TOS Communicator Build

[turner3d]

I think we have a winner! I used .05 x .05 fuzzy skin (I also have a Bambu - P1s), but it was just a little too pointy looking. I hit it with some Duplicolor Matte Wheel Finish clearcoat, waited about 1/2 hour, and gently buffed the peaks. The camera doesn't really do it justice - it's much more subtle in person, and I think it looks pretty good! Now to set up all the modifiers to only put it where it's needed. Thanks again!

If your slicer has a "fuzzy skin" setting, that can produce a fair approximation of the haircell texture. This was done on a Bambu with the Fuzzy Skin set to Contour, Point Distance 0.05mm and Thickness 0.05mm.

View attachment 1906581

 

[Ghostsoldier]

Yowza...stunning!

Rob

 

[finalfrontier]

Looks excellent, it's nice when a plan comes together!

 

[finalfrontier]

 

[Arky]

Damn, haircell is hard.

Question - what layer height were you using in that pic? Is that a .2 or something finer?

.16, but yours looks way better. Fantastic job!

 

[PicasoX]

I'm really liking those,

how do you implement a fuzzy skin into your print? Is it a slicer setting?

 

[PicasoX]

Progress update:

First off, my rhinestone order came in - they made a huge difference, IMHO. They're not the exact shape of the originals as the Swarovski model 2000 stones are extremely hard to come by, but the colors and sizes are accurate. Note that the orange-ish one sitting off to the side by itself matches the center stone in season 3. The story goes that the center stone (Siam) fell off of the alpha hero, and they stole one (Hyacinth) from one of the dummy props to replace it. I wasn't sure which one I wanted to go with, so I got both.

View attachment 1901523View attachment 1901522

Next, I took a $5 1.5V "continuous sweep" silent clock movement and gutted everything not responsible for spinning the second hand. I also 3d printed an alpha-accurate housing for the moire which mates with pins on the clock chassis. I was able to get the whole thing pretty small, but it's still going to be a super tight fit. It's only 1rpm instead of 2, but it's close enough.

Still much to do, including rebuilding the 3d model of the body from scratch - I need to mostly hollow it out anyway, and the shape isn't completely accurate. Coming up:

• Find a textured spray paint that closely resembles the Kydex "haircell" pattern used on the vacuformed original
• Find a tiny sample player/amp for the sound (maybe DFPlayer?), hopefully one that boots up quick and can play sound on startup. I'd rather not have to turn things on with a switch before flipping the lid will play the sound
• Find a tiny decent sounding speaker that can be mounted under the mic grill
• Figure out how to best trigger the sound and clock motor when the top is flipped open (maybe magnetic reed switch?)

I would really appreciate any input/ideas for any of these remaining elements.

Can you tell me which $5 1.5V "continuous sweep" silent clock movement you used? that is excellent!

 

[turner3d]

It's been a rollercoaster since the last shipment of parts came in. The battery pack I thought would work won't, the buck converter I thought would work won't, but I found a somewhat larger alternate battery pack that would work while eliminating one of the circuit boards, and I confirmed that my plan of powering the whole thing on when the lid opened would indeed work.

Please forgive the funky red color of the body and the tether in the attached video - it is only an incremental test of the sound board and of the magnetic trigger system. I have to say, I'm pretty damn happy with how it's all going.

I'm really liking those,

how do you implement a fuzzy skin into your print? Is it a slicer setting?

The fuzzy skin is in the slicer, though there is some modeling necessary to create a mesh to use as a "modifier" - this allows you to turn off the fuzzy skin in areas that the secondary mesh occupies. I really wish there was some way to just do it by selecting faces you want to exclude from the fuzzy skin, but it's what we have for now. BTW, Orca's 2.3 beta version has some new fuzzy skin algorithms which are capable of continuity across layers, so I may be revising this yet again.

 

[turner3d]

Can you tell me which $5 1.5V "continuous sweep" silent clock movement you used? that is excellent!

Sure thing - The same movement I used is now $7.59 for a pack of 2 on Amazon - https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08B8X1FN5

They're pushing the silent nature of it more than the smooth sweep, but that's what makes it quiet. That's another thing I really like about it - the motor and gearbox that drives the Diamond Select communicator's moire is noisy as hell, but this one is absolutely dead nuts silent.

 

[turner3d]

It's been a roller coaster since the last shipment of parts came in. The battery pack I thought would work won't, the buck converter I thought would work won't, and I drastically missed the mark on my guess about where the magnetic reed switch needs to be positioned. It's not all bad news, though - I found a slightly larger battery pack that would work while eliminating one of the circuit boards, I confirmed that I could power the whole thing on with the opening of the antenna with only a slight delay in the sound effect, and everything works! The audio board takes a full second to boot up and play the sound after the antenna flips back, but I think that the lid flip powering everything up with no need for a separate power switch is an acceptable tradeoff.

Please forgive the funky red color of the body and the tether in the attached video - it is only an incremental test print for the sound board and the magnetic trigger system, and all of that stuff will absolutely fit inside of the communicator. Despite the setbacks, I'm pretty happy with how it's all going.

What's going on here?

Inside of the communicator:

• Stripped down 1.5V continuous-sweep clock movement driving the moire animation
• Magnetic reed switch triggered by a neodymium magnet in one of the hinge wheels when the antenna flips open. This is the power switch for all of the circuitry, set to auto-play the sound effect on power up

On the breadboard:

• DFPlayer - MP3 player and 3W amp on a 20x20mm chip with built-in microSD slot for audio file(s)
• Tiny 10x15mm speaker
• 3.7V LiPo drone battery - turns out the DFPlayer won't work unless it has quite a bit of horsepower available
• Resistor-based voltage divider to drop the 3.7V down to 1.5V for the clock movement

 

[finalfrontier]

Sorry for the setbacks but it looks like your overcoming the challenges. You are quite the engineer!

 

[turner3d]

Prototyping fun! One of my goals is to make the insides portable so that I can update the shell if I want without having to re-purchase all of the components. In other words, no glue. This means designing a bunch of custom internal brackets and mounts. I'm hoping to get the wiring harness done tomorrow, then it won't be long before I'm wrapping this one up

 

[finalfrontier]

Nice! Love the thought behind this, the motor fits like a glove.

 

[turner3d]

Nice! Love the thought behind this, the motor fits like a glove.

Thanks! And, just barely! To fit the clock movement, the bottom shell is less than 1mm thick at one point. It just barely squeaked in there.

Original prop background: The height of the bottom shell is one area where I did NOT duplicate the specs of the Alpha prop. On Alpha, the lower shell is slightly shorter than the top shell, due to a partial vacuform pull. To make the shell mate properly with the midplate, they had to trim off more of it, making it shorter. This can be seen in the Wand Company communicator, since Alpha was the only one they had physical access to. The other original 9 props had bottom shells mostly the same height as the top - I went that route so I could fit everything in.

 

[turner3d]

Well, crap. While wiring everything up permanently, I ran a test to make sure things were still working. I plugged in the battery, brought the magnet close to the reed switch, and everything fired up perfectly. Problem is, the reed switch didn't disconnect when the magnet was moved away, and I had to tap on it to get it to disconnect. I assumed it had either gone bad from being knocked around or gotten too hot from the solder or something, so I removed it and installed a new one (I bought a pack of 10). I brought the magnet next to the new one, and nope - same thing. Turned on fine when the magnet got close, but was then stuck on even when the magnet moved away.

I was using the reed switch to power up the whole thing, and the DFPlayer board was wired to auto-play the sound. The sound was delayed by about 1 second, but it was still really good. Problem is that my magnetic reed switches are only good for 0.5A of current, and the sound board with the built-in 3W amp is apparently pulling significantly more than that. From what I've read, this can cause reed switch contacts to arc and fuse together. I went through 4 switches, and all suffered the same fate. The only thing I can figure is that I had relatively long lengths of wire hooked up before, and it must have added just enough resistance to keep the contacts from frying.

All hope is not lost. This just means that I'm going to have to have a power switch somewhere, and use the reed switch to trigger playback - this will require it to carry a much much smaller current. So now, where do I hide the power switch? I'd rather not have to open the lid, press a button, then close the lid before opening the lid again to get a chirp - that would be lame. I guess I'll put it in the bottom of the shell somewhere. Drat.

 

[Gregatron]

It's been a roller coaster since the last shipment of parts came in. The battery pack I thought would work won't, the buck converter I thought would work won't, and I drastically missed the mark on my guess about where the magnetic reed switch needs to be positioned. It's not all bad news, though - I found a slightly larger battery pack that would work while eliminating one of the circuit boards, I confirmed that I could power the whole thing on with the opening of the antenna with only a slight delay in the sound effect, and everything works! The audio board takes a full second to boot up and play the sound after the antenna flips back, but I think that the lid flip powering everything up with no need for a separate power switch is an acceptable tradeoff.

Please forgive the funky red color of the body and the tether in the attached video - it is only an incremental test print for the sound board and the magnetic trigger system, and all of that stuff will absolutely fit inside of the communicator. Despite the setbacks, I'm pretty happy with how it's all going.

What's going on here?

Inside of the communicator:

• Stripped down 1.5V continuous-sweep clock movement driving the moire animation
• Magnetic reed switch triggered by a neodymium magnet in one of the hinge wheels when the antenna flips open. This is the power switch for all of the circuitry, set to auto-play the sound effect on power up

On the breadboard:

• DFPlayer - MP3 player and 3W amp on a 20x20mm chip with built-in microSD slot for audio file(s)
• Tiny 10x15mm speaker
• 3.7V LiPo drone battery - turns out the DFPlayer won't work unless it has quite a bit of horsepower available
• Resistor-based voltage divider to drop the 3.7V down to 1.5V for the clock movement

That delay in the sound is painfully noticable, but, all things considered it’s a minor gripe with an otherwise AMAZING project. Fantastic work.

 

[Gregatron]

Thanks! And, just barely! To fit the clock movement, the bottom shell is less than 1mm thick at one point. It just barely squeaked in there.

Original prop background: The height of the bottom shell is one area where I did NOT duplicate the specs of the Alpha prop. On Alpha, the lower shell is slightly shorter than the top shell, due to a partial vacuform pull. To make the shell mate properly with the midplate, they had to trim off more of it, making it shorter. This can be seen in the Wand Company communicator, since Alpha was the only one they had physical access to. The other original 9 props had bottom shells mostly the same height as the top - I went that route so I could fit everything in.
View attachment 1909027

We all love the original props and their quirks, but the potential is there to create an ultimate, idealized version.

 

[turner3d]

That delay in the sound is painfully noticable, but, all things considered it’s a minor gripe with an otherwise AMAZING project. Fantastic work.

Thanks! Yeah - I wasn't super happy with the delay, but I was willing to deal with it if it meant never having to worry about a power switch other than closing the antenna. As it turns out, I'm forced to shift my strategy anyway. The audio circuitry apparently pulls too much current for the reed switch, and the contacts wind up arcing and fusing in the "on" state. That means I'll be hiding a separate power switch somewhere and then triggering the sound with the reed switch after the system is already booted up - that will mean a 100ms delay instead of 1500ms. The other bright side is that I'll be able to leave it on display while the antenna is open if I want.

 

[turner3d]

I figured out where I'm going to put the power switch, at least on this iteration. When throwing out old broken down electronics, I have a habit of cannibalizing them for potentially useful parts - that's where this switch came from. It works like a microswitch, with a very nice positive snap from off to on, but is considerably larger. I debated moving forward with this approach since it won't be repeatable, but the customizations made to the shell are easy enough to reverse and/or modify. Plus, there's no question about this switch being able to handle the current pulled by the power-hungry DFPlayer board.

I built a rotating piece with a ramp that levels off at the top to push the switch's activator. The result, seen in this print of a spliced out segment of the bottom shell, is a small interface on the back that looks more like some kind of hatch release than a switch. All in all, things are shaping up pretty nicely.

 

[Gregatron]

Awesome.