Global Scale Modeller

WOW Bob, you have really been busy!! I spent mine just laying down some primer. Not much to show for the effort and watching the race.

Looking forward to the work

Awesome work there mate looks cool

Update 13 - Slow progress...

It’s been a while since the last update; it’s been a rough couple of weeks at work and my wife was away for a week+ on a business trip. After work, my brain has been too fried to have any interest in modeling.

But, before that all started, I did complete painting all the colored exterior panels. Most were mixes of Tamiya paints over AK chipping fluid. Most are a bit too dark, I’m hoping a very transparent gray will fade/ weather them enough to blend in a bit more.



And today I managed to get back at it. I completed all the small decals, assembled the landing gear and lit the boarding ramp.





Unfortunately, since I painted the landing gear on the sprues, I didn’t get the same coverage so they don’t match very well. If I can find more MRP Insignia White, I’ll just add a few more coats. If not, I’ll try to blend them in when weathering.

That’s all for now....

That is fabulous
I love the light spilling down from the open walkway
Looking really good

Glad to hear I am not the only one who has those kinds weeks at work...zombied beyond belief when you get home
Keep up your spirits, she is looking great

this looks awesome Bob! Excellent work!

Looks bangin the light works really well looks very realistic

Thanks Gents!

After another long week at work, I spent the entire day modeling!

Update 14 - “What a piece of junk!”

I spent the morning getting her to live up to Luke’s concise description. I started by making a mix of flat clear and a few drops of Deck Tan and Flat White. I thinned it a bit extra with Tamiya Lacquer Thinner and applied a light coat most over the colored panels. This helped tone them down a bit. Then it was a couple of hours of Tamiya Panel Line Accent. I was pretty liberal with it which provided an overall feeling of grime.

Before:


After:


Next I’ll add some dirt and rust streaks.

After this I decided it was time to work on the lower lights. Ten LEDs, what a rats nest...



After some soldering, heat shrink and a few more hours... that’s better.



And they work,

Looks great Bob! Excellent work!

Really liking what you're doing with this nice work

That is looking sweet Bob, awesome electrical work there

Thanks again guys... I’ve been having a good time with this one! Well, until.....

Update 15 - Disasters averted...

One “disaster” that I’ve been avoiding is that I didn’t get great coverage when painting the landing gear on the sprues. I had hoped it would look OK but once I put them together they were just way too gray. Unfortunately, my MRP Insignia White had run out and HobbyworldUSA is out of stock (plus I wasn’t looking forward to another $8 plus shipping for another bottle). Instead I mixed up some Tamiya Flat White and a touch of Deck Tan; close enough. With weathering I new it would blend in just fine.

Well, that wasn’t a real disaster, I figured I’d be able to do something like that. But with that done, a real potential disaster started to brew. I remember reading someplace, either researching this build, or maybe in another build thread here, that someone had said to be careful with mineral spirits with this Bandai plastic. So I had planned to use Ultimate washes instead of Tamiya Panel Line Accent for weathering. But I completely forgot, so when I started weathering the main body, I grabbed the panel line accent and weathered away. I didn’t really notice any issues doing this, nor could I remember what the reported issue was. And there were even times I really laid on the mineral spirits while removing the excess. So I figured there was something different that I was doing that avoided the issue.

When it was time to do the landing gear, I just proceeded as I had on the body. After applying the panel line accent it had gotten into some areas of the partially assembled landing gear. Since I had only snapped the pieces together, it was easy to pull them apart; or so I thought. That’s when I noticed one of the pieces had cracked! And it wasn’t just a rod, it was a disc that snapped right in half, see picture below. Fortunately there was one extra of this piece so I could use that. Then I noticed yet another starting to crack, what the.....? And then some of the connecting tabs... What???? I was able to salvage the rest of these pieces using my new favorite solvent cement, Flex-I-File Plast-I-Weld. It’s very much like Extra Thin, but flashes off and “grabs” much quicker and is pretty well set in a few minutes.

I proceeded very carefully disassembling, cleaning and reassembling the landing gear, this time with cement. Hopefully they’ll stay together and not crack any more. Here they are completed, a long with the disc that cracked in half.



Bob

Good save

How do you apply the flexi-plastic-eye-welder???
I have a bottle, but no applicator, wondering if you have a trick

Up to eyeballs in hockey at the mo.
He is doing very well, just need coaches to see it. The players, goalies and trainers can see it.
“For god sake sign this kid” was yelled out by the goalie coach after an especially good drill the other night
And still nothing yet

Twokidsnosleep wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 5:09 am Good save

How do you apply the flexi-plastic-eye-welder???
I have a bottle, but no applicator, wondering if you have a trick

Up to eyeballs in hockey at the mo.
He is doing very well, just need coaches to see it. The players, goalies and trainers can see it.
“For god sake sign this kid” was yelled out by the goalie coach after an especially good drill the other night
And still nothing yet

I used a micro brush; first time I’ve really used it. Seemed to work out and I think I’ll be able to reuse the brush.

Good luck with the hockey. Where’s the team? What level? Looks like it’s shaping up to be another long year for the Kings....

Twokidsnosleep wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 5:09 am Good save

How do you apply the flexi-plastic-eye-welder???
I have a bottle, but no applicator, wondering if you have a trick

Up to eyeballs in hockey at the mo.
He is doing very well, just need coaches to see it. The players, goalies and trainers can see it.
“For god sake sign this kid” was yelled out by the goalie coach after an especially good drill the other night
And still nothing yet

I have two applicators and no glue ... https://www.microworldgamesllc.com/prod ... goryId=592
Sorry to hear your young bloke is missing out. I guess all he can do is hang in there and be the one who never gives up. His luck might change in a instant.

BobM wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 6:35 am

Twokidsnosleep wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 5:09 am Good save

How do you apply the flexi-plastic-eye-welder???
I have a bottle, but no applicator, wondering if you have a trick

Up to eyeballs in hockey at the mo.
He is doing very well, just need coaches to see it. The players, goalies and trainers can see it.
“For god sake sign this kid” was yelled out by the goalie coach after an especially good drill the other night
And still nothing yet

I used a micro brush; first time I’ve really used it. Seemed to work out and I think I’ll be able to reuse the brush.

Good luck with the hockey. Where’s the team? What level? Looks like it’s shaping up to be another long year for the Kings....

Junior B, a couple of teams locally and one in interior
He really looks sharp lately and Is fighting hard
I am staying away and quiet as it pisses me off when I see who they sign early

Good save, I've done something similar on my at-st and if fell in to a million bits so just pretty much poured on a bottle of ca to recover it lol I might have mentioned on here a few weeks back about it but you've saved it well just keep an eye on it over the next couple of days as it's quite thin it gets in everywhere so you may still have an issue, hopefully not

Kingdan wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 6:14 pm Good save, I've done something similar on my at-st and if fell in to a million bits so just pretty much poured on a bottle of ca to recover it lol I might have mentioned on here a few weeks back about it but you've saved it well just keep an eye on it over the next couple of days as it's quite thin it gets in everywhere so you may still have an issue, hopefully not

Yeah, maybe that's where I read it... The mind isn't as sharp as it used to be...

Twokidsnosleep wrote: Tue Aug 13, 2019 3:22 pm Junior B, a couple of teams locally and one in interior
He really looks sharp lately and Is fighting hard
I am staying away and quiet as it pisses me off when I see who they sign early

Yeah, I've been through that in other sports with my kids, maybe not at that level or intensity, but similar. You feel bad for the kid and there's not much you can do but continue to support and encourage. I think you've said in the past that he understands "the game", so hopefully he keeps it in perspective and keeps his chin up. Good luck to him.

Sorry about that Bob. Bandai plastic is a little infuriating that way. Their kits are so awesome, but the plastic is so terrible.

Great to see the progress on this Bob - the lighting is looking really good.

Real shame to see the way the plastic broke up on you on the landing gear but a great save.

Thanks for the kind words. Every build is a new learning experience, this one has a lot of lessons!

Update 16 - The finish line is in sight!



The final weathering is complete. I tried doing some streaking and rust with artists’ acrylics; the problem with that is I’m no artist! I tried a few small areas and wasn’t happy with the results. So I reverted to trusty Ultimate weathering washes. After a coat of Tamiya Flat Clear, I just dotted, dabbed, splashed various colors (Rust, Dark Dirt, Mud, and Light Dirt mostly) all over. This dried for a bit and then I used about 100 damp cotton swabs to remove and blend the excess. The flat coat (and rough paint job) grabbed just a bit of the washes leaving interesting streaks and patterns. Maybe a bit over done, but “What a piece of junk!”

Once I was happy with the appearance it was time for another flat coat. I was out of the Tamiya, so this time I tried some recently purchased Model Masters Acryl Flat Clear thinned 50/50-ish with Ultimate Thinner. Seems to have sprayed great! I think this will become my go to flat. It has always bugged me that the Tamiya only comes in 10ml bottles, Model Masters is more like 30ml.

The only thing left is some final wiring, programming, assembly and reveal photos! The next post will probably be in the reveal thread; although I’ll also update this thread, I’ve been asked to post the final Arduino code which I’ll do once I figure out a how to do so...

Thanks for following along! See ya at the reveal!

Awesome awesome awesome did i say awesome some fine work right there

Looks great Bob! Excellent work

Final Update - She's alive!

I said my next post would be the reveal thread, well... I decide to post info on the programming first. I'm calling it complete, just need to take some photos and video. But here's a sneak peak...



Warning... Nerd content to follow.....

First, some fair warning...

1. I'm a professional software engineer.
2. I enjoy programming, especially small, new projects; not so much the crusty, old behemoth I work on daily.
3. The code for this project is completely over-engineered.
4. I'm a nerd...

With that out of the way, here is the new monster I built. If you just want to find the code, I put it on GitHub, the main source file can be found here: https://github.com/bobm91001/Millennium ... Falcon.cpp. Feel free to do with it what you will. I developed this using PlatformIO in Atom, not the standard Arduino programming environment; I wanted an environment that is more powerful than the standard. I believe the code can be pasted as is into the Arduino editor, with one line at the beginning removed, "#include <Arduino.h>"; however I have not tried that. Also, I included some code below, none of it was actually tested so...

The goals of this effort were two fold. First, learn Arduino programming; I'm a very experienced C++ programmer on Windows, but I know there would be lots of limitations to deal with on the Arduino. Second, I wanted my Falcon to have some "life", not just sit there and glow (OK, it still just sits there and glows and flickers and flashes, but that's a bit better). So I developed a whole "sequencing scheme" that allowed me to "tell a story", albeit a very short one... I think I achieved both goals.

So first, the learning part. If you Google for examples of controlling and flashing LEDs, you usually find some very simple examples. These examples are great for controlling one or two LEDs; my Falcon has 20 LEDs on 6 circuits. Those simple examples just won't cut it. Why? To create a flashing LED, most of these have code that looks something like this:

    int LEDpin = 3;
    void loop() {
        analogWrite(LEDpin, 255);   // Turn on LED....
        delay(500);                         // ...for a half second
        analogWrite(LEDpin, 0);      // Turn off LED....
        delay(500);                         // ...for a half second
    }

Great, you've flashed one LED on/off in one second intervals. What if you want two LEDs, one flashing at 3 times a second and the other twice a second? That can't be done with the above code. The problem is the two "delay(500)" calls; that means every time through the loop will take a full second, if I need something else updated more frequently than that, well, I'm out of luck.

So a better way to do this is to remove all delays from your loop() and control the LEDs as a function of time. For example:

    int LEDpin=3;
    int cycleStartTime=0;
    bool LEDisOn = false;
    void loop() {
        int now = millis();   // Get current time
       
        // See if we reached the end of a 1 second cycle, if so start new cycle
        if (now - cycleStartTime > 1000) {
            cycleStartTime = now;
        }

        // If we are in the first half of the cycle,
        // turn the LED on if needed
        if (now - cycleStartTime < 500 && !LEDisOn) {
            analogWrite(LEDpin, 255);
            LEDisOn = true;
        }

        // ... otherwise if in the second half, turn it off if need
        else if (now - cycleStartTime > 500 && LEDisOn) {
            analogWrite(LEDpin, 0);
            LEDisOn = false;
        }
    }

Hopefully you can imagine how that could be changed to control 2, 3 or more lights.

But as the number of lights, and complexity of the flashing, glowing, flickering increases; the above gets more and more complex to manage. So, I developed some C++ classes to manage my Falcon. But that's getting into some semi-deep C++ programming. I won't go into the details here, that can be found in the source (link above). I will, however give an overview of what I built.

It started with an LED class, basically you make one for each LED circuit you want to control. I have 6 such circuits, the cockpit (1 LED), the headlights (2 LEDS), the landingLights (11 LEDs) and three engine light circuits (2 LEDs each). Each LED can be put into one of several modes: off, on, ramp, sinusoid and flicker. Each of these modes has some parameters to control them, on has the brightness value; ramp has the target brightness and a timespan to get there; sinusoid has a min and max brightness, a period (time for one on/off cycle) and a phase; flicker just has min and max brightness (it randomly updates the brightness between those two values). You can set any LED into any of these mode and then just call it's update(now) function inside your loop() and it will update it's brightness appropriately. Nice.

In order to manage some slightly more complicated behaviors for the engine lights, I created an Engine class that controls the 3 engine LED circuits using 3 LED classes. The Engine has 7 states, each representing different patterns of the 3 LED circuits: off, idling, fullPower, failing (it is the Falcon after all), rampingUp, rampingDown and landing.

Finally, in order to "tell a story", I built a simple state machine that runs all the lights. The state machine just manages the current state of the entire system and transitions between states based on the current time. Each state sets the various LED circuits to a specific mode. The states also have a time duration and a next state. The states are: onGround, PrepareForFlight, InFlight, Landing, and (again since it is the Falcon) FailingStart, Failing, EmergencyShutdown and Restarting. Details of the states are:

OnGround:

• cockpit light ramps to and stay at full brightness
• headlights ramp to and stay off
• after 1 second, landingLights ramp to and stay at full brightness
• engine is set to idling (low, pulsing lights)
• time in state is a random time between 5 and 20 seconds
• next state is randomly chosen between PrepareForFlight and FailingStart

PrepareForFlight:

• after 2 seconds, cockpit dims to a low level
• after 1.4 seconds, headlights ramp to full brightness
• landingLights ramp to off
• engine is set to rampingUp over a 6 second interval
• time in state is 6 seconds
• next state is InFlight

InFlight:

• cockpit light stays dim
• headlights stay full brightness
• landingLights stay off
• engine is set to fullPower, full brightness with some flickering
• time in state is random between 10 and 20 seconds
• next state is Landing

Landing:

• cockpit ramps to nearly full brightness
• after 1.5 seconds landingLights ramp to full brightness
• after 1 second headlights ramp to off
• engine is set to landing, ramps LEDs to idle level over 4 second period
• time in state is 4 seconds
• next state is OnGround

FailingStart:

• all LED modes match PrepareForFlight
• time in state is random between 2 and 4 seconds
• next state is Failing

Failing:

• cockpit starts flickering after .1 to 1.5 seconds
• headlights start flickering after 1 to 2 seconds
• landingLights start flickering after .1 to 2 seconds
• engine is set to failing (various different LED modes)
• time in state is random from 1 to 2 seconds
• next state is EmergencyShutdown

EmergencyShutdown:

• headlights ramp to off
• after .75 seconds, cockpit ramps to off
• landingLights ramp to off
• engine set to rampingDown
• time in state 5 seconds
• next state is Restarting

Restarting:

• headlights stay off
• cockpit ramps to full brightness
• after 2 seconds, landingLights ramp to full brightness
• engine is set to off
• time in state is 4 seconds
• next state is OnGround

Phew! That seems like a lot, but once the structure was in place adding new states and transitions was pretty easy. Over-engineered? Yeah, probably, but it was good practice for future Arduino projects.

Speaking of over-engineering... As you saw many aspects of this have a random component to them (flickering lights, time spent OnGround, InFlight, and FailingStart, and whether the Falcon has a successful PreprareForFlight or switches to a FailingStart). Randomness is controlled via the builtin routine random() which returns a "random" number. Well, if you know anything about computers (and humans), they aren't very good at truly random behavior (I know, you have plenty of friends that contradict that assertion). In fact, you if just start calling random() in your Arduino code, you will always get the same sequence of "random" numbers.... Not very random. However, you can use the function randomSeed() and pass it a starting point in the sequence. Great, just pass it a random number to get a random location in the sequence... Oh, wait. Where do we get a random seed? Well, if you look at most Arduino tutorials you'll find the suggestion to read an unconnected analog input pin which should have some random noise on it, something like:

    randomSeed(analogRead(0));

Well, those with even more time and interest have studied this and it turns out that analogRead() on an unconnected pin returns fewer "random" numbers that one would like. Well, there is a lot of work that has gone on to develop "truly" random number sequences on Arduinos, but those efforts are for way more serious applications than running LEDs on a model...

Anyway, that was a long way to get to the fact that I built a somewhat better random seed generator. I don't use any of the analog pins in my project, so I wrote a simple routine that reads all of them and generates one random number using the noisiest last 4 bits of from each pin. It looks like this:

    unsigned long generateRandomSeed()
    {
        unsigned long seed = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < 8; ++i)
        {
            seed = seed << 4 | (analogRead(i) & 0x0f);
        }

        return seed;
    }

I did a quick test and out of 10,000 calls I got about 5,000 different seed values... Good enough for me!

Congratulations (or condolences?) to those that made it to the end. But that's enough nerding for today. Time to cleanup my workbench, then take some photos and a video for the reveal!

Bob

Wow I have no idea what I've just read lol but I'm sure i can dumb it down to a bulb of some sort at one end a bit of wire in the middle and a battery and switch at the other end pmsl however you've put it better than me you've done a great job can't wait for the final pics all lit up and sparkling well done that man

Dan

Made perfect sense to me. Thanks for publishing the code.

The code just blows by me but the build is super!

WOW!

Best explanation ever what life is like for an embedded programmer (that has a boss that doesn't want to pay for an RTOS)

Awesome work - I'm really curious about the Atom+PlatformIO environment - I'll have to check that out!

...now, you are planning to capture that wonderful light show on video, right ? Pliiiizzz


Tommy

TommyKillander wrote: Mon Aug 26, 2019 7:21 pm WOW!

Best explanation ever what life is like for an embedded programmer (that has a boss that doesn't want to pay for an RTOS)

Awesome work - I'm really curious about the Atom+PlatformIO environment - I'll have to check that out!

...now, you are planning to capture that wonderful light show on video, right ? Pliiiizzz


Tommy

Thanks Tommy and everyone else.

Yes, the Reveal Thread is up including a video of the lighting effects. The video has added sound effects, no audio module in the actual model... maybe someday.

Awesome Bob, but I am with Dan here. Just a ME guy here . But it looks great to me!

What was the part after the picture of the spaceship ???

This meme is for @bfrd ...appropriate again

BobM wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 7:09 pm

Sadly yes
Keep me in biology/chemistry and away from mathematics and I am ok

// If you put in too much coding,
// then my brain cycles over and over
if (now - cycleStartTime < 500 && !LEDisOn) {
then (eyes glaze/brain goes off);
convulsions begin= true; start silly walk in circles

Wow those electronics would have me running a mile, you are braver than i am i would set out with the best of intentions but would just end up with a load of loose wires and components and a sore head , should be a great build i will deffo be watching with interest. Thanks for the post.

I'm totally clueless as to the tekky stuff but its a great build of the TFA Falcon