Brick Fest Live - Day ONE

Day ONE starts with finalizing the detailing.  Above I have added doughnuts to the supervisors as the oversee the small workforce.

Here the alien population gets added along with a walker.

This is the rogue droid recovery.  One Worker holding the long pole and the other worker trying to capture the droid.  Success is yet to be determined.

Populating the blue patrol groups and we are ready to go.

What about Brick Fest in general?  Well here are some of the activities they offer.

A huge pit of bricks.  This ended up with about twenty people in it most of the time.  Some "snow angels", but mostly people just building creations out of the bricks.

For those less adventurous, there were traditional build tables with lots of different bricks.

For the artist, there was a large black light section with about 75% of the bricks the type that will fluoresce under black light.  You could build a creation under the black light, then they had another space where you could leave it for attendees to look at.

A car race setup.  They had four raceways with 5 lanes each.  They gave each person just a few minutes to build a car, then they raced them.  No prizes, just bragging rights.

More build tables.

A message wall.

This was very interesting.  A large mural on the floor.  Each person is given a base plate, access to tiles and plan for the base plate.  Each one is numbered. The person builds up the base plate and then it is placed on the floor in the appropriate place.  Kind of a jig saw puzzle, but different.  Then as time goes along, you can watch the mural fill in.  It took all day to do this.

We will wrap this up in the next post.

 

Brick Fest Live - Setup

 

Spent the day setting up in the Expo Hall of the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds.  First load being wheeled in.

Now the unpacking begins.

First job is to get the center built and anchored.  This is the most important step in building the Space Outpost,.

Then I assemble the hangers that are behind all the cliffs.

Helps when you remember how they go together and don't have to go back an re-assemble
 

Here the right cliff side (front view) is done.The two hangers and the new spacer are all connected.   Power now flows through the hangers.  The changes I made to the power distribution  made a huge difference in setup.  To ensure that the power was connected correctly, I connected the power and left it on as built out from the center.  That way I knew if the connection was good.

And the front view.

Here is the right side with all the modules connected.  Because I wanted more of curve on the left side where the new floating platform goes, I used two shallow bends in a row.

A longer view of the right side while I work on the left side.

The left side coming together.

The technique is to connect the front platform to the cliff wall.  Then slide this into the existing structure.  This seems to be the easiest way to do this.  Then I use 2x8 plates to connect it all.

Here I am sliding the next section into place.

On the right side I used two large angle connectors to force the Space Port module as close to perpendicular to the front face as possible.  This is the first time I have done this, I wanted to see what will happen.  For this setup it is OK.  But if I expand the floating platform, the angle of this is going to be critical.. In this arrangement, adding in any direction except to extend on the current line will not work.  I was looking at three landing pads base plates and one interconnect road base plate.  More thought is needed on this aspect.

This shows the final arrangement. 

Long view from the left.

Long view from the back.

Long view from the right.

Front view.  At 4:45PM and 4 1/2 hours of assembly, we called it quits for the day.  Still need to do some detailing in the morning.

Finally the boys doing there daily PT.

Floating Platform - Final

 

This is the final version of the floating platform, for now.  There is still more detailing that needs to be done.  Plus I have two more landing pads and 2 connector base plates that I hope to integrate in the future.  I had described some preliminary work done in these two posts,  here and here.

The 6 X 16 black plates arrived.  Above shows the final configuration of the supporting plates on the edge.   Four 8 X 8 plates and four 6 X 16 plates.

Then I filled the gaps with four 1 X 8 plates and four 1 X 12 plates.

This is the final fill.  Two 2 X16 plates, two 8 X 16 plates, one 6 X 16 plate and two 1 X 10 plates.  Since you cannot see the internal 6 X 16 black plate, that can be any color.  This will save money since the black ones seem to be more expensive.

The support frame did not change, except for adding more pin connector plates to attach the base plate to this frame.

The two pictures above show the corner connection with the T Lift arm as the feet and the pin connector plates that will connected to the plates

When I first did this as a concept, I never checked the height to see if it was close to the entrance on the Space Port module.   After noticing some sag in the bridge portion, I did some checking.  The platform was a plate to low.  So I added plates under the pin connector plates to increase the height of the platform.

Now it is at the correct level.

There is still a lot of detailing work that can be done.  But for now it is done,  

On to Brick Fest Live in San Jose.

Floating Platform - Update

 

I have made some progress on this concept.  At first I thought the lime 8 X 16 plates on the bottom would go with the pattern on the base plate.  But after seeing this, I am back to all black.  Black is the only color that will provide the floating platform illusion.  

To provide the support needed for the base plate, normal large plates are needed.  The corners are 8x8 plates.  In between will be either 8 X 16 or 6 X 16.  Cost is the driving factor here, since 8 x 16 in black is expensive for some reason.  In the center is a 16 X 16 plate.  Here color doesn't matter since it is not visible and thus the least expensive can be used.  Finally four 8 X 8 plates are used to bind all the plates together.  The four corner pieces are attached to the top as are the 8 X 16 plates.  The two 2 X 12 black plates are insurance.  I suspect this will be adjusted one more time, once I get the 6 X 16 black plates. 

The frame is 1 X 15 lift arms connected using perpendicular connectors in each corner.  A 3 X 3 T Lift arm is used as feet. 

  The frame is connected to the platform using a pin connector plate.  The entire structure seems stable and can hold some weight.  The issues will be building things in the corners of the base plate where the studs are.  Since the frame does not extend that far out, it might tip the platform if it is not balanced.

Finally I will build a railing around  the platform.  Using the same concept as the railing throughout the Space Base, I used the transparent light blue bars.  This time I used the modified plate with ring to hold the bars.  This provides a more secure attachment.  The plate is attached to a standard 1 X 1 headlight brick.  The exception is in the corners.  Here I used 1 X 1 brick with studs on adjacent sides.  Now this does not line up exactly with the headlight bricks, but it is close enough.  The 1 X 1 bricks are attached to 2 X 2 jumper plates.  Then 2 X 2 black tiles go in between.  

For Brick Fest Live in San Jose this will probably not be complete.  So I will use the Maintenance team to show it is under construction

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Brick Buddy Scripting

 After days of working on this I may have made some progress. I had done some scripting work on the Light Buddy 2.  Both use the 40bit (5 bytes) format for a script command.  But it never really worked consistently and in the end I built most of those scripts by hand.  

This is the Script Window in the PC APP.  I have the motor section working.  It provides the ability to attach the corresponding sensor to the motor.  Then you can choose whether to have the motor reverse or stop when the sensor activates.  In a Brick Buddy 3, the sensor will only activate on the state going to ground.  Internally the sensor line is tied to 3.3VDC through a 100K resistor.  I wrote a simple script that turns the motor on and attaches the sensor with Motor Action set to reverse.  It runs until you press the button, which immediately reverses the motor.  This is going to provide some interesting possibilities for MOCs.

Here is the test setup.  A scrap PCB board that I attached four momentary SPST push buttons.  This allows me to test the sensor inputs.

What is missing in the scripting setup is the LED features selection.  I discussed the different LED styles and features in this post.  

On the Main Control Widow, I have a possible solution.  The issue is that the features are not mutually exclusive,  You can have multiple features.  In a traditional Windows Combination Box you can only choose one item.  This picture shows a combination box with individual check boxes for each item.  Thus you area allowed to choose multiple items.  The display of the current selections is not ideal, as you can see to the left of the drop down box.  Also the component does not allow for the drop down box to widen to show the selections.  This feature will require some more research. Ii really did not want to develop my own component, but I may have not other choice.

I did achieve my goal, I have written and installed the script for the Vertical Generator.  The Auto Start now works, so for Brick Fest LIVE, its apply power and it is off and running.  Next task is to do the same for the Vertical Generator.