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.

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.