Dome: complete

So tonight was the night to finish work on the dome. I mounted the lights inside the dome, and got everything together. There's a coupe of little bitty details, but I'm basically rocking.

I made a couple of these as mounts/diffusers for the front and rear PSIs. This one is the rear.

Here you can see the one for the front PSI. The diffuser is hot glued to the MDF ring; the blue tape is holding the PSI in place inside it.

Unfortunately (as you see here) I had accidentally put one of the ring holes right where the rear PSI is,so I had to attach the rear diffuser to the dome instead of the MDF ring. I'm using paint tape here, but that's just a temporary measure until I get some more permanent mount. Like duct tape.

It's all good, though. It came out looking nice:

Here, you can see the rear assembly. From left to right: rear PSI, rear holoprojector, rear logic display, and battery pack velcroed to the MDF ring so I can pop it off when I need to swap out the batteries.

The front assembly:  cable from rear logic display, the front logic displays, the front PSI, and front holoprojector.

Rear view:

Front view:

And here's a video of it in action:

So, that's the dome. Not sure what's going to be next. I've got the frame coming, and will be getting a set of legs before long. I may just rest until they show up, concentrating on more 3D printing, but I'm nearly there. I might also do the skins, laser cutting them at the maker space. In any case, this is a pretty big milestone considering I only started about six weeks ago. In any case, I'm having a blast.

...and there was light.

let there be more light

So this evening I sat down to do the Rear Logic Display. I figured I'd get 2 rows done, maybe. I somehow managed to get 4. I was waiting on a print of my first attempt at a 3d printed diffuser for the front and rear PSIs, so I went ahead and kept on soldering. I would have got all 5 rows, but I goofed in putting an LED in the wrong way so I had to take it out and unplug the holes.

Lessons learned:

• double-check the pins before you solder.
• If you have to remove one, use the iron to melt the solder and take it out a little at a time.
• If you have solder in a hole, put a little solder in it and get it all nice and liquid then tap it on a flat surface (I had missed the bit about adding a little extra solder when the guy at the makerspace showed me the other night)
• DO NOT hold the iron to the hole in hopes of melting it out, as you may well gunk it up and destroy the connection. I now have one LED that won't light up anymore because of this.

 Anyway. Other than that one bulb, it's all good. I tried the diffuser, and found that A) it blocks too much light, B) the inside radius is too big--I want the PSIs to fit snugly inside, and C) It's too shallow. I want it to tuck in there nicely. I'll redesign and print again tomorrow night. Fortunately, Autocad 123D is proving to be very simple to use, and even exports straight to STL. It's not perfect, but whaddya want fer nothin'?

Anyway, got home and was disconcerted to find that the lights wouldn't work. Funny thing. The chain with the rear PSI was fine. But the one with the FLDs and front PSI was kaput. It was either all-on or all-off. Taking instruction from the FAQ, I removed and reseated a few of the LED controllers, which didn't help, then reseated the Arduino Pro Mini, which did. So thank goodness for that. It's pretty impressive.. can't wait to show it off. Hopefully tomorrow.

let there be lights

So this was an interesting weekend, alternatively fustrating and productive, with lessons learned and progress made. I'm well on the way to a completed dome.

First off, as mentioned Thursday, my LED controllers and jumper wires showed up. So Friday after a long, frustrating day at work I sat down to try to program my Arduino Pro Mini with the standard Teeces sketch as found here. Now, I had originally thought to use a Pro Micro because it has the built-in USB, but it turned out that it's a little too big, with extra bits hanging over the side on both ends. Not a problem in and of itself once you adjust the pinouts in the code, but it did butt up against the screw-down terminals for the power connection, meaning it wouldn't be a snug fit in the socket. So I bit the bullet and got a mini and FTDI adapter at the local MicroCenter.

So if you haven't done one of these before, you basically go with a USB cable to a little PCB that is essentially a USB jack on one side and 5 or 6 pins on the other. Mostly 6 these days, which is good. You connect it to the pins on your Mini, and that dumps the code and all that down. Unfortunately, it would not work. I tried different computers, different serial drivers, different settings...all to no avail. I posted for help on the arduino forums, no help there. Saturday morning, I woke up, and went at it again...and I got it. My mistake? I had assumed the FTDI & Pro Mini should be both "right side up" when connected together, but the pinouts, upon closer examination, showed otherwise. I turned the Pro Mini upside down relative to the FTDI, and glory be. We have liftoff.

Once that happened, I dropped the LED controllers into their sockets and put a few test LEDs in without soldering. Bingo. Random flickerage. So after my volunteer shift I went to the makerspace and got to soldering on the Front Logic displays. There's two of them with 45 LEDs each. I'd already done the front and rear PSIs, which use nice big 5mm LEDs, but the 3mm for the rest of the displays were quite a different task. Lots of close, careful work.

A couple of times I messed up, getting solder in a hole before I could put an LED in. I learned two ways this weekend of dealing with that:

1. Use the tip of the iron to melt the solder and then give it a sharp rap on the table. This should jar it loose. Not recommended if you ahve delicate stuff soldered to the board already.
2. Poke at it with the component that needs to go in from one side, and heat it with the iron from the other. Then just ease the component in and solder it the rest of the way.

Anyway, Saturday and Sunday I did one front logic display each, and with the PSIs connected I had 4 out of 5 lights working. That's a total of 144 LEDs soldered. That just leaves the Rear Logic Display... 135 LEDs. Oy.

Funny thing. You may notice in the picture that the rear PSI is mostly yellow but has a little green. Sometimes on the PSIs, the color doesn't change all the way, just most of the way like that. I need to see if that's something people have been seeing before or what. In any case, I'm not too worried about it for now.

In the meantime, I glued in the holoprojectors to the dome. I tried using my super glue first, but it didn't last. Then I tried the glue gun today, but it was surprisingly ineffective. The owner of the makerspace said it was probably because I was using the small, low-temperature glue guns and to use one of the big high-temperature ones instead. That did the trick. At least, it has so far. So, another lesson learned. Oh, and I sanded off the paint from the bits where the glue was going, to give it something more to hang on to.

Anyway, got the word from the frame guy to send the balance. So I'll do that tomorrow if I can. Good timing, n'est-ce pas? And then tomorrow night I'll start to soldering the RLD. I'd like to have that done sometime this week so I can secure it and the battery pack (4xAA from Radio Shack) inside the dome. I still haven't added any kind of external switch; I'm waiting to see how the rest of the droid electronics pan out.  But in any case, I will have a fully done droid. Just gotta get a gear for turning it anddrop that in there, and I'm golden. Cool beans.

Dome final details and Teeces LEDs

Long day at work today, real pain in the neck. Right back to it tomorrow, but in the meantime got some good progress on the R2.

First off, I started printing more of the battery harness assemblies, got the last 3 done. Since it was open house, I brought the dome and put it up to show off. While the prints were going, I busied myself soldering the front and rear PSIs:

All nice and done. Then I glue-gunned the MDF ring inside the dome, and then added the "pie slices" and the mounting rings for the holoprojectors. Here's one with the projector mounted inside:

(Incidentally, if you've never used a glue gun before, that stuff dries fast. Like in seconds. So it's a race to dab it everywhere then position your part before the stuff hardens.)

I'm going to put some spacers on the back of the mounting rings before attaching the back mounts to them, so they have a little wiggle room for repositioning.Which pretty much leaves the lighting system.

Fortunately, when I got home, I discovered that both my LED controllers and my 5-pin jumper wires showed up. So once work is over tomorrow, I should be able to program my arduino with the R2 sketch and then do the initial smoke test.

If everything works out, I may just have the dome complete by the end of the month. Cool.

Dome coming along, holoprojectors and more

So the holoprojectors showed up yesterday, which was cool. As you can see below, each one comes in three parts, including the front and back containers. Here they are before smoothing and painting:

Gave everything a nice paint job and so it should be nce and dry by Thursday night when I hit hte maker space. Also, since my lenses came in today, I went ahead and put them in (they fit very snugly; don't need glue or anything). In the meantime, I went ahead and glued down the dome and the blue bits going all the way around. Here's what it looks lie now, with me holding the holoprojectors in (I haven't glued them in yet as I wanted to give the paint a little more time. Learned that lesson the hard way).

As you can see, it's getting very close. Going to see about the top spokes tomorrow night, and if not, will just say to hell with them and leave them as-is. Picked up nuts and wingnuts for attaching the dome and ring to the rockler bearing as well. Then in go the blue "pie slices" up top, the holoprojectors will get glued in, and then it will be a case of finishing up Teeces. And that will be the dome.

Actually, the Teeces stuff is coming along well. I spent last night de-flanging the flanged LEDs that came in the mail, and I've got them in little baggies in by project box, ready for soldering tomorrow night. Now if only the LED controllers and 5-pin jumper cables would show the heck up...oh, well. I've got a few nights of soldering before I need to worry too much about that.

Another paint & prep day

Well, it's MLK day, so a lot of my stuff is in postal limbo. No worries. I did a little work on the dome, first boring out the holes on the MDF ring a little so I could fit it more accurately to the dome ring (I'm not one to pitch products, generally, but I gotta admit that el cheapo file set I got a while back ahs been paying for itself like crazy on this project). I may just glue them down, actually, in the end. But right now I'm just using the bolts that come up through the rockler into the dome ring and up into the MDF rings. I need to get some nuts and wingnuts to do the proper spacing, but no rush.

After that, I formally decommissioned the last sad little plastic carton of egg nog in the fridge (protip: egg nog should not go "clunk") and cut a couple of covers for the front and rear PSIs:

(actually the Royal Engineers of Naboo were very big on old milk bottles and scotch tape.)

Anyhow, after that I broke out the XTC-3D and laid it to the front and rear coin returns, as well as the front and rear logic displays. After they dried, I sanded them down and gave 'em a does of paint:

I swear, I through a lot of Rustoleum, but when it comes to metal-look paint, Valspar's silver beats the crap out of everything.

Anyway, with any luck the holoprojectors will show up tomorrow. Maybe some bits from China, the other LEDs at the very least. SO I'll be able to get those all nice and prepped, and maybe have them ready in time for Thursday night. If not, then that will be an ideal opportunity to take care of them. What the hey.