It's been a while since I wrote last time so I thought I'd better put something up!
Eye of the Cambot 3000
This was my small contribution to GoKinema this year...
...a Cylon scanner to this über cool robo statue - Cambot 3000.
Anders at Gothenburg Prop Makers made the fantastic robot and I helped him to give it "life"!
The bot is made from old film lamps, lenses, tripods, and old camcorders, it stood in the entry hall at Gothenburg Film Studios during GoKinema.
I used my old friend, the internet, (have you heard about it, it's great! ;-)) to find a-simple-to-make-circuit for a 16 LED scanner and came up with a nice page: www.attiny.com
I had some problems though! Don't know if it's my lack of experience or if the actual schematics is incorrect. Either way thanks to the schematic I came up with my own version made out of the old one, here it is:
I actually skipped the 180 ohms resistor connected to the LEDs, instead I used 5 volts LEDs with internal resistors.
I think this is by far the simplest, fewest components (only 23pcs plus battery), 16 LED scanner I've seen without any programming needed!
Also, I added a power plug connector for the 5 volt and a switch (only had a 2P DIp switch at hand) to make it easier to power it and turn it on/off when mounted in the robot head.
The scanner was made on a perforated prototype board, not very practical but I didn't have time to make a PCB.
If I'd had more time, I would've added 16 rectifier diods and 16 capacitors (about 220uf) to give a nice smooth fading effect to the LEDs. The rectifiers have to be there so the capacitors won't be short circuited, because the 74HC138 is high when not active and low when active.
I'm very happy that I got a Dremel, it made it much easier to tool the board!
I put some tape on the back side as insulation to make it easier for Anders to place it inside the robot head.
The end result was a little bit messy but when Anders put the LEDs into a custom made socket (sorry no photo) it worked great!
LED scanner installed in the robtot head.
This photo is taken at our workshop. You could find some pretty cool stuff there if you look around!
I wonder if they'll come up with something like this in the future?
