MOC Update - Horizontal Generator

 

 

 This is where we started.

 

 

This is where we ended up.

Again they are basically the same on the outside.  There were significant changes on the inside.  As in the Vertical Generator, we really started here.

This one took much longer to redo than the last one.  And it still needs some cleanup.  

The first issue is just how slow can I make the motor turn with a PWM input.  I have never been happy with the approximate 1100 Hz that LEGO used in its design.  One it makes a lot of noise.  The PWM frequency will resonate and if a PWM frequency in the human audio range is chosen, you can hear it.  The lowest PWM value is about 50%.  Below that it just hums at 1100 Hz. All of the other motor PWM designs I have done in the past, including a fishing trolling motor, I used 15 KHz or higher.  That way only the dogs could hear it.

Motor speed on the space guns on this module is important.  They can't just swing from one side to the other.  It has to be some slow movement that looks controlled.  When testing at 50%, they were moving faster than I wanted. 

The gear reduction on the left is for the space guns. Some of this was driven by where the motors had to go and also to make space for the Brick Buddy 3 controller.  Independent motor control was not important.  Thus we have a long shaft that runs the length of the module.  This drives the two Space Guns in opposite directions.

The Horizontal generator on the other hand could go quite fast as does the two vertical cylinders.  The speed control provided by this gearing arrangement was more than sufficient for what I wanted.  The gears on the left in the above picture power this set of features.

This shows the Brick Buddy 3 about to be put into place.  I have run the motor cables through the module.  And have run the power to the AUX port to power the Brick Buddy 3.

The Brick Buddy 3 is in place now and the motors are connected.  Most of the covering is also in place.   Unfortunately I will have to remove some of this when I run the wires for the LED lighting.  

The first LED Lighting is in the control room area.  I added three LEDs that were not there before.  This LED is behind the control room and will light up the area directly in front of the generator.  This module was always dark until the generator turned on.  I never liked that and this changed is meant to correct this issue.

In the control room I added two LEDs.  One is white and one is red.  My thinking is that in the beginning, the white LED will be on.  When the generator starts to spin up, the light will changed from white to red.  The picture also shows how the wiring runs between to 1x1 round plates to the other side.

You cannot see it (by design I might add) the wiring.  It runs on the right side behind the three 1x1 round bricks.  The round brick on the far right side is concealing a small gap in the wall that the wires run down.

Here you can see the gap at the very top of the picture.  This runs down to the Brick Buddy 3 using the PCB connection device.

This shows the LED wiring for one of the Space Guns.  The wire runs down behind and the underneath the two cones.  This design keeps the wire tight to the back of the Space Gun.  Then it runs underneath the plate and between two 1x1 round plates.  This keeps the wiring centered on the Space Gun.

These two pictures show the wiring going into the wall, between to 1x1 round plates.  The space between the two plates is quite large and allows for wiring to run in between.  The picture doesn't show it very well, but the hole in the wall is directly behind the Space Gun.  This allows for minimal service loop to allow the gun to rotate.  While the wire might look like it is close to the gearing, there is actually quite a bit of distance.

For now I am continuing to use the pulley system.  This allows for slippage when the Space Guns reaches the end of its travel and the motor is sill on.  I have tested the motor connection to the sensor in the scripting language.  When the sensor is activated the motor is either stopped or reversed.  Once I wire this up, the pulley could change to a gear, though I like that the gears/motor are not mangled.  That comes with a price though, changing the rubber band is not easy at this time.

 

 

 

Floating Platform Concept

 

This is a concept for a floating platform that will be next to the Space Port module.  Right now the Space Port look like this.

My vision is to have at least one and maybe to landing pads and a floating walkway connecting the Space Port module to the floating platforms.

These are the only two base plates available.  I have one set and will acquire a few more, depending on the price.  These are not available in large quantities, so they demand a good price. I am thinking right now two landing pads and one connection piece.

The first picture is my first attempt at this.  I need a lot of black pieces to do this.  We always use a black table covering and that will be required to get the right effect.  Then I would build a walkway, similar to the one in the second picture.  Except it would be anchored on one end to the Space Port (as it is in the picture) and the other end to the floating platform.  Then the detailing starts. This provides a completely new "canvas" to work on, spotlights, small control tower, landing lights, vehicles, different size spacecraft, etc, etc, etc.

More on this in the coming weeks.  I am planning on some small version of this for Brick Fest Live in San Jose, June 17-18.

Brick Buddy 3 Issue

 

Ran into an interesting problem.  I have 5 of the new controllers completely built with BT.  Two of them will reset when running a motor.  But only when using the AUX power port.  The board is powered through the USB port when developing and programming.  Only when it is installed, had I intended to use the AUX power port.  The AUX port connector is the same type as the other connectors I have used though out the Space Base.

This is the AUX input.  Diode or'ed with VUSB

This is the USB input

This is the motor controller I have used for years.

VPWR feeds two DC-DC converters that make 5VDC and 9VDC(Buck-Boost so it will run from an input of 3.3VDC to 20VDC).  The 5VDC has a 3.3VDC LDO on it for the PIC, BT, Memory, etc and that LDO has a 1.8VDC LDO for LED Controller core.

Working Observations

• Works on USB port powered by USB HUB, Phone Charger and all battery Packs
• Works on AUX port powered by USB HUB, phone charger and some battery packs

Non Working Observations or tried this, did not change behavior

• Added 220uF cap at VPWR
• Added 22uF caps on motor controller (C40,C41)
• Tried different cables
• Sometimes will cause the battery to shutdown, other times just causes a reset

Obviously there is something about some of the batteries and the aux port. 

• Does the PI filter network on VUSB make that much difference.
• Did my Chinese builders use crappy caps for the build.  I specified X5R and they said that is what they used.
• How is the 9V bus radiating back through the DC-DC and effecting the 5VDC.
• Are these battery power backs at the end of their life ( ordered a new one from Amazon, we shall see)

Anyway I am moving on, just have to remember which battery pack goes to which model for now or bring out the USB connection.

MOC Update - Vertical Generator

 This is where we started

This is where we ended up.

Yes they are the same for the outside.  To be fair, here is where we actually started.

The two on the side are the old controller and the power supply.  With the new Brick Buddy 3, the controller is smaller and the power supply is included.  The Vertical Generator was the easiest to upgrade.  

This is what it looked like originally underneath.  There was a lot of room in it.  This is now what it looks like.

I moved the motor for more front to back space, though probably did not need it.  Changed out the dual white LEDs for RGBW LEDs.  The plan here is to turn on the White LED at about 50%.  Then one side will randomly pulse RED and BLUE while the other side does BLUE and GREEN.  Also I can get to the USB MINI connector from the bottom.  Thus when I need to update the script, I can.

Here it is with most of the top covering installed.  Two other changes were to make the tower removable.  The two LEDs in the tower are now on a connector and the tower is design to be easily removable.  The Sand Blue platform was changed to also be easily removable.  That will enable an easy way to do firmware upgrades until I can get the Bootloader working.

Finally the power is supplied by the standard connector I am using through out the Space Base.

You can just see the white connector on the bottom.

 

 

 

 

 

Brick Fest vs Trains vs Blogging

 

Back to the old issue of working on stuff vs writing about stuff.  Working on three different things right now.

• Another IKEA bookcase hack in a closet.  Will update this in a few days.
• Getting closer to the trains being ready for the grand kids arrival
• Updating the Space Base for Brick Fest Live.  The configurations is changing from a semi circle that is 80" long and 30" deep to a curve that is about 120" long and 24" deep.  Most convention tables are only 30" deep and this caused part of the display to hang over the front edge.

I am making a concerted effort now to post more of what is happening, epecially about the upcoming Brick Fest Live.

 

 

RN4020 to RN4871 Update 2

In this post and the follow on post, I discussed the changes I have made for this transition to the RN4871.   I am getting near the end of this being done.  After testing with a several Play Store Apps (Nordic, Silicon Labs, and Microchip) I found that the name I assigned to the RN4871 was not showing up in the scan.  Again in the RN4020 this was not an issue, the SDN command was sufficient.  But for the RN4871 or maybe the version of BTLE that is running, this is an issue.  Unless you know the MAC address, the user would have a hard time determining which device listed is the Brick Buddy.  It is not uncommon for me to see 10-15 BTLE devices in my lab.  Not sure where they are all coming from, but these is a lot.  

Well it became apparent from examining those devices I was seeing that had a name attached, they were placing this in the Advertisement.  The RN4871 has an Advertisement limit of 30 bytes (31 bytes in later firmware).  Fortunately I had 11 bytes left from 30. So I added the name and that brought me up to 27 bytes total.  But as with adding the service, you could not just put the name in as text, as here.

NA,09,B_Buddy  

The NA command requires the actual hex bytes that represent the name.  This is alluded to in the RN4871 documentation, but is not really clear.  The 09 is the command for the complete local name.  

NA,09,422D4275646479     

It seems that everything works now.  The Android App finds it, connects automatically and the name is displayed with the last two address octets attached.  The Android App does allow you to name the Brick Buddy device and then bind that name to the MAC address.  From then on, it shows the name instead of the MAC address.  A more user friendly approach when you have multiple Brick Buddy's in a MOC.

Final change will be a check to see if the  RN4871 Non Volatile Memory (NVM) is valid.  Not sure how to do this yet.  I am somewhat concerned that reloading the NVM on every restart will wear this out too soon.  Especially for the device(s) I use for development.  The easiest way is probably to place a flag in the PIC EEPROM (or I2C memory when it is installed) that indicated a valid NVM.  Thus when the NVM is written and all commands have been accepted, the flag would be updated.  I currently have a config word that is kept, I just need to add this to it.

 

 

 

 

More Train Control

 

 In this post, I talked about the issues I was having getting the next build working.  I finally pulled the one installed.  I had replaced the 10L series with a 10ohm SMT0805.  While an SMT0805 will handle more power than an SMT0603, still not good.  So I replaced the 10ohm with the same parallel combination of 120 ohms to get it to 60 ohms.  

As the above picture shows, I finally finished with the way too many SOT23 I had to put down.  Also DigiKey had 6000+ of the Transceiver module, so I bought some to populate these boards.  The plugin module was a nice stop gap, but with it perpendicular to the board, I was always afraid that it would get damaged pushing a box underneath the layout.

All of this started with one signal that I could hear activating, but it would not move the signal arm.  This was an old style signal that I had buried in the layout as show here.

 

During the move, the black metal tab dislodged from the plastic plunger.  The plunger moves back and forth inside the solenoid plastic form.  You can see the tab better in this picture.  Now I have to replace the heavy paper that covered the solenoid housing.

 

 

 And finally this what one controller installed looks like.  Still a rats nest.