Unused Voyager Tricorder build... Tis FINISHED!<<< Or is it!?

Not the update i wanted to give to be honest. But Royal Fail still hasnt delivered my PCBs yet... Its been about 3 weeks since dirty PCB shipped them :/

Anyway I wanted to say Ive started putting the electronics together and tested them out and found theyre fine and started assembling the Tricorder... but NOOoooooo.....

I do how ever have a couple of pics of some resin parts i cheaply casted in silicon sealant

They came out better than I thought they would... They still need cleaning up, get excess sanded filed off.... But yeah came out alright...

Not bad for 2 quid sealant :p

LE79vlG.jpg


YFbZm1w.jpg
 
Well PCBs finally turned up... And ive started putting them together. And realised I dont have any 150ohm resistors D: So got them on order, hopefully should have them in a few days.

Anyway A pic showing the pcb. Needs loads of work. More parts to put on, some solder cleaning on those TLC5947s and then need to snap the board apart and solder the connectors between boards.

I have made a really irritating mistake in my design... its really irritating because i tried really hard to avoid this issue.

I got a dfx file out of f360 to help line up where some of the leds go. And the main green scanning bar on the front... well thats gone wrong. i dont know why i didnt notice it at the time when designing the board. But some how I managed to offset the whole bar array to the right by about 5-10mms, and whats worse, squashed it together a little too... I really dont know how i managed that...

I can get around it but its so stupid. ill have just to push the leds to the correct position, theres a good little bit of clearence between the pcb and front face...

Anyway lookie :p
iwMc6QF.jpg
 
I put on a more higher capacity 5v, and yep behaves more correctly... Though a couple of leds are misbehaving. I think it's just a dodgy connection there.
 
I put on a more higher capacity 5v, and yep behaves more correctly... Though a couple of leds are misbehaving. I think it's just a dodgy connection there.

Absolutely love this project and your professional layout..... I notice only a few decoupling caps and don't see any tantalum/electrolytic caps, unless they are on the backside of your board. You have a lot of clocks running on those boards and when it gets closed up there could be an issue with noise on your VCC, I'd take a quick look with a scope, might save a few headaches, just a thought. Great work so far, can't wait for the next update.
 
Thanks for the tip, Your probably right, i based my design on a led controler break out board, matching the main components... Im not a full expert by any means. But yes there might be some noise on VCC. What im likely to do when i put it together properly is im going to put a electrolytic and a ceramic on the main rails... Should help.

I really am going to tidy up this wireing when i start putting it into the tricorder properly.

Also ive discoverered using the flex cables as connection wires has been a mistake. Theyre simply too fragile and the soldered connections break too easily. So im going to probably replace most of them with some decent solid core ribbon cabling.
 
Just a little update... Got most of the electronics working now. I had a couple of little issues, one part was not getting enough power, that's sorted. But today I had some right hassle trying to get 3 of the led circuit to work.

For the most part im using 2 tlc5947's and a tlc5940 to drive the leds. That's pretty straightforward. But only when you're driving one led per channel which for the most part I am. However to save space and not need more drivers I wanted 3 channels to drive more than 1 led.
After some research I designed a circuit, that when the pwm channel is opened it would trigger a mosfet and drive the multiple leds.

Basically these extra leds were lit all the time nd I couldn't figure out for the life of me why. No shorts all the signals worked fine, no missing tracks or wires.... I was really scratching my head.

So I posted a circuit diagram online and linked it to a electronics Irc chan I'm in... Right away someone spotted the problem. I had my mosfets back to front :(

My mistake was I copied the circuit from an example online, but failed to notice that the pin number were flipped on the symbols they used.

Anyway. Easy fix. Desoldered, turned them round. Resoldered and tested. Worked perfectly....

Soooooo tomorrow... Getting the door circuitry working properly.

Hopefully I shouldn't have any real issue here. Should just need to do some editing to the arduino library I'm using...

Like I said earlier I'm using two types of tlc59 chips. Ones 24 channel ones 16. In theory the 47 chips should be able to shift the data to the 40. Will test tomorrow.

Once this is finished I'll start constructing the prop.
 

Hi all update :D

Today hayfever is actually trying to kill me... ive had 2 minor asthma attacks and my nose is pooring like a tap. ive taken all the medication is its bearly dulled it.... oh well

So ive uploaded a video showing that the leds on the door side are now working correctly...

What I had to do is hack in a tlc5947 into the pins of the old tlc5940 slot... while not pretty this does work and I now have full greyscale control of each led.

So whats next.

Ive just desoldered the pcb from the flex cables between the door and main body... And its now time to start assembling some parts and making a much more tidy wire layout.

The flex cables are a pain though. They are very fragile and easily break at the soldered point, so im going to reinforce those points with hot snot. Some flex cables ill replace with wire...


So yes some progress :D

If it turns out that i get some interest and a few people want to buy these... I will alter the designs of the pcb to fix the little mistakes I made with this v1 design... Just to make it easier to put together :D
 
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Ha, I know the feeling. Allergies are an entire category of annoyance. Incredible work again, this build is turning out to be one of the most interesting I’ve seen. Love the design, and I’d be interested in one :D
 
Wow im discovering how much I hate resin casting...

Its just sooooo damn fragile with small things.

So theres a few parts I decided to try and clear resin cast. One of the things were the greebly sensor bars that run along the left side of the tricorder...

Ive broken 3 of these now D: first, I accidentally dropped a few feet and it shattered. Second I was sanding off the excess flash and it broke D: The third. Survived being sanded and prepped... And painted it getting ready to fit it to the prop... And a little cleaning up bits for light to pass through... And that bit broke D:


soooooooooo Im going to have a go at printing these parts in clear PETG, its not crystal clear but should be enough to back light. But Im not 100% sure how this is going to go. i have very mixed results with petg printing. Mostly because it strings just so damn much and makes a right mess...

Also PETG doesnt play too well with paint. So its going to be a tricky one to get right... Will do some testing.
 
Perhaps you could find an online service that could print them in SLA resin. I don't know if Shapeways ships to the UK, but I do know that thier Frosted Detail plastics are reasonably durable and very transparent when cleaned up and coated with a clear coat.
 
Depends on the object. When you upload a file it gives you the cost for all material types before you order it. The Frosted Detail plastics are costlier than the basic SLS nylon, but for small items it's not bad. I had four wedding ring prototypes printed in the Ultra Frosted Detail and it was about $20 all told.
 
Perhaps you could find an online service that could print them in SLA resin. I don't know if Shapeways ships to the UK, but I do know that thier Frosted Detail plastics are reasonably durable and very transparent when cleaned up and coated with a clear coat.

Shapeways has places in UK, so shipping is local. But you do pay a VAT, since it is built in UK and shipped to UK.
 
The prices from shapeways arent that bad... Though tbh, I cant see a clear plastic/resin option.

NM ill see what i can get from the PETG print. Im just baking my clear PETG to try and remove any moisture from it. The reel isnt new.
 
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