Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Grey Knights Diorama/Display Board part 4. Now with lights!

A lot of progress was done last night.  Hopefully the walls will be done tonight so I can start painting tomorrow night.  Dark Star is 5 days away.


I didn't see the light until I was already a man. By then, it was nothing to me but blinding!


As always giving credit where it is due.  Thank you goes out to Suijin and Bryan.  Both came up with the LED idea.  Tremendous thank you to Suijin for being a fucking awesome assistant in helping put this thing together.  Swear he's more excited about it than I am.

Sundays work.


Used hotwire to make a groove for the wires go into.  Plan is to make the wires flush with the surface.  Not have any wires hanging loose.

A switch will be placed on the far left side.  It will be the positive off for the board.  More about that later.

Suijin is soldering the secondary switch under the board.  Scrapped the blue coating off the nail so it would make a good connection for the circuit.

Monday nights work.

Suijin put in the positive off switch last night.  Cut away enough material so the bare wire isn't in contact with the styrofoam.  More for safety to avoid burning down the diorama and Grand Tournament.

Suijin pulled this from a computer circuit board.

Behind the scenes wiring.

Hot glue to hold the wire down.  If I ever need to build my deck plating bases again, which I will, I'll use a hot glue gun.

First LED of six soldered.



Blooper pic.  This is the secondary switch.  Turns out these magnets don't like heat from a soldering iron.  The magnets were much weaker after applying heat.  oops

Ripped off previous magnets and placed new ones with aluminum tape.  Aluminum tape should be conductive enough to complete the circuit.

It works!  Great work, Suijin!  You're awesome.  Originally wanted red LEDs near large door in the back flashing indicating to clear the area for large vehicles leaving the door.  Really wanted blue LEDs to provide a cold atmosphere with unfeeling, metal, deck-plating and industrial walls.  Suijin gave me the choice.  Blue it was.  Damn it looks great.  I love how the light pools on the ground under the platforms.  The white LEDs above the platforms are super bright when you're close to them.  He also had the idea of the white LEDs casting shadows from the Purifiers on the platform.  Put a Sister of Battle up there to see how it works.


Will need to cut out more space for the wire nuts.  Perhaps a slot for each wire nut.


slainte mhath

4 comments:

  1. That is friggin awesome. Can't wait to see it finished.

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    1. Thanks, Sean! I also cannot wait til see it finished. Took Fri off work in case I needed more time to finish this for my Grey Knights.

      I would've gone more into the technical side of the LEDs and power requirements. I'll leave that Suijin. He handled all of that.

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    2. Well most people use a resistor in series to limit the current to LEDs, but I hate "wasteing" that power. Also I've read that as long as you under-volt them you aren't running into an issue there.

      The white ones are at about 1V per LED and are quite bright. At 1.5V per LED it is like staring into the sun, it kind of actually hurts to look at them. There are a total of 18 white LEDs hooked in series. Not sure on the actual specs of the LEDs as I got them from a non-working LED lightbulb (I could have shipped it back for replacement for $5-7, which is as much as I paid for it, so I saved it for something like this to use).

      The blue ones were rated at 3.3-4V per LED (30mA) and they are setup here at about 3V per LED (6 LEDs in series with 18V from 2 9V batteries).

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  2. Looks great, I like the fact that the main guy is the key to the blue lights. next thing you should do is make your Rhinos have headlights. -LT

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