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MOEBIUS 2001 1/8 scale Space Pod


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  • 4 weeks later...

UPDATE.

 

Spent ages programming the ARDUINO to display the screens, Now using 0.96 in TECHNOIT colour displays for the front two screens

 

Here is a picture of the screens fitted outside the cockpit, to show through the apertures.spacer.png

Next picture shows the wiring to the ARDUINO NANO processors: some too long, as they were going to be 'outboard' .

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The displays are glued in place, supported by sticky tape until it sets. GORILLA tape is useless, it un-glues itself.  Using a single 5V 18A power supply for the boards, and 9V PP9 for the LEDs.

My original idea was to have the  NANO boards outside the pod, but as they are small, they can be fitted inside. This would mean the 'ears' sides, will have to be removable to service, etc. so they will have to be some sort  of magnetic clips.

Tried uploading a movie of the inside, but it was too large for the server.  pity as it looks very good.

 

While writing the C programs, I realised I could now make a complete 8 screen HAL9000 , as seen in the centrifuge and on the flight deck. I started with Ardufruit ST7735 Breakout  1.8 in  display,s then went to 2.8 and then 3.5 in displays for testing the software. The big problem as , again, the settings for rotation, colour management etc.  As the display is landscape, to get them near enough  to look like a HAL9000 display setting, they have to be landscape, left, right position to l get the gaps right.   The 8 screens would fit on a 2ft long black panel with the apertures cut out as per movie.


Continuing with the space pod. The screens can only be seen inside , so it is a lot of effort for very little.

I didn't use the light tubes or stick on light  blocking sheets, as I have spent a load on it already.  Mainly it was about making small light-boxes to show through lines of buttons, and it doesn't illuminate every light, but looking at the movie (which I now have on my MAC), not all the buttons are lit at any time, and only a few are pressed. Also, none flicker. Attempting to individually light some, Does anybody have a source for  single fibre-optic lead?

M

 

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1 hour ago, oldmodeler said:

UPDATE.

 

Spent ages programming the ARDUINO to display the screens, Now using 0.96 in TECHNOIT colour displays for the front two screens

 

Here is a picture of the screens fitted outside the cockpit, to show through the apertures.spacer.png

Next picture shows the wiring to the ARDUINO NANO processors: some too long, as they were going to be 'outboard' .

spacer.png

M

 

No pictures are showing as all I see is spacer.png in their places.

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Thanks Tommo,

the build is fast becoming a programming one. I should get back to the plastic!

There  are several pod builds on   YouTube which look better.

The movie of the internals was too large for the server download limit.  

The strange thing is the movie was around 1966 when it was made,  the artists and set builders predicted window views on a computer somehow, when few computers were in use, they had punch cards, no graphic display, and then ---they though computers could be intelligent!  Ha, Ha.

I have the  MOBEIUS 1/144 Discovery  and 1/55 moonbus to do after.  The MOBEIUS kit is supposed to be from the movie  2001, but some say it is the one from 2010 especially around the windows at the front. The plan is to paint the panel work exactly as the 54ft movie prop, it is mostly a blue-grey that is had to get right. 

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On 18/03/2021 at 20:34, oldmodeler said:

Thanks Tommo,

The strange thing is the movie was around 1966 when it was made,  the artists and set builders predicted window views on a computer somehow, when few computers were in use, they had punch cards, no graphic display, and then ---they though computers could be intelligent!  Ha, Ha.

 

 

To  get the the flat screen effect that Kubrick wanted it was a series of 8mm film on a loop. But, in the film its imposible to tell and looks like and iPad screen from 2021.

 

Tommo.

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On 18/03/2021 at 20:34, oldmodeler said:

I have the  MOBEIUS 1/144 Discovery  and 1/55 moonbus to do after.  The MOBEIUS kit is supposed to be from the movie  2001, but some say it is the one from 2010 especially around the windows at the front. The plan is to paint the panel work exactly as the 54ft movie prop, it is mostly a blue-grey that is had to get right. 

 

Yes the Moebius Discovery is based on the 2010 filiming miniature because it is still extant. Scott Alexander rehabbed it a bit back for TCM the company that owns 2001 and 2010 now and it was/is displayed in thier offices.

 

When you get around to the Moonbus, both the Paragrafix detail kit (it just been updated and re-issued, so an easy if expensive snag at the moment) and the Stargazer (Ian Walsh) accurate interior kits are both absolutely essential, if you don't already have them. Timless Hobbies (Tony James) did have limited stocks of the later not so long back.

 

Me, I'm waiting for the Moebuis Boeing Aries 1B, but I do have the AJA 1/48 kit c/w interior in my pending pile if that does not materialise.

 

Tommo.

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8 hours ago, Caerbannog said:

I once build the Atomic City Pod which is not even close to screen acurate inside. Still I like it because of the lightning installed inside.

 

 

To be fair to Scott Alexander (which I'm not keen on, due to the Atomic City debacle) he never claimed it was. But various companies including Paragrafix did some wonderful interior upgrades that made a huge improvement.

 

Tommo.

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On 23/03/2021 at 19:59, The Tomohawk Kid said:

 

To be fair to Scott Alexander (which I'm not keen on, due to the Atomic City debacle) he never claimed it was. But various companies including Paragrafix did some wonderful interior upgrades that made a huge improvement.

 

Tommo.

Correct - but as I had put it into a GB I chickend out on all the work involved with the interior correction. I would not have finished it in time otherwise. Still a nice kit in a decent size.

Rene

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  • 3 weeks later...

spacer.pngProgress:

 

Progress so far. I got diverted in making a 1/8 scale  model of  the HAL9000 computer (see above).

This has 8 1.8in animated screens , effectively 30mm square, powered by 8 Arduino NANO computers to make a working? HAL.

The bezel is in progress, temporally fitted to a card bezel. HALS eye made from small PVC  hemispheres from 4D Model shop. modelshop.co.uk   This looks really, good, but this site does not seem to permit  .mov files to show.

 

The space pod is now as far as fitting the two main halves together. After fitting the window, which turned out acceptable, it tends to obstruct the  close fitting of the halves a bit, so I had to skim a little of the window surround and use filler.  This may be because I have miss-aligned something elsewhere, but  worth doing MANY  test fits as you make the pod. to ensure it is going to fit properly.  Apart from my possible mistake there, all the other bits fit well, considering they are complex shapes.

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This shows the complex wiring for the 4 ARDUINOS and 2x 1in and 2x1.8in displays, and all the LED wiring.

I  used the Tenna lighting kit leds,  and made boxes to stand them off. but wired them up without using the Tenna control, as that doesn't represent anything relevant.

HALS'eye is a small red LED in front

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This is the internal, animated , it looks great. but doesn't show up well in the picture. The switches are lit with simple LED  strips behind, which tends to light a group in the middle sort of. not the best work.  The overhead circle bit is also lit, as are the two round display on the wall.

The power is off-board, with wirings coming out of the rocket bell in the bottom, this will be on to a black felt stand.

As this looks good, I plan to make a complete 2001 display, of Discovery in a large museum clear acrylic case with  the HAL as part of the case.

Also  the Pod on a stand, and the Moonbus...as well.

 

 

 

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After making the above test HAL9000 display,  I have added a  HALS  eye as well. -to show when the proper bezel is complete = 300mm wide.

 

The HAL900 above has 28 different screens written in C, Ardufruit Grphics, as four programs of seven display, used twice. The real HAL sometimes shows the same display screen in two place. To do this I stepped through the movie fram-by-frame to copy the pictures as best I could. some were too memory consuming so I had to limit to the simpler ones.

I can put the C programs  on the web for copying if anybody wants them. All you need is 8 Arduino NANOS or UNOS or MEGGA250, and 8 x Ardfruit display, Download ARDUINO IDE and  built the 4 programs and download to 4 sets of 2 .The you have your own HAL blinking away at you !

 

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PIC:  4 screens up close. text would be too small to show so it is  just a row of random dots . The 8 display running makes a convincing  HAL.

 

I  have been working on the larger HAL900 which has 3.5in displays, effectively a 320 pixel square part used. This shows more detail in the display screens I have mocked up. It will be 600mm wide. Each screen display takes between one and three days to  program. taking perhaps hundreds of test to get it to look right, overwrites on top of writes  and delays() to make thing blink.  Not model making, but I see that animation, lighting , sound and whirling propellers were there at the last Telford IPMS.

Lockdown hopefully ending, permitting  the next Telford IPMS.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The screens look really good, do you see them drawing bit-by-bit or do they update in a single refresh?

I wonder how the drawing code size compares to e.g. RLE-compressed 16 colour images in ROM, that would make them a lot easier to author but animation would be more work. Or ADAFruit have a library to load them from an SD card.

You might also be able to drive multiple displays from one Nano by multiplexing the serial output somehow - I haven't tried this though, I think the last time I did anything similar I had a single screen displaying bitmap data.

[edit] I looked at the setup the screens I have use and they're communicating via SPI. That I guess means you can drive one display per spare output pin you have, on top of the three SPI bus lines. So it might be possible to do it all with one processor assuming you don't mind updating the screens on a round-robin.

 

Cheers,

 

Will

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 Hi Will,

As I wanted  all screens animated at the same time, and  the ARDUINO NANOs are only £5 each , it was easy to  fund and solder each NANO to the back of the screen. I didn't get .bmp file writing to work with  ST7735 breakouts which have slots for micro SD. The screens animate the same as in the movie, to the same timing and pauses.  the refresh rates is sufficiently fast that most look reasonably instant. Seeing all 8 displays running at the same time is well, creepy, as though HAL is in the room, plotting something, ready to shut off the life support....

The C programs  end up using more than 60% of the space just to load the graphics and font  libraries, so the draws and texts are abbreviated to fit.  I had to use a simple font for the large letters : LIF etc, MICROGAMMA extra bold  was used in the film. The screens in the pod are .96 wide, 1.8wide for  the two side screens The pod displays were eventually glued in place, with a mass of wires all over the place. I used the smallest single strand as it  it bends easy. The push-in ARDUINO-type wires and connectors would be too big with the sheer amount of wires. The space pod glues together really well, provided test fittings  are done to make sure it fits correctly. I have fitted the rear do in the open position, as it is hard to slide. HAL's eye and the four lights are also  on the same 9v power, the NANOs are on a 5v power bus, with cables trailing out of the bottom  engine bell. The Honeywell square  switch  look reasonable though I didn't use the after market light tubes. Much time has been spent single-stepping through the movie to copy the exact screen animation. though the 2x side screens and .96 front ones are  not that easy to see detail.

I have scaled up some of the larger HAL screens once more to 320 square and re-worked for the big HAL.

Little  and Big Hal's eye panel  was made from card, using colour print paper to print out HAL 9000 at the top and black print for the panel front, glued to a slightly larger plastic strip pained silver to show silver edges.  the clear domes from : modelshop.co.uk/Shop/Item/Hemisphere

Currently experimenting with sine/cosine graphic  draws to make some of the display plots.   these draws replicate some of the moire patterns of  HALs  graphs.

Also making the Mobieus Discovery. This goes together well with liquid glues. The plan is to have the small  HAL as part of its display case. 

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The pictures are on a non https server, you may have selected not to access non https servers.

Aztek build is amazing, the man has adopted many of the methods I have also used,  silver paper light block, making light boxes etc. I think the front two displays are running  movies taken from the actual 20012 movie in Aztec's version.  I  am making graphic displays with graphic draws, lines, text, circles etc, which is clearer I think... Also doing  both the side double displays, 6 in all.  When all running , plus the lights,  it looks quite  good.

 

Please let me know it this enables you to see the pictures. I will supply a link to the movie of the pod interior if I can download to the server.

 

Have also been working on the Big HAL which has 320x320  = 50mm square displays, done  frame-by-frame as best I can do copies of the HAL display screens. This looks even better, About 30seconds takes about two days programming, which is not good for sanity.

The Mobeius pod arms arms have been made so that they are stiff enough to  set in any pose, I added some Vaseline to lube but they still hold position.  This seems to work well.  As the pod halves are now glued together, it now comes to how to clip the tow side 'ears' on, magnets or clips somehow.

M

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Many of the pod instrument panel light positions are under the thickened parts of the panels  that  fit the  edges, so, if you are building this model to light, it  may be a good idea to cut out the thickened edges where they cover up the light squares,  or drill for fiber-optic light strands.  I found it impossible to do this once the panels are glued together, limiting the  number of switches that can be lit . The panels fit together so well, that, as a test,  you can clip all the parts in place to see where this happens before gluing.

 

Also the displays on the 'real' prop are flush-fit with the panels, but you end up with a 1.mm step on model. It might be possible to cut out the entire panel locally to fit the Arduino ST7735 display behind the paper transfer only, this would give a flush fit, though very tricky to support.

I found, as noted above, it works well to  leave the transfer on the paper background and glue it over the panel. -the transfer breaks up otherwise.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Working on the Pod and Discovery, and HAL.

Discovery,

Looking at the small details, the Mobeius Model Discovery is not from the 2001 Discovery,  all the essential parts are about right, but the small detailing is  partly from the movie and partly from 2010 and  some details  are not from any movie stills or the pictures in Simon Atkinson's book. The 2001 Discovery ship went through several iterations and builds , and had 3 different models in 2001, and three in 2010 , according to Simon and the 2010  movie tie-in book: 2010 'The Year We Make Contact" magazine from TARGET p.48/9 shows the rear of the habitat sphere as different from the 2001 Discovery.  so I am doing a compromise between the three.  The 2010 version is crude in comparison, but the quick, sloppy  35mm camerawork hides a lot.

The space pod seems pretty good  in comparison. and when all six panels are lit, it detracts from my clumsy model making.

The HAL panel  is now done, with the correct apertures for the screens,  square cut outs with rounded corners, then a square with bevelled edge.

I'm not sure why some cannot see the pictures,  unless it is  the non-https restriction.

 

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