"Under Construction"- Lighting Adventures Continue

Vector wrote:

Also: For your side panel - couldn't you use a cnc mill to put lego dots on the panel? Then you could build on the case it self?

Oh man! I like it! The side panels have a plan, but I wonder if I could do that on the top without losing the nice feel of the case.... Dad does have the cnc mill...

You're a dangerous man, Vector.

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What about getting a building baseplate and install it in a good spot? You can purchase an appropriate color or paint it what you want.

http://creative.lego.com/en-us.....y/620.aspx

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bnash10125 wrote:

What about getting a building baseplate and install it in a good spot? You can purchase an appropriate color or paint it what you want.

http://creative.lego.com/en-us.....y/620.aspx

Also an option, but less "fun". Very Happy

I'm really striving to keep a balance between case and LEGO, rather than have a case made of LEGO pieces.

I did glue some small plates to the bottom inside of the case to secure the LEGO "raised floor" that I ran a bunch of cabling through. The girders on the side/front and the crane on the back are all attached via a handful of small Technic bits with pins, allowing for easy detachment.

Given the accuracy LEGO maintains in its parts, it would be tricky to get the CNC to cut "just right" out of the acrylic.

Now I just have to wait for the young 'un to graduate from Duplo to LEGOs in a couple years and then get a few baseplates for a large build surface on the floor, and my all my parts can come out of storage from the garage.

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Oh I agree - a case made out of lego is bleh. But having anchor points could be useful. I bet you could measure and duplicate it fairly easy. Once you do a 4 dot by 4 dot pattern, you really have it infinitely.

Another option is to put holes in the window that are the size of the BLACK piece on the far right in the image below.

Then you could attach these:

And build off those.

WORST case you could use a 4 dot wide "Lego bar" (Black and looks like x on top) and then put it through the window, and two anchor couplers on each side.

O==[]O

Where "=" is the black bar
and "O" is the lock piece
and "[]" is the black long bar in the 2nd pic above.

Hard to describe online, hope you see it?

Oh here: The bar is on the Right and the "couplers" are 2nd in from the left on the bottom.

That was one of my original ideas, was to have bricks intersecting the case panels. One of the issues I have is that the case panel is flush up against a few other parts of the case inside, right where I have attachment points, so I wouldn't necessarily be able to do the method you mentioned.

What I might try to do is make the hole the proper size with for one of the technic pins, and countersink the back end enough that the pin can grip it (like on any other technic piece).

My setup right now has parts glued to anchor everything down. Not so much that I have tons of stuff glued on, just enough to hold everything in place without being rickety.

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I have to tell you this is one of the most awesome things I have ever seen. Case mods are cool, Legos are cool, so of course this is super cool.

It is very creative and came out amazing. I didn't think it needed anything done to it but these finishing touches are blowing my mind. Cool

Great job. Can't wait to see the next thing you come up with. Smile

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Wow, thanks for the encouragement! I'm really excited to get it done, upgraded (for Battlefield 3) and keep bringing it to the LANs.

I was eyeballing the Rampage III Extreme Black Edition for the upgrade (with a little mod work to change the red -> yellow), but at an estimated $600+ for just the motherboard I dunno when I'll swing that one.

Ok, back to the sunshine for a bit. Very Happy

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I've been thinking about adding a light to the top of the crane for a while, so I decided to try my hand at it.

First I cut a few small holes in the top of a LEGO piece (OH THE HORROR!!!!) and fit in 4 small LEDs:

I only had red ones on hand, but for a prototype I figure it will work.

Then I fit on the orange bit (I'll likely try and find an old yellow/amber one for the final piece):

I did a test fit on top of the crane, seems the combination of pieces isn't too contrasting:

Then the fun began... I started sodering the wires to the leads beginning with the ground and resistor:

Followed by the control wires for each LED (yes, that is a piece of CAT-V cable.) Please keep in mind... I'm not an electrician, electrical engineer, or anything remotely related, so it's gonna be ugly... Smile

:

Final product came out okay! Other than some code issues to get rid of that little delay, and some power adjustment, it works!
It's only activated when I click a button on the computer to move any of the 3 motors, which is by design. Kind of a "warning, heavy machinery in use" type deal. Smile

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8MlsamLepU

Just need to round up some white LEDs and a yellow brick and do a nice clean job with the soder/wires and I'll be good to go with that.

Still need to integrate it into the case, find somewhere to mount the microcontroller, wire it into my existing lighting setup so I can control the brightness of that on the fly... Smile

Oh the fun to be had.

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Awesome... Just awesome...
That's some good progress on the crane since you got the board! I expected it to take way longer but you've already got things wired, moving, and have pulsing lights on top of that.

It never ceases to amaze me how many people come over and marvel at the mod LAN after LAN, it's the case that keeps on giving. Very Happy

After the success of the caution light prototype, I headed up to Surplus Gizmos this weekend and picked up a few odds and ends. I got some 3mm LEDs (Amber and White) and some other stuff.

Upon getting home, I tried out the small LEDs and discovered they are 'slightly' larger than my 3mm red LEDs that I used in the prototype, so that meant doing some additional drilling to the inside of the LEGO pieces. After digging through my tub of unsorted parts, I came across a yellow cylinder to house the LEDs in. The yellow LEGO piece + the amber LEDs == awesome!!

First I needed a brick to run wires through instead of that god-awful mess I had in the prototype, so I took a drill to a standard LEGO brick. 4 small holes in the pegs for the positive leads and a large hole in the center for the ground leads. Then 1 hole out the side for the wires to come out of.

I then soldered the grounds together and attached the ground wire to the LEDs in the LED cylinder.

So, because the LEDs were slightly larger, I had to expand the holes in the pegs. I also ran the ground leads into the center hole of the cylinder, so that resulted in the LEDs sitting a bit wonky. Once the lid is on, you can't really tell, and it doesn't affect the lighting at all.

After doing some soldering and wiring, the "wire management brick" seems to be doing its job quite well!

Final assembly... much cleaner than last time!

And a mounted on the crane shot:

I still have to do a bunch of wire management as the wires run back to the case, but the lights themselves work great and look much better than the red LEDs in orange lego prototype did.

In other news, picked up a beefier GPU for the system (GTX 480) ((THANK YOU!!)), and realized my current power supply can't handle it, so had to order a new one of those. That will give me an opportunity to do a better paint job than the last one, and possibly do some cable re-sleeving/resizing. I'm going to use the mesh sleeves to re-do a lot of the wiring in the case too (lights, cables to motors, etc), so it will be a good opportunity to learn that stuff. Lots of learning with this mod...

More to come as the weeks progress. Smile

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Not my idea, but just reminded me of it. maybe setting up the LED's with the HDD Light so it sits there and blinks with the HDD Very Happy

HpK wrote:

Not my idea, but just reminded me of it. maybe setting up the LED's with the HDD Light so it sits there and blinks with the HDD Very Happy

I have this set up for the Welder on the front of the case. Really looks like he's welding when the HDD is blinking. Very Happy

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I hauled the case out and began disassembly for a nearly total rebuild. Lots of things need cleaned up, redone, etc. My new power supply arrives tomorrow, and then I can throw the GPU in and give it a run. Eventually I'll upgrade the rest of the system, and I have plans for those components to be... adapted to my color scheme.

Meanwhile I needed to re-do a bunch of stuff, starting with wiring and teardown:

GPU waiting for its chance to shine!

It's nice to have the crane re-attached to the case properly...

My current "cable management" method was to hide the cables below a 'subfloor' of lego

I added a small light to the inside of the crane cab, to help draw attention to it when lights are dim (like, say, at LANS!):

Wiring is still waiting for cable sleeving supplies to be selected and attempted (scary!)

A quick shot of the brains driving this whole case:

I tore out the old LED lighting. I really liked the 'construction site' effect it had, but the way I went about the wiring was... sub-par. I used new LEDs which are smaller but brighter. You can see the difference here (new are on the left):

New LEDs

Old LEDs

Now both sets are wired with new LEDs

The lights are a bit too over-powering at full brightness with the lights off, but I found when I got them where I wanted them in the dark, you couldn't really tell they were on when the lights were on. SOLUTION! I wired in a photosensor to the setup and now the lights go between ideal and bright based on external lighting conditions. Yay! Really the effect is pretty subtle, but it's enough for my tastes and it was really fun to figure out.

A couple of vids of the effect (sorry for the crummy videos... I was in a hurry).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V7Bim2C_Dg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEC7t2YJjGc

Lastly, a quick video of the caution light I wired up. The camera is adding a bit too much red to the image. In actuality it's much more orange/yellow.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij328aEnVIE

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Just wanted to throw a quick shout out to everyone who came by and chatted with me! It was a lot of fun showing the rig off and I loved the reactions on peoples' faces when I told them the crane could be controlled from the PC. Looking forward to continuing to bring it to the LANs, just need to develop a good transportation mechanism... the LEGO bricks don't tend to travel well.

Again, thanks for making it worthwhile to go through the hassle of bringing that system vs just gaming on my laptop!

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Nitemayr wrote:

Just wanted to throw a quick shout out to everyone who came by and chatted with me! It was a lot of fun showing the rig off and I loved the reactions on peoples' faces when I told them the crane could be controlled from the PC. Looking forward to continuing to bring it to the LANs, just need to develop a good transportation mechanism... the LEGO bricks don't tend to travel well.

Again, thanks for making it worthwhile to go through the hassle of bringing that system vs just gaming on my laptop!

Dude that blew me away I'm glad I got it on video, my fiance was totally blown away and it was one of the things she actually thought was awesome (She hates my computer addiction). So props to you. Keep up the good work.

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