2022 - July
Let's continue from the announcement in April. Following the success of summer 2021, I decided it was time for the biggest event we made yet. Multiple members of our team worked on its announcement.
The goal was to make a video to motivate as many people as possible to come and help us during this summer. The catch was that we said "We WILL raise it together" which meant we had at least to make it stand at the end of August. More than that, we titled it "The Last Step", so we had to be able to show something big...
Matt (Eagle SG) made the video using the 3D model made by Bertrand (The Ant Replicas) which he himself had made from our orignal section using 3D scans, pictures and measurements, so a 100% accurate model. An original 3D model of a spaceship was also used at the end of the video.
Here is how it looked like.
We also created a website explaining the whole project :
www.emg-team.com (now repurposed to show where we're at. It contains SPOILERS). We explained most of the elements we had to work on, how the event would go and displayed a table of how many people would be with us each day from the start of July to the end of August, which showed that there were people interested, hence reassuring anyone who may feel alone and hesitant when subscribing. We also announced there would be an event at the end to celebrate our work.
Of course the team said "We should split the ones knowing the best about the project during the two month of work" and of course I finally went myself during the whole two months and most of the team members who had been there for a long time came on the last weeks and for the event.
Anyway, I haven't been alone, actually the teaser worked really well ! About 60 people subscribed for the whole thing and a few of them for quite a lot of time. We had building painters, students set painters devs, students in computer science, video makers, students in biology, electricians, etc. Of course they came when they could, so their skill weren't always used as much as we wished. The first batch only worked on bondo and sanding, for the chevrons, again... but we were able to discuss a lot of themes and to prepare for the next steps and all this wonderful knowledge really helped us a lot.
One of them was a youtuber, who used the time he was there to make a series of videos about the project (here on the left) it's Laurent from the
Dans Ton Film channel.
While we were sanding the chevrons, we had to think about the panels themselves. As they were warped we took the hard decision to do this again. But to be sure everything would be ok and to gain a bit of time, we asked a professional to make them for us. The bad news was that he was quite far away and the time it took for us to confirm the order, he actually couldn't work for us directly anymore, so we had to wait to be able to work on the panels. I'll come to that.
Now that we had decided for the casts to be made by a workshop, we had to give them our molds. But new problem here. When we got them out, we noticed some of them were warped too... so we brought them anyway and asked for some test casts. The result wasn't great. I didnt' know what to do. New mold on the originals ? Again ? It seemed too much. Put the silicon skin back on the originals and make only the resin shell again ? It would never work, some parts being intricate geometric elements, for sure there would be bubble everywhere... So, not knowing what to do, we just went back to the workshop with the originals, to see... And by chance we really were able to put the silicon skin back on them! I was quite happy, but also a bit hangry that my certainty that it would work allowed us to loose some time again.
Back at our own workshop, after we worked on the chevrons, we still had a lot of time to prepare everything except for the panels. The first group to arrive was some young computer science students. They all worked with Ian, who's our developer, and together they tried quite a lot of things to build the management system of the Gate. The idea was to work on how to trigger the sounds, lights, make the glyph-track spin and stop precisely depending on the symbols sent, be able to check and manage everything from an iPad or something similar, etc. They used RaspberryPi, barcode scanners, WiFi transeivers, Alexa and about any module for arduino you can think of in link with this project. We had already discussed a lot about the architecture of the system but they really went next level on this. Ian also made a few tests for AR with the gate for the activation and the event horizon.
Of course after we moved in October 2021 we had to re-assemble the Gate. It took about one hour as there were no panels on it, which is way easier than with the panels on, and about one extra hour to level everything, because when you move up a part of the gate of course the parts that were already too high are going up too, but you still have parts too low and then the nightmare begins.
Even though they were not really in shape, we still used the new test casts as references as we had to gain some time while waiting for the new panels. We also used some old panels, the less warped ones. We were starting to feel like we were only filling the waiting time, but we had to make the best of it!
First we tried to finish the design for a way to fix the chevrons in place. That kind of build needs a lot of prototyping and designing before you can make anything. Sometimes it's a bit overwhelming. But we were able to model something out of wood that fitted between the structure and the panels, to be able to screw the elements of the chevrons in them. What we wanted was to use as much as possible metric screws and not wooden screws to avoid having to change those part frequently. The panels themselves should stay in place, only the chevron will be disassembled each time we use the Gate, but to be coherent we went for the same idea for the whole thing. I spare you the details, we went for so much prototypes for everything that I have no idea what they were anymore, but I'll do my best to explain what we kept at the end.
We also started working on the lights. First we had to test some LEDs, I had a lot of different strips to test, we also tried COB. The original light was a R7S, the LEDs equivalents don't quite diffuse the light the same way. We tried different finish on the crystals to see how diffuse it would be at the end, we tried to add some diffusers between the source and the crystal, but there isn't that much space... We had also bought the drivers years ago, but we tried new ones anyway. We didn't really find what we were looking for, the COB was interesting, but we never found a driver with a nice curve for them. We decided to glue LED strips around an aluminium profile to mimic the R7S source as much as possible, that would be sufficient for now.
We also made all the metal reflectors of the chevrons from the old turkey trays we used for the
Atlantis Gate.
Bonus picture : Here Ian says "I think it's a bit dull, maybe we need to add more power to it ?" and then "Ah, oops".
We were still working on the design of the steel base at that time. I was still not convinced by the drawings I made (even though I made a bunch of versions during the years), but what I was sure of was where we would put the links between the circle and the base, in 3 places. We made the closest measurements possible and we modified the wood structure to allow space for these elements. Spoiler : We had to do this again later.
It seems like it was going ok for this part, but hey, August was already at our doors and we knew we wouldn't have the whole month to finish our work as we would have to prepare the event too. Actually at that time, it was decided that we would make a mini Stargate convention. It was beginning to become something bigger than we anticipated and we were clearly not ready. Would we be able to show the gate the way we wanted ? Was it a mistake to bet on this event to be the last time we worked on the Stargate to be able to bring more people to help us ?
You'll know in the next update.
But before it's too late, please note that we'll be LIVE and working on the Stargate starting the 11th of this month! You'll be able to see our work all day and to discuss with us if you want. The live will be in french, but we switch language as soon as someone speaks english. You can visit us on
Youtube and on
Twitch. The end should be around the 18th or the 20th.
Also, if you have any question, about how the original Stargate was made by the studios, how we designed some parts, etc. Don't hesitate to ask here! I'm trying to summarize based on what I remember, so I may have forgotten some important parts. I'd be happy to give your more details about anything.
Cheers!
Oh, did we say we were from Switzerland? Time for some well deserved cheese fondue...
