E.D.F. Andromeda advice?

@Phil H: Thanks for the idea. I went to Michael’s and Hobby Lobby this week, and I looked for something like that. I didn’t see anything I could use immediately, but I’m gonna keep looking.

@Pawel: I think I’m good. That site I linked to had lots of good advice and diagrams for how to use their products. Their LEDs have resistors built in, and are designed to run off a 9v battery rig (at least, that was what they said…), so I ordered a few lights and a switch/battery hookup combo. Should get here in a few days, and I’ll see if it works.

Thanks for the help, everybody. This is the next project I’m working on, and I wouldn’t have been able to do it w/o all the friendly advice. Thank you.

Glad to hear it's movin' on! Check all your effects, if they can operate from 3V source. Anything needing higher voltage means too much modifications on the ship IMO. Good luck with your project, have a nice day

Pawel

Hey CJ,

Juat a FYI. Though I don't jave an immediate application for them, I recently picked up a set of four of those battery powered "tea lights" at my local "Reject Shop" (an Aussie "dollar store" type chain) for a whole $2.00. These are a type which will need to be cracked open to get the guts out, but at $2.00 for 4, they're dirt cheap, even if just for the 4 CR2032 batteries alone.   

Thanks for all the help guys. I really appreciate it.

I found a site to get my LEDs from - it was very helpful, and pretty cheap too. I was afraid LEDs were going to cost an arm and a leg.

http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/

I'm thinking of using their Fire Effect set for the ship's main engines. The welding set is neat too.

Well, it looks like I'm ready to get this project off the ground. 

Glorfindel

Should be easy enough to switch to LED lighting. Earlier in this thread there was a great site for figuring out the wiring for the LED's and getting the proper resistors. That's a nice size model that should look great when lit. Get us some pics.

Should be easy enough to switch to LED lighting. Earlier in this thread there was a great site for figuring out the wiring for the LED's and getting the proper resistors. That's a nice size model that should look great when lit. Get us some pics.

Pawel

I'm glad you asked this question

On my drawing you can see three "branches". In every "branch" you need a resistor for a LED. Jome jokers hook up all the LEDs on one resistor, but in this setup it would lead to a situation where the LEDs "compete" for the current and one ends up getting all of it. Since we already have a resistor for each diode, we can adjust the brightness of each diode independently. The remainder of the diodes don't even know something changed for their "neighbour". That's a feature of a good design

With the parallel wiring setup, having each LED with its own resistor effectively creates a number of  independent sub-circuits all powered from a single power bus. This means that, as explained, you can vary the intensity of any one LED simply by altering the value pf the resistor.. It also means that you can mix LEDs of different voltage and current ratings (eg. as may occur with different colours and output intensities) without affecting the others .

Also, this means that if an individual LED should fail,, the others will be unaffected.   (If connected in series, if one fails, the whole circuit will stop working)

Cosmic J

 Looking closely at the kit, I've realised that there are four smaller engines ringing the main one, so... Is it possible to string multiple LEDS on a singe strand, and can you have one brighter than the others, or do they all need to be the same output? What does that mean for the power supply?

I'm glad you asked this question

On my drawing you can see three "branches". In every "branch" you need a resistor for a LED. Jome jokers hook up all the LEDs on one resistor, but in this setup it would lead to a situation where the LEDs "compete" for the current and one ends up getting all of it. Since we already have a resistor for each diode, we can adjust the brightness of each diode independently. The remainder of the diodes don't even know something changed for their "neighbour". That's a feature of a good design

You want more LEDs - I like it! For the power supply you have - 3V, you would have to add more "branches", I mean more LEDs with a resistor for each one. If we had more voltage, we could "daisychain" the LEDs, but we don't. You can safely assume you can hook up ten times more LED's than light bulbs, but it woulnd't be too risky to go as high as 100 in this setup, provided they don't all go maximum brightness.

Normally the AA battery has a capacity of say 2Ah, that means you can draw 2 Amperes for an hour. Or half an Ampere for four hours. If we run 100 LED's at 0,005 A (5 miliamps) we gat our half Ampere (100 * 0,005 = 0,5).

Now your next problem would be to get a nice, insulated wire, that's thin and solders good. There is a wire insulated with lacquer that melts away at soldering point, so you don't have to strip the insulation. If you can get some of that stuff it would make rigging all up easy. If not, we'll think of something else.

Hope to hear more of this project, have a nice day

Pawel

Phil_H

If you want a flickering effect, there may be a simple and relatively inexpensive way to do it. Strip down a ready-made LED candle.

This article may be of interest. http://www.japanrailmodelers.org/pages/modelingjapan/flickeringleds.html

 

Jackpot!

Pawel

Hello J,

It's good to see the instructions. From what I see the kit is perfect for electronic improvements. Now soldering is the best way to go here, we don't want anything to stop working after you close your model up, do we? "Twisted" connections have a tendency to do just that - stop working after they oxidize after some time.

For any action - cyclic on-off switching, blinking, changing intensity and stuff you'd need some electronic circuit to do it. While there seems to be plenty of space in the hull for such a device, you need at least some experience in electronics to install it. If you have such experience, go for it.

The good thing is you can use the base/stand as it is, without modification. All the mods will be in the hull. Polarity (+/- of the battery) is important here, you need to determine where the "plus" and where the "minus" is on the contacts inside the hull.

Now the values of the resistors depend heavily on several factors, most importantly on the type of LED you use. The newer LEDs make much more light per current unit than the older ones. To decrease the brightness you need to increase the resistor (more ohms) and vice versa. The good news is you can easily increase the resistor by "daisychaining" other resistor to it (it's called serial connection).

My idea would be to experiment - build a laboratory circuit to test the LEDs you have and experiment with their brightness. You see a LED you can see glowing in the darkness or even at a darker day is totally unnoticable on a bright sunny day, so it really would be good to check. Once you got the circuit nailed, you carry it over to the model.

I look forward to see your progress, so please keep us posted & have a nice day

Pawel

Dude, that's very very helpful information. Thank you.

Alright, since I've got you here, one last question:

 Looking closely at the kit, I've realised that there are four smaller engines ringing the main one, so... Is it possible to string multiple LEDS on a singe strand, and can you have one brighter than the others, or do they all need to be the same output? What does that mean for the power supply?

[quote user="Watchmann"]

Cosmic J:

 

Watchmann:

 

Cosmic!

 

 

Watchmann! Hey brother, did you make it to the 'Fest this year?

 

Sho did!  There was a good turnout, yet again. {/quote]

It really was. A new record for contest entries, and not a bad model among them.

Time was, the contest would get a mix - a few excellent entries, a lot of mediocre ones, and some clunkers (my very first was really bad...). I didn't see a single bad one this year, and most of them were very good.

Did you have anything in the contest?

Good luck with this lighting project.  I'm looking forward to what you come up with!

m@

Thank you. Originally it was going to be a quickie weekend build, something to take a break from my usual obsessive-compulsive builds. I was just going to put some LEDs in it and drill out the gun barrels - now it's turning into a full-blown project.

I'll take progress pictures as I go, and post a build thread once I get her done.

If you want a flickering effect, there may be a simple and relatively inexpensive way to do it. Strip down a ready-made LED candle.

This article may be of interest. http://www.japanrailmodelers.org/pages/modelingjapan/flickeringleds.html

Hello J,

It's good to see the instructions. From what I see the kit is perfect for electronic improvements. Now soldering is the best way to go here, we don't want anything to stop working after you close your model up, do we? "Twisted" connections have a tendency to do just that - stop working after they oxidize after some time.

For any action - cyclic on-off switching, blinking, changing intensity and stuff you'd need some electronic circuit to do it. While there seems to be plenty of space in the hull for such a device, you need at least some experience in electronics to install it. If you have such experience, go for it.

The good thing is you can use the base/stand as it is, without modification. All the mods will be in the hull. Polarity (+/- of the battery) is important here, you need to determine where the "plus" and where the "minus" is on the contacts inside the hull.

Now the values of the resistors depend heavily on several factors, most importantly on the type of LED you use. The newer LEDs make much more light per current unit than the older ones. To decrease the brightness you need to increase the resistor (more ohms) and vice versa. The good news is you can easily increase the resistor by "daisychaining" other resistor to it (it's called serial connection).

My idea would be to experiment - build a laboratory circuit to test the LEDs you have and experiment with their brightness. You see a LED you can see glowing in the darkness or even at a darker day is totally unnoticable on a bright sunny day, so it really would be good to check. Once you got the circuit nailed, you carry it over to the model.

I look forward to see your progress, so please keep us posted & have a nice day

Pawel

Cosmic J

 

Watchmann:

 

Cosmic!

 

 

Watchmann! Hey brother, did you make it to the 'Fest this year?

Sho did!  There was a good turnout, yet again.

Good luck with this lighting project.  I'm looking forward to what you come up with!

m@

Pawel

An electrician pro is coming to the rescue!

OK, you want to switch to LEDs? That's what I would do, too. Now we have two AA batteries - that means 3V (approx.). I thought about explaining all the rules, but what the heck - let me show you the wiring diagram directly:

Like was said before, watch for polarity of batteries and LED's. The resistors' values are not critical. The smaller the resistor value, the brighter the LED is going to be. If the resistor value is too small, the LED is going to burn out after seconds. Everything above 30 Ohm should be OK. Hope it helps, please let me know how it works for you, and have a nice day

Pawel

PS. I'll be glad to help other people with their LED lighting too!

Awesome! I'd like the light coming from the LEDs to be more of a warm glow that a blazing beacon, if you know what I mean, but they need to be bright enough to be visible. What would be a good range for resistors of that type?

Here are some scans of the instructions, in case they help illustrate what I want to do. Bottom of the first page and top of the second are the relevant steps.

Phil_H

Note also that LEDs are polarised (ie they MUST be correctly oriented positive/negative ) On a typical round LED there is a "flat" on the side of the negative terminal and the negative lead is shorter than the positive.

LEDs are also sensitive to overheating when soldering and you may burn them out if you apply too much heat for too long.

 

Hmm. Would it be smarter to connect them without soldering?

Phil_H

Cosmic J:

I would like to replace the bulbs w/ LEDs, preferably two red or orange ones and a yellow one. Can they just be subbed out, or do I need a resistor of some sort? What size or power rating would they need to be?

I would expect that you'd need to add a resistor or two (depending on the wiring layout). The rating of the resistor/s depends on the supply voltage, the desired operating voltage of the LEDs and the desired current at which you wish to drive the LEDs.

This online calculator may be of assistance: http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz 

Thanks for that. One of the things I was thinking of doing was having the engine LED sort of gently flicker. Is this something I can do w/ a resistor, or would I need to wire a circuit to do that?

An electrician pro is coming to the rescue!

OK, you want to switch to LEDs? That's what I would do, too. Now we have two AA batteries - that means 3V (approx.). I thought about explaining all the rules, but what the heck - let me show you the wiring diagram directly:

Like was said before, watch for polarity of batteries and LED's. The resistors' values are not critical. The smaller the resistor value, the brighter the LED is going to be. If the resistor value is too small, the LED is going to burn out after seconds. Everything above 30 Ohm should be OK. Hope it helps, please let me know how it works for you, and have a nice day

Pawel

PS. I'll be glad to help other people with their LED lighting too!

Note also that LEDs are polarised (ie they MUST be correctly oriented positive/negative ) On a typical round LED there is a "flat" on the side of the negative terminal and the negative lead is shorter than the positive.

LEDs are also sensitive to overheating when soldering and you may burn them out if you apply too much heat for too long.

Cosmic J

I would like to replace the bulbs w/ LEDs, preferably two red or orange ones and a yellow one. Can they just be subbed out, or do I need a resistor of some sort? What size or power rating would they need to be?

I would expect that you'd need to add a resistor or two (depending on the wiring layout). The rating of the resistor/s depends on the supply voltage, the desired operating voltage of the LEDs and the desired current at which you wish to drive the LEDs.

This online calculator may be of assistance: http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz 

Watchmann

Cosmic!

Watchmann! Hey brother, did you make it to the 'Fest this year?

It's gonna depend on your power source and your LEDs.  Here's a good web site for calculating what you need.

Really, you can't go wrong with putting any sized resistor in the circuit; it will very the brightness of your LED.  Play around with different ones, and see which you like best.

I got that kit too, but it's deeeeep in my stash.

m@

Thanks much for the link. I basically have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to wiring a kit, so it should really help.

Cosmic!

It's gonna depend on your power source and your LEDs.  Here's a good web site for calculating what you need.

Really, you can't go wrong with putting any sized resistor in the circuit; it will very the brightness of your LED.  Play around with different ones, and see which you like best.

I got that kit too, but it's deeeeep in my stash.

m@