GERTY 3000 replica - from Moon (2009)

[McFlyte]

Markus, this is looking really incredible.

Thank you for the nice words!
I am not completely sure how to understand your question. The plywood is cut with a laser cutter and the tabs and slots are included in the .dxf files for the laser cutter. I am drawing the dxf files in librecad, based on my hand-drawn sketches. This includes the drawing of the tabs and slots. If this is what you mean "by hand", then "yes".

Yes, you understand correctly. I've been trying to find a way to draw the tabs and slots automatically from a solid model, but the tools I've found don't work very well for models with any complexity. I've been working on a Quake II blaster for laser cutting and have done the same as you, it's a lot of work!

 

[Markus]

Yes, you understand correctly. I've been trying to find a way to draw the tabs and slots automatically from a solid model, but the tools I've found don't work very well for models with any complexity. I've been working on a Quake II blaster for laser cutting and have done the same as you, it's a lot of work!

Wow! That blaster look like a real challenge - at least with my "by hand" method. But then, on the other hand, if you approach this piece by piece, it's feasible. Just look at one piece at a time, make a good hand-drawn sketch and take it from there. But yes, it's still a lot of work. For me, however, that planning stage is one of the most fun stages of a build.

 

[joberg]

I love the whole look of it...keep up the great work with Gerty!!

 

[Markus]

Two Lamps
On his blog, gavin Rothery describes how the two lamps on GERTY's body were an afterthought. They tried two florescent 6-inch-long tubes and found that this addition made GERTY look better on film. But, of course, I try to build it all from scratch. So, to emulate the effect of the tubes, I decided to build each lamp around a 60mm x 8mm 1W COB LED strip - these are incredibly bright, and the 60mm long bright area nicely simulates the look and feel of a fluorescent tube.

The body is, again, made from plywood.

For the opaque cover I am using a piece of plastic, from a vinegar bottle (did I mention that I love to re-use everyday items in my builds?).

Here is the finished upper lamp (and you can also see the PIR infrared motion)...

...and the lower one in operation.

The 1W cob LED strips are extremely bright, so I will not operate them anywhere close to their full power. Instead, I am dimming them in software (using PWM outputs from the Arduino). Here, the cob LED is operating at PWM level 22 (out of 255), which seems to work well for standard operation. For some quick flashes (e.g. for notifications), I may use a level of 120, which is very bright.

 

[McFlyte]

Wow! That blaster look like a real challenge - at least with my "by hand" method. But then, on the other hand, if you approach this piece by piece, it's feasible. Just look at one piece at a time, make a good hand-drawn sketch and take it from there. But yes, it's still a lot of work. For me, however, that planning stage is one of the most fun stages of a build.

Thanks. I agree about drawing a hand sketch first, I didn't do enough of that and had to back up a few times and start parts again.

You seem to have the process nailed down, everything looks so good!

Do your parts always fit first time? I assume you have your own laser cutter?

 

[Markus]

Thanks. I agree about drawing a hand sketch first, I didn't do enough of that and had to back up a few times and start parts again.
You seem to have the process nailed down, everything looks so good!
Do your parts always fit first time? I assume you have your own laser cutter?

No, I don't own a laser cutter, I just have occasional access to one. That's why I spend more time to make sure that I get it right in the first place. Still, this does not always work out. Sometimes I make errors, and pieces (or tabs and slots) don't fit. But of course, I'm not showing these here
In other cases I finished whole elements and it turned out that I got the sizes wrong. Here are two examples: The first attempt at the top piece (it was not wide enough)

and the first version of the left side detail (not long enough).

These shapes are more complex than anything I had done before, and in both cases, I was so proud that I got all of the parts together (including the sanding of the angled parts that are not at 90 degrees). But, no, the finished pieces didn't fit, so it was: Back to the drawing board!

 

[Antsnest]

Hi - I just found this build - some fantastic work going on there!!

Steve Howarth actually released a 1/6th scale resin kit of Gerty some time after the film. It came with basic lighting and some 'cells' for the emotes but I decided to go all in and managed to get a tiny LCD in there to get some animated images going.

There's some more pictures and video of my build here Modelling Gallery

BTW, Steve has a website here Model Miniatures - Modelmaking for industry, film and television and is also on Twitter https://twitter.com/imadegerty but doesn't seem to have been active this year

 

[McFlyte]

Thanks so much for the info. I'm loving this build.

 

[Markus]

Hi - I just found this build - some fantastic work going on there!!

Steve Howarth actually released a 1/6th scale resin kit of Gerty some time after the film. It came with basic lighting and some 'cells' for the emotes but I decided to go all in and managed to get a tiny LCD in there to get some animated images going.
...
There's some more pictures and video of my build here Modelling Gallery

BTW, Steve has a website here Model Miniatures - Modelmaking for industry, film and television and is also on Twitter https://twitter.com/imadegerty but doesn't seem to have been active this year

Hi! Thanks for your kind words. I found your build a long time ago and I love it. It's one of the first entries in the "everything Gerty" list that I compiled before starting my build. Unfortunately, by the time I heard about the Moon movie and when I got interested in building GERTY, Steve's Gerty model was already history. I love in particular how you did the Gerticons on that tiny LCD screen - plus that "boot screen" image that I also created for my bigger screen.

 

[Markus]

A few push buttons and LEDs
Alright, alright, GERTY 3000 is responding to voice commands - I got it! And the only switch is the big "reset"/"reboot" switch on the back. And for my replica, voice recognition may be an option for the future. But (at least to begin with), I need one push button to shutdown the RaspberryPi and another one to start the tea timer (yes, that will be one of its few features). And I need three LEDs (RPi operating, RPi power, tea timer in progress), two of which are included in the push button switches. These elements are mounted on an acrylic plate. Since I don't want to change GERTY's front side, I am adding those elements on the left side, below the cup holder. (since GERTY will be hanging to the right of my office desk, this gives me easy access to the tea-timer button).

The plate is spray-painted gray from behind (I love the effect of painting the back sides of acrylic plates). If I had planned this a little better, I would have added the opening at the beginning as part of the laser cutter files - but I didn't. So, I had to use a dremel with a saw blade. The opening below the cup holder is not very accurate, but it does not matter as it's hidden behind the acrylic plate.

The cabling is always a mess...

And the finished element, in place.

 

[Markus]

Stickers
I still remember building LEGO sets, where some of the most fun was adding the stickers at the end. And the same applies to my GERTY build. It's the stickers that make the difference. The big "GERTY 3000 - ROBOTIC ASSIST" at the top and the "LUNAR INDUSTRIES LTD" in the center - and all the other little details.
I am re-designing all of the stickers from scratch, using the wonderful open source software "scribus". The most important ingredient is, of course, the typeface. Either Eurostile, Microgramma, or Microstyle (all: Bold Extended) do the job. The latter one was actually used in the Moon movie (but I doubt anybody reading this would notice the tiny differences between the three). For all my previous projects, I got great results (and very cost-efficient) by having my stickers printed on glossy photo paper - just regular, cheap 6"x4" prints at Walgreens. Of course, you should make sure that they don't get wet. The original files that I sent to the printer are posted on my blog. Here are the prints that I got.

There is one little detail that I got wrong (I wonder if anybody will find that ).
And then there was the issue with the hand written post-it notes, where I got some help here (post 23-27 in this thread). I was really lucky that the chosen gray background color is very close to GERTY's color (actually the photos reveal more of the difference than what's visible in reality). So, here are the details...

... and here is the full view.

 

[Markus]

...
There is one little detail that I got wrong (I wonder if anybody will find that ).
View attachment 1325477

So, where is the little detail that I got wrong?
It's the perfect trap for a German guy who learned British English at school - but then moved to the US and adopted the local version:
"No Service - Pressurized Seal Hydraulics" - this should have been "Pressurised" (even my spell checker tells me that the latter version is wrong - but that's what is has in the movie).

 

[McFlyte]

Stunning work!

 

[joberg]

Keep up the great work

 

[Markus]

Videos from the Movie
There are a few pieces in "Moon" that are well-suited to be displayed on GERTY's screen.
The first one is the "Lunar Industries" ad at the beginning of the movie. I isolated this clip and posted it here:

That was the easy part...
At about 9 minutes, there is another nice clip that is announced by GERTY as: "Message received from your wife, Sam, via Jupiter link".
For some parts of the video, the full computer screen is visible, while for others, one can see Sam while the video screen is only in the background.
But I need the whole video message in full-screen. So I removed the parts where the video is not visible full-screen and I replaced those with some of the full-screen pieces.

I did this in kdenlive, where I lined the full-screen pieces up such that the mouth movements were in-sync (approximately). Then I resized the video, such that the image fills the screen. The result is not perfect - but good enough for me. Plus, the imperfections look a little like the artifacts that Sam is seeing. The result is posted here:

 

[Markus]

... and a few more photos of the full unit

 

[joberg]

Most excellent!! Keep up the great work

 

[jarvis]

Gerty looks awesome!

 

[Markus]

Electronics
As mentioned earlier, GERTY is built around this 7" LCD screen with a resolution of 1024x600 pixels.

The control panel is operated by 5V, so I can power it directly from the 5V USB supplies that I am also using for the other components. The screen is connected via HDMI to a Raspberry Pi model 3 B+ that I had lying around. This is connected via a USB cable to an Arduino Nano microcontroller (which operates the PIR infrared motion sensor).

A PAM8403, 3W amp which powers the two speakers is connected to the 3.5mm headphone output of the Raspberry Pi.

The Arduino Nano is sitting on a small custom PCB featuring a piezo buzzer, four transistor circuits (for the two lamps, the eye-LED, and the tea timer button LED), screw terminals (for the wires to the button and LEDs), and a 4-pin connector for the PIR.

Another PCB with screw terminals is used to distribute +5V and GND connections to different pieces of the circuit.

I made a small piggyback PCB for the Raspberry Pi, with screw terminals for the wires to the shutdown button and two LEDs.

Here is the control board for the 7" screen, partially hidden by the cabling mess (no matter how you try, at the end the cabling always becomes a mess).

Here, all the elements are installed in GERTY's body,

...and here is the full view on GERTY's internals.

In both previous pictures one can also see the picture wire - this is how I plan to hang GERTY.
And here is a first front view with the blue eye-LED and the Raspberry Pi boot screen.

(The color rendition of the bright blue eye-LED is very poor in photos. In real life it is much closer to how it looks in the movie)

 

[Markus]

I just saw that Amazon lowered the price for the book "Making Moon" from $28 to $8. It's a beautiful big hardcover book, and at this price it's a steal!
Amazon.com: Making Moon: A British Sci-Fi Cult Classic (9781789091007): Ward, Simon: Books