the Gulf.. now, there is no fishing, shrimping or very little tourism and their probably want be for decades now. In the meantime BP has been downplaying the amount of oil leaking.. or downplaying the death and destruction headed towards the gulf ..or just plain lying....BP has also been spraying a dispercent to break up the oil.. but hey, it's 4 times more toxic than the Oil is..and its making cleanup workers sick.. and probably ending up in the food chain. They were asked by our government to stop using it, and they didn't.. so now, there is fury about a coporation telling a Sovereign government what they will and won't do. There is already talk of criminal action against BP. In the meantime, protests at BP gas stations have been going on around here and all over the country to demand the goverment freeze BP's assets for declaring war on our environment. ..

[directorcass]

Your ISD continues to impress. I forgot about those really low buildings on the surface to light up! Crap, more drilling!

[erospawn]

I finished up the coning tower and got all that FO'd up and all settled..

                       

My camera is really bad at closeups, but I wanted to show the two micro-switches I placed in the engine area.. fairly hidden. One switch turns on the main lighting and the other causes the engines to fade in or fade out. The whole thing is powered by two 9 volt batteries tied in parallel.. If they had been in series, that would 18 volts, but the current wouldn't be very strong..in parallel, its still 9 volts, but has a stronger current output..

               

[427 Cobra]

That tower is looking KILLER, Ron! I'm loving this more, and more with each new picture. I love the lights. I just wonder how much more wiring you'll have to do to make this operable once mounted. Did this come with a mounting base?

~ Cobra Chris

[erospawn]

Hey guys.. here is some more pics..


                   

[dbhs]

Ron, that's looking great. It looks huge in these pics because it's so detailed. How long is the whole body of this one?

The lighting is going to look great.

[JAWS]

Yeah we need a Coke can picture for scale!

[directorcass]

The Ani SD is a whopping 28 inches nose to tail.

[erospawn]

And thats with the lights off Im working on a base right now.. Nothing spetacular.. just took a peice of wood and stained it with ebony stain..Im going to make 4 clear cast posts to support it.. then I'll take pics with lights on.

[directorcass]

That close to what I did. Piece of plywood cut into the shape of a SD (like a shadow). However I used wood dowels as supports, three of them. One is drilled all the way thru for the power wires to run thru.

[erospawn]

I modified the conning tower and powered everything with two 9 volt batts.. I thought about doing it that way but decided not too.

[directorcass]

I decided to go walwart on this one. This is because when I took my SS X-Wing to Wonderfest last year I forgot the battery pack! The judges didn't know it lit up!