I’ve been tardy posting updates this last week – been busy trying to get stuff back together for the new Clone Wars movie.
I finally got my periscope installed and functioning. Here’s a short video of it in action
There’s still some small quirks I need to iron out, but I’m pretty close to being done with it (for now). One of the big issues is that everything has to be align perfectly, and taking the dome on and off isn’t as simple as it used to be. What I’ve quickly realized is that with every gadget I add maintenance goes up exponentially.
I repainted the periscope housing after tweaking the curve at the top to match my dome. While I was at it I clean up some spot that I wasn’t happy with
Right now the dome pie panel velcro’s on top of the periscope, but it’s hard to get it to sit flush with so much spring in the velcro. It also very hard to align things perfectly and to get it to stay put. I’m probably going to use magnets instead or even use the small side screws I added. Right now they’re just for show to mimic the ROTJ periscope.
I’m not convinced that the clear lenses look correct either, it’s hard to tell but I suspect the original had a slight frosting to it.
I really need to document the wiring and micro-controller setup for this, but here’s a few overview shots of the periscope installed and there are more in the gallery.
Right now, up/down is manually controlled by the Futaba transmitter, at some point I’ll probably automate this. I also have a small 08M Picaxe micro-controller dedicated to automatically rotating the periscope when it’s fully extended. In addition I have to route 12VDC from the main dome power board back down to the periscope light circuit. The Picaxe and the small mini-servo that rotates everything runs on 5VDC and just taps off of the power for the lift servo.
There are two small micro switches, the first trigger the micro-controller to start randomly turning the periscope when it reaches the top
The second turns on/off the lights when the periscope is raised/lowered
I think I’m almost done with my new keycoder, it’s gone thru several iterations and I’ve ironed out most of the bugs.
I’d posted earlier this week that I’d started with a box I made out of aluminum angle, and added a bunch of momentary toggle switches, I then took the guts out of two RF remotes and wired them up inside. Sounds easy but it didn’t feel like it at the time.
The switches are mini (on)-off-(on) momentary, I really wanted to try and get sub-mini’s that just did (on)-off, but I couldn’t find any at a price I was willing to pay. I think the switches I ended up with worked out to be around a $1 each after shipping.
Space is very tight and I really didn’t want to make the box any bigger than absolutely necessary, so I ended up trimming the RF boards down and consolidating the antennas as well as removing the two batteries.
The switches center solder tabs are common and wired together
This is the spaghetti I’d created once I was “done” wiring the switches in
With being generous with the wire I’d forgotten it all had to fit in the box somehow! So I ended up shortening everything down. I also wrapped the backs of the switches and any critical parts of the boards in electrical tape.
I’d tried really hard to fit rechargeable batteries inside too, but ended up with a better solution I think. I ran a cable out and up into the battery compartment of the Futaba to share it’s battery. The cable has a Y split in it for easy removal. The RF remotes come with a 12V battery, but I’ve tested and found that they work very happily on the 10VDC coming from the Futaba. When I double checked my older remotes their batteries had dropped to 6V and were still working fine.
So, that’s my new CTEC keycoder almost done.
Lessons:
Having the antenna internally limits range so I’ll be moving it outside.
Total cost was roughly $94 (incl. two RF setups $60, aluminum $10, switches $24), and about 2 or 3 days of work. On the other hand the Vantec Hitchiker product is around $450 – and only works with their special Futaba 75Mhz FM 9CAP, but does have some great features that I will need a cheap micro-controller to replicate.
My keycoder weights in at 10oz, adding to the already heavy Futaba setup at almost 2.5lb. So I may look into making a plastic box – but the weight of the switches definitely adds up.
One last trick I learned is that you can have multiple remotes control a single RF receiver. Yep, you heard that right. I’ve been controlling multiple RF receivers with one remote for a while, but had no idea it would work the other way around – each remote doesn’t not need to have the same code even. I accidentally found this out while trying to mate the new keycoders remotes to my droid and found that my older remotes still worked.
I’m still fiddling with the periscope, I added some LEDs, a servo to make it turn and something to mount it to the lift mechanism.
But first I had to adjust the dome pie panel cut out to give more clearance. I marked off the area I wanted to cut and Dremeled in a few slots to start things off and finished it with a small hacksaw blade.
The main periscope assemble is mounted atop PVC tube to add more height.
I wanted to easily remove it for maintenance and also allow some height adjustment at the same time. This little tube is fixed to the lift mech
And the main PVC riser tube slips over and locks into place with a couple of screws
I installed a small HiTec HS-55 servo into the top of the PVC tube to turn the periscope side to side when it’s extended. Attached is a round plate the aluminum based of the periscope will screw into.
I’ve also add the LEDs to the main periscope housing. On the front is an array of 6 rectangular LEDs. These are very close to one’s used on the original ROTJ periscope
They’re glowing orange in the photo but they’re deep red in person. Power is 12V and no resistors needed as they’re in series
Here’s the block of LEDs soldered together before I installed them
I’ve wired in some bright white LEDs inside and some colored one’s on the back of the housing, I also re-appropriated one of my old PSI boards to blink a couple of LEDs to add a bit of variety.
Dome Pie Panel Hinge Experiments – Adding hinges to anything on Artoo is tricky, with so many curves and often tight spaces, it’s really hard to get things just right.
Well I’m almost done with the mechanics of my dome periscope, and I’m turning my attention to the life form scanner, in particular the antenna to raise and lower it.
Just like with the periscope the limitation will be the height of the dome. I can’t extend the antenna into the body because of the slip ring cross bar on the top of the body – so anything I come up with has to remain within the 9-10 inches of the dome.
Everyone has a different approach to things. I plan on making my own radar screen and body/cap assembly. My rough sizing calculations have it coming out around 6″, maybe a little shorter, from the top of the radar screen to the bottom of the body.
From studying photos of what other people have done, most seem extend the antenna into the body, but as I said – I don’t have that luxury. But what they also do is un-attach the antenna from the spool/motor housing. This allows you to rotate the antenna 90 degrees saving some space, rather than having the motor adding to the height.
A couple of weeks ago I bought the shortest antenna I could find on eBay hoping it could get it to work, the jury is still out but I suspect I’ll need to find something even shorter.
It’s a Harada MX-1 and once I removed some housing and un-attached the mast from the body this is what I was left with
Unfortunately, the mast was still too long, collapsed it’s close to 7″, and once I stick the LFS assembly on top that’s still too tall.
This is a rough drawing on what the plan is
So I’m still looking for a short (and cheap) antenna. I did find this one (a Metra 44-PW32) which is meant for old school Minis, but the cheapest I’ve found it is $73 – which is more than I want to pay at this point.
The mast is approx. 5 1/2 inches when collapsed which should work if I extend the body of the LFS assembly over it
So if anyone has a lead on something please let me know.
Just got back from the TRU Midnight Madness – and was it madness. Over 100 people were in line when I arrived at 11pm. People had been camping out since noon today.
Unfortunately, I didn’t plan ahead so I was on my own. – Alas all my buddy’s in the RL/501st are down in Comic Con this weekend, but I had a blast anyway and everyone loved Artoo.
My embarrassing moment from tonite was when someone in the line heckled “2-3-2, do 2-3-2, I bet it doesn’t do 2-3-2”. I came back with “Well, where’s your droid?”, and he answered “It’s at home, I’m the guy who bought Jerry Green’s R9!”. Too funny.
At 11:50 they were still assembling the display and people in line were getting mad, especially as there were only going to be 60 of the special General Grievous.
I replaced the original drawer slider bracket with something a little bigger. It’s cut from a piece of alu angle and makes the whole setup a lot more solid. You can see the original bracket in the background.
The slots make it easy to align on the dome ring
I still need to work on the riser below the periscope assembly and fix it to the lifter.
