Brick Days 2023 Are Here

 

 Well we started with a bunch of boxes at 9:30AM and at 5PM we were here

And here is what happened in between.

Unpacking in the correct order is important.  There was lots of room on the table, but not lots of excess.. 

Basically every module had its own box.  The only exception was the large entrance that was in a 64qt container along with a cliff and all the entrance attachments. 

After 1300+ miles, some things came loose.  So there was some rebuilding.

When trying to line up black parts in the shadows, you need extra light.

Balancing the generator on the crane.

Getting closer.

And here it is finished.

The Well Generator.  Ends up the Blue LEDs I am using have a strong UV component (not unusal actually) and the transparent neon green visors will fluorescence under this light.

A patrol returning to the Space port.

The large Space Gun and the Vertical Generator.

The Main entrance.

The horizontal generator.

The original module.

A look at the crane section lowering a new generator for the Ray gun module.

And in the back, a group of maintenance workers work on finishing the flooring fpr the hanger, while a group of supervisors look on with their coffee.

Two hangers with units under inspection.

An empty hanger that just finished construction.

On top a patrol squad doing PT while two workers try to wrestle a rogue droid..

A view of the generator being installed.

The new Ray Gun module.

Tomorrow what everyone else did.

 

 

 

 

 

Brick Days Omaha - Almost here

 

Brick Days are upon us.  We are on the way to Omaha.  Hope to see many of you there.  Here are some pictures from last year.

Detailing the Sapce Base

 

Here is some of the final detail.  I applied stickers in four places

• The Blacktron Logo in the center
• Computer screens on either side and up high.  Used the standard hinge to give them a tilt down.
• The large screen at eye level.

What I have done so far I will call Level I Detailing.  The area to either side of the main screen looks empty.   Not sure what I am going to do about that, but that I will call that Level II Detailing.  Right now I am making a first pass through the Space base adding detail and making sure the color choices follow the design choices.

Here are a few things I have learned:

1. I tried clear gloss labels first.  They are OK, but you need a white background, otherwise the colors are washed out.  I had intended to use a black background, but that was a complete failure.  You could hardly see anything. 
2. The sheet label I did use was a matte type.  So the color is fairly good for my $70 HP2700 inkjet, but they don't pop out.  It doesn't really give the true appearance of a computer screen.  Next I will try a glossy type of label.
3. While in this post, I like the effect that the hinged window created, I am now not liking the pillars.  They cover up the the two monitors that are high up.   Even I get rid of the pillars, the window frame will still obstruct these. I either remove the windows all together or they need to be extended to completely cover the opening.  Maybe with a door?
4. The label printing is not as precise as the Lego parts themselves.  For example the top mounted screens are 4x4 or 32x32mm.  I am using Paint.net (Adobe Illustrator is probably better, but is more complicated than I care to learn) to build a blank canvas that size.  I then take pictures that are typically 10x and reduce to that size, both through reduction and some trimming.  I then place this graphic in a Word document along with other graphics.  After printing I use a rotary cutter to cut them out.  After applying, the white edge will sometimes show.  I use a black marker to fill in any white showing, which works great considering the sticker is applied to a black tile.
5. You can see the light just in front of the Balcktron Logo.  The picture below also shows it, this was before all the stickers were applied.  Well the light is uneven in this area and is washing out the Blacktron Logo.  I need to move this light to between the Blacktron Logo and the monitor.   Then balance it with a light on the other side.  Not hard, just time.

 

 

 

Railing Ideas

 Railing in the Main Entrance and the Platforms has been a design issue for a while now.  I started with this idea.  Using transparent light blue 1x1 round plates, stacked four high.  Then capped with transparent blue 1x tiles.  This idea is shown here.

The issue for me is that this was just too massive.  A railing should not be a focal point, but with this design, it was just over whelming.  

I moved on to this.  Much simpler using the telescope to support a 1x tile.

But this reminded me to much of a church alter or communion rail.  So this did not work either.

What is a railing, especially in an industrial type setting.  In it's simplest form it is just pipe connected with T-Joints.  So how can we do this.  There are no true pipes in the Lego system.  The closest item is a bar.  They come in many sizes and shapes, these are but a few examples.

Additionally there is need for flexibility in length.  The longer it is, the harder it will be to fit into irregular space.  The shorter it is, the more you need.  And so cost becomes an issue also.  If you need lots of them, you would prefer they be inexpensive.

Which leads to this.  This is the same concept in two different forms.  On the left is a round 1x brick and on the right are three 1x1 round plates with an open stud.  Both are capped by the mechanical claw and 4L bar.  What is nice about this idea is that the bar comes in multiple colors.  Here I am using transparent light blue bars. I could have used a 1x1 tile with an open O clip instead of the claw, but somehow the square tile on top of the round pillar just did not seem the right idea.

Here is a view how this idea turned out.  At first getting two bars into one clip was challenging.  But after a few, I developed a method that made it fairly easy.  Getting the first one int he correct place made the rest easy to do. 

While I like the three stacked plates and the pillar it forms, I will be staying with the round brick for now.  The simple lines fit better with the austere design of the space base.

Brick Days - Omaha

 

Well we are a week from leaving for Brick Days.  So over the weekend I decided it might be good idea to see if the Space Base will fit in the car.  Or will I have to rent a van to get it there.  

Well the great news is it fits😀  And we have room for our suitcases, which makes the wife happy. 

The wife gets to bring here small traveling sewing machine to work on stuff.  

This will be a great time and we are looking forward to it.

 

 

 

 

 

Brick Buddy 3 Its Alive

 

Well kind of.  The light flashes (see yellow arrow) which means the main loop is working.  As you can see all of the through hole connectors need to be installed and a few other parts.  I can start testing the LED control right a way and then move on to motor control.  The only mistake so far is on the back side.  I added an I2C EEPROM for more memory storage of scripts.  This type of memory does not have the restrictions on it as does using any left over program flash for this purpose.  The clip holds the Tag-Connect ICSP connection for the PICKit.  For now I am using the on chip EEPROM.  When the time comes, I will "jury rig" something to make the connection and have the memory.

But the first day was a roller coaster.  It works then it doesn't.  And it all came down to writing internal EEPROM with the debugger attached.  This is FYI for anyone using PIC18FxxQxx processors, but might apply to K processors also.  

I added the FTDI part (did not have the assembler do any backside parts), Windows recognized the FTDI part and my Brick Controller PC APP that controls all my boards connected just fine.  I needed to do some Win APP updates for this board, so I downloaded the firmware just to reduce the variables.  This is the same base code that runs in all boards.

It downloaded just fine and started running.  I disconnected the ICSP,  unplugged the USB and reconnected and nothing.😮  No lights, no connections, just nothing.  How do you find a problem, without a debugger.  Okay, the ICSP has three wires PGC, PGD and MCLR.  Has to be MCLR or some power up config.  Checked all of that, everything looks good.

I have an LED on a PORT pin.  So I built an infinite while loop that toggles the LED, just in case I needed to look at it on a scope. Put the loop as far in the beginning of the code as I could and it works.  Now I started moving the loop further down the initialization until it failed.  It failed while writing to the EEPROM.

I have base code that gets the serial number, evaluates it and then decides if it is valid (generally fails on all 0xFF, which is a new programmed part).  If it fails, it will save a generic serial number that will validate, but that I know indicates the serial number needs updating.  Also a good test of read/write of wherever the storage is.  I have had problems in the recent past with some newer processors (non Q type) where the solution was to use the library to read/write.  But for my code for this Q processor, I just followed the data sheet example.  When I tried to use the library, the compiler said use the MCC, the library is deprecated.  I examined the MCC generated code and other than using ASM in the lock sequence, there appeared to be no difference, except.....

All of these new processors are 24 bit address for ALL memory.  I noticed the MCC code was intentionally loading all three NVMADR registers.  Where in other processors with 256 bytes of EEPROM, the upper bits really did not matter.  Well in this PIC, they do, if you are not using the debugger.  With the debugger attached, you dont need to load the upper 16 bits, but a normal production start and yes you need to correctly load those 16 bits.  Don't understand it, but that is the way it works.

Now I can get back to updating the Win APP.