Mini Maker Faire Sale

With Seattle Maker Faire and the Tulsa Maker Faire, we have lowered the prices for a lot of items.  Check out the store to see what we have going.  The Sales Prices will be good until 9/1/18.

Maker Faires

We will be going to the Maker Faire in San Diego, Oct 6-7.  We will have a little of everything by them and will be showing new and exciting things.  Dont miss it.

And as a reminder we will be in Seattle Aug 18-19 for the Seattle Maker Faire

And in Tulsa on Aug 25 for the Tulsa Maker Faire

These are always a lot of fun and hope to see a lot of people there.

Apps in Google Play Store

We have pushed the initial production releases of the Brick Buddy and the Power Monitor to the Play Store on Google.  This allows everyone to view the capability of the apps and the equipment they control.  The Apps are free.

Next Things

Well I have recovered from the Bricks by the Bay.  Finally sorted my 10 pounds of Bricks that I bought for future development.  August is Maker Faire month with one in Seattle and on in Tulsa.  Therefore I will be working on cleaning up the product line and finishing the temperature sensor.project. 

Also Google is requiring all Apps target Oreo or later, starting on Aug 1.  So the next few days will be spent cleaning up the different apps and pushing them to the store.

Planetary Space Base Presentation

I have posted the presentation I gave at Bricks By The Bay.  You can find it here.

 We had a great time and will post some pictures later.

Bricks by the Bay

We will be at Bricks by the Bay at the Santa Clara Convention center this weekend.  So this will be the last blog post until that is done.  Too many things to do with the Planetary Space Base MOC setup, the presentation on Friday AM and then running the vendor booth.  Hope to see you all there.

LEDs for the Platforms (Part 2)

So I have developed this method for mounting hidden LEDs and those that act as overhead lighting for enclosed spaces.  I am using  very bright (>5000 mcd), wide angle (110 degrees), dome shaped LEDs.  I have used these to light portions of HO train layout and they work very nice.

Here I have mounted a pair to a perf board that I cut up with a dremel tool.  If this proves useful, I may do a small PC board for this purpose.

The dome shape is clearly visible on the one laying on its side.  In this case, as opposed to the Laser cannon setup, I have included a dropping resistor (120 ohms) in each path.  These are SMT0805 resistors.  I realize this is not for everyone, but for me it was the most compact method. It is mounted on a 1x4 tile (using the Kragle) so it just snaps into  place as shown here.



This dual light set was designed for the vertical generator to be mounted in the charging room across from the glass window in this picture.  It will be connected to the random PWM generator to produce a random intensity bright flashing light.

Here is a single mount design.  This is intended for mounting on ceilings to light up a compartment with the look of a domed overhead light.  I mounted these on 1x2 plates, so that it would be centered and still have some attachment strength.

Finally a lot of the small Laser Cannons are done with robotic arm ball joint.  Here is a series of pictures that show how this is done.  All of these designs use the PICO LED from BrickStuff.  The first design uses a 1x2 round brick to  connect to the ball joint.

This design uses a technic 2L connector.  

In all cases I had to drill out the ball joint barrel to run the wire.  In the first case I also slice one side of the perpendicular connector with an Xacto knife so I could run the wire through the connector.  In the second case the hole went al the way though the perpendicular connector since the wire is on the outside.

The challenge with all of these is running the wires.  When multiple LEDs are present I will connect the ground returns together to at least reduce the number of wires that I have to hide.