Galaxy Quest Surface Mapper build.

This has been a dream prop of mine for a long, long, long time, and now – thanks to 1080p screencaps and 3D printing – I'm finally doing it.

I started with the blueprints found on the Questarian website, but quickly realized that they've got a lot of inaccuracies. They're good for what they are, blueprints drawn by hand off of DVD quality images, but there's better reference available now. I started with the blurry, low-res front-facing photo found on the Questarian, and lined it up with a small fragment of a high-res pic that @redshirt posted years ago:



I used that as the baseline for size and placement of the lights, openings, etc. Once I had a real waist level finder in hand, I used that plus the 5 mm LEDs on the face and 1/2" strap to scale the mapper to 38mm high by 76mm wide by 145mm long. The result is thus:




I made changes as needed to match the screencaps.

I have an initial print in-hand, with a second revised (and hopefully final) print on the way.



A long time ago, somebody here (I think it may also have been @redshirt, but I'm not sure) posted a video showing what was supposedly the screen-accurate sequence for the LEDs in the face. I went through frame by frame and mapped them out thusly:



Electronics are still in the planning stages, but the current plan is to have:

• A backlit graphic behind the hood that will activate when the hood is opened
• Sequencing LEDs and a sound chip with sampled sound FX from the movie that will activate when the central button is pressed.
• A faux-touch surface behind one of the openings on either side of the switch that will change the LED cycle when pressed.

I picked up a programmable LED flasher kit off ebay that should be here in a week or two that I'm going to use to power the LEDs.

Paint will be Rust-O-Leum hammered silver for the face and grips, and Rust-O-Leum metallic charcoal for the rest of the body. I've already made and printed graphics for the screen and the pink circles seen on the front face of the prop.



I'm still trying to ID the exact strap used in the movie. @rkpetersen, who owns an original set of GQ binoculars, was kind enough to take some photos and measurements of the real strap material. It's hard stuff to come by -- a very thin strap with a tight weave, dyed a sort of warm grey color. Everything is either the wrong thickness, the wrong width, the wrong color, or all of the above. I may have to settle for "close enough." I currently have some white webbing coming from England that's very close in width and thickness; I'll be conducting dye tests once it arrives.

pretty
Like i said before if you need any help or tips, you can always ask

Nice work! I love seeing Galaxy Quest props; they don't get nearly as much love as they deserve.

Sent from my LG-H932 using Tapatalk

AnubisGuard said:

This has been a dream prop of mine for a long, long, long time, and now – thanks to 1080p screencaps and 3D printing – I'm finally doing it.

I started with the blueprints found on the Questarian website, but quickly realized that they've got a lot of inaccuracies. They're good for what they are, blueprints drawn by hand off of DVD quality images, but there's better reference available now. I started with the blurry, low-res front-facing photo found on the Questarian, and lined it up with a small fragment of a high-res pic that @redshirt posted years ago:

View attachment 820792

I used that as the baseline for size and placement of the lights, openings, etc. Once I had a real waist level finder in hand, I used that plus the 5 mm LEDs on the face and 1/2" strap to scale the mapper to 38mm high by 76mm wide by 145mm long. The result is thus:

View attachment 820793View attachment 820794
View attachment 820795View attachment 820796

I made changes as needed to match the screencaps.

I have an initial print in-hand, with a second revised (and hopefully final) print on the way.

View attachment 820797View attachment 820798

A long time ago, somebody here (I think it may also have been @redshirt, but I'm not sure) posted a video showing what was supposedly the screen-accurate sequence for the LEDs in the face. I went through frame by frame and mapped them out thusly:

View attachment 820799

Electronics are still in the planning stages, but the current plan is to have:

• A backlit graphic behind the hood that will activate when the hood is opened
• Sequencing LEDs and a sound chip with sampled sound FX from the movie that will activate when the central button is pressed.
• A faux-touch surface behind one of the openings on either side of the switch that will change the LED cycle when pressed.

I picked up a programmable LED flasher kit off ebay that should be here in a week or two that I'm going to use to power the LEDs.

Paint will be Rust-O-Leum hammered silver for the face and grips, and Rust-O-Leum metallic charcoal for the rest of the body. I've already made and printed graphics for the screen and the pink circles seen on the front face of the prop.

View attachment 820800

I'm still trying to ID the exact strap used in the movie. @rkpetersen, who owns an original set of GQ binoculars, was kind enough to take some photos and measurements of the real strap material. It's hard stuff to come by -- a very thin strap with a tight weave, dyed a sort of warm grey color. Everything is either the wrong thickness, the wrong width, the wrong color, or all of the above. I may have to settle for "close enough." I currently have some white webbing coming from England that's very close in width and thickness; I'll be conducting dye tests once it arrives.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you have put a lot of thought into your build.

Would you be able to give the link to the programmeable LED flasher please?

Thanks

renaissance_man said:

Sounds like you have put a lot of thought into your build.

Would you be able to give the link to the programmeable LED flasher please?

Thanks

Click to expand...

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https://www.ebay.com/ulk/itm/232624006781

I'm assuming it's programmable; it's got a microcontroller in it preloaded with 14 programs.

Playing around with some electronics I've immediately run into a problem. I have 6v of batteries powering LEDs and other items that need different voltages; some sources say you can reduce voltage with resistors, others say no and I can't make heads or tails of the discussion (it doesn't even match what I thought I understood about how resistors work). The simplest approach seems to be a voltage divider circuit. I followed the circuit diagram as I interpreted it – which I was reluctant to do, as it sure seemed like wiring a short circuit, and sure enough, nothing lights up. What am I doing wrong here?

Hi, you have a few options. And it depends on a few factors. How much power that new lower voltage needs to be, does it matter if the voltage is unstable?

Deviders are a good little fix if you need a lower voltage for things like analogue reading on a gpio port. By bringing what ever voltage you have to the range of the port.

But isn't the best option to drop violate for components that require a fixed constant voltage.

Deviders out put voltage would curve down with the source voltage. I. E as your battery drains it will go lower and lower in voltage till things stop working.

Also if your running devices that require a fair bit of current, you could burn out the input resistor of your Deviders. Be sure to use a large enough watt resistor for the application.

If your just driving an led, use a simple resistor dropper with an ohms for that led. Google led resistor calculator.

2 alternative powering options.

Both with pros and cons.

You can use a low head room voltage regulator. These let you have a headroom of around half a volt above your desired voltage before they stop giving a fixed voltage. That means if your target voltage is 3.3v the output will stay 3.3 till your battery drains to around 4v.

The downside to a regulator is they're inefficient. They use up a fair bit of power and produce heat depending on how much you draw through them.

The best option (if your looking to have a stable power rail for multiple of thing) is to use a buck regulator. High efficiency at a cost of size... There are plenty of prebuilt units on Ali. These can be dialed using a pot resistor to your desired voltage.

Apart from size, the other downside is they draw more power as the voltage drops to make sure the output is stable. The battery will drain faster as it dies.

There are some small buck boost regulators that are small, but they tend to be more for lower my ratings.

Sorry last post was typed on the phone...
Ive reread your post and noticed the bit about the led not working...

yeah voltage dividers arnt good for things like powering leds... Electricity flows through the path of least resistance... In this case the output resistor is the least resistance.

Dividers are best for low impedance reading. Such as the example i mentioned, bringing a voltage range to the range of a GPIO port on a MCU. This is done to read analogue data from sensors or simply to calculate the voltage of a power line

Running your resistors with a much higher ohms rating, while keeping in mind you still need to keep the correct ratio , might work?

But i wouldnt power an led that way. The best way to power an led is a voltage dropper on the cathode side of the led.
I might be wrong but in my mind the reason to put the resistor on the cathode side and not the anode side is so you can get away with a lower wattage (smaller in size) resistor. As the power is being used in the LED and not passing through the resistor first.

Use this to calculate the resistor needed
http://ledcalc.com/

Of course powering direct from the battery will cause the leds to go dimmer as the battery slowly drains.

This is why I mentioned regulators and buck boosts.

At the top of your circuit you should setup a power rail, a single (or possibly more) dedicated power lines for your whole circuit.

Add up your total power usage, IE all the mAs of your leds and devices and choose a regulator or boost with just above that number. You could likely get away with a 500mA regulator but 1A ones or even 2A ones dont really cost much more and you have a fair amount of space in your chassis.

Typically now (thanks to things like arduino kinda making a defacto standard) the common rails will be 1x3.3v and 1x5v

If your not running an MCU or any device that needs 5v, you can forgo that one.

This also makes powering leds alot simpler. Though, be sure to always have a resistor on the led, even if the battery matches the voltage. This would stop the led from draining the rail to much at a cost of being a fraction less bright.

Making a dedicated power rail that keeps a regulated stable power line will mean your circuit will stay stable, and roughly the same brightness for longer, untill the battery is drained beyond the point the regulator/boost can cope with.

Anyway i hope this helped.

It's a lot to wrap my head around, but it helps. Thanks. I just picked up some sets of boost and buck converters off eBay. Should be here next week.

With all these prefab circuit boards to fit inside the mapper, it could run out of room real fast...

Would you mind elaborating a bit on the power rail part? Some googling shows, at its most simple, that it's just a strip of wire or metal that you can hook all the components to (a la the rails on the outside of a breadboard.) Where does the "1x3.3v" and 1x5v" fit into that? Is that where the boost and/or regulator comes in?

Cool, just be sure the buck boost is high enough mA for your project...

A power rail can be just like you said a rail. But generally it's the filtered power line your hardware runs off...

So it goes
Batteries - - - - regulator/buckboost----your hardware, leds , anything....

So yeah the rail is just where you draw your filtered power from. It doesn't have to be a dedicated strip in one place, it could be a track that travels around your pcb design, a dedicated copper layer on a multi layer board... It's just the circuit you draw power from...


Remember a buck boost can also boost your voltage. So be sure to use a circuit tester and dial the pot to the voltage you want.

Oh on my tricorder the charger module for my lipo battery has a fixed buck built into it that gives me 5v... It's about the size of an sd card, but 5//mm thick

A package from Shapways arrived today.











They look great, but alas, I stupidly decided to get some of the parts done in Black Strong and Flexible, which turns out to mess with all the tolerances. I had to shave a few edges with a Dremel to even get things to fit together. Worse, the latch on the battery compartment cover is severely warped out of true:





I've contacted Shapeways customer service about it; we'll see what they say.

Meanwhile, on to sealing the surface. A bath of acetone with superglue dissolved in it serves to seal up the porous material. This way, it can be smoothed with only two or so coats of filler primer.




Be sure to put down paper towels or something similar if you do this, which I failed to do. It also turns out that the black dye leeches out in acetone. Ick.

A comparison between the first print and the newer, more accurate second:



This print fixed a lot of issues with the first one, but introduced new problems of its own. Some parts will need to be printed a third time, but hopefully I can minimize the number of parts to redo this time.

Update from Shapeways: they're reprinting the part with the battery door at no charge. That includes the mapper front and back plates . Which is good for me as I just updated that model file with some changes to the battery door and the face plate, so I'm getting those for free!

Sigh. I really hate this Rust-Oleum hammered paint. I've stripped and refinished every part that has it at least twice now. I let the handgrips cure for a week this time, then put Rust-Oleum satin clear on top, and this happened:

D:

Whats the base plastic? And did you prime it first?

Im wondering if the base plastic is resin and that might be reacting with the varnish?

Also in the past i found that hammerite (uk brand for hammer look paint) didnt need a varnish. it had its own strong enamel finish in the paint. Though i remember it took ages to properly cure.

Also when i recently repainted my fuel tank for my bike, I gave the base coat 2 weeks to set before applying the lacquer finish as per instructions... You might need to do the same. Is it winter where you are? Cold or overly humid weather can slow paint drying too

It's Shapeways SLS nylon with an automotive filler primer sanded smooth. The Rust-Oleum is seperating from the primer as far as I can tell.

I have not had the problem with the Rust-Oleum graphite gray I'm using for the other parts; it's something specific to this hammered paint.

(And I'm clear coating not for protection but to match the prop; the screen caps don't appear as glossy as the paints come out in real life.)

Nods well you can rule out the base plastic then... In all honestly. Try giving it 2 weeks in good warm dry weather. Other than that i dont know what to suggest, other than different paint

I'm thinking of trying a different brand of clear coat. A test of Testors matte clear produced no lifting, so I'll give their semigloss a try.

Just a quick progress update:



It's been beastly hot here lately, which is good for helping paint cure, but bad for comfort.