I can see when you register (20 in the past day as of this posting) and will catch your comments. Nearly all get flagged as spam automatically and never make it to anywhere on the site that can be seen publicly. The ones that don’t I can easily pick out from the legitimate comments. So in other words….you’re hopeless…so stop trying. Not that this will really stop you. *Annoyed*
Sorry to those of you who were following my progress on the Tron Identity Disc Mod. I stopped working on it a while ago due to a couple of reasons I’ll keep private, and I haven’t picked it back up since. I’ve had some significant changes in my life, and though I’m in a better situation now than I was earlier in the year, but it is still not entirely settled.
I said a while back that I would try to post the code and diagrams for my project, and I failed to do so, sorry for that. Here is a zip file containing my latest work on the project, from back in February. This includes a Wiring Diagram in Visio format (you can get a free Visio viewer from Microsoft) as well as the C# project (source code) done in Visual Studio 2010 Express. I won’t guarantee that the code will work, as I think I was in the middle of rewriting some of it when I stopped working on it. I do hope to resume work on this project sometime in the near future, but I will not offer any promises right now.
In other news, I have joined Google Plus recently, and have been posting a bit there. If you want to follow me there, feel free, though I will only be posting comments on the Tron Project here on my blog for now (though I believe it will get posted to Google Plus via Twitter).
Progress on the disc has stopped for several reasons, the most basic one is that I don’t have the time. I will resume, but I’m kind of in a transition period in a couple different areas in my life including work, and it’s been really hectic.
Also getting over a nasty sinus infection that kept me home from work for the past week. Hasn’t been fun.
So it’s tax time. Everyone is prepping their forms and getting all their paperwork in line to meet the big deadline. Since I started doing my own taxes, I have always been one to get them done as soon as I can. It’s not only because of the nice refund you usually receive, but also because it’s one big headache out of the way. So yeah, my taxes are done and I received my refund. One of my goals in getting the refund was to finally make the move from iPhone to Android. So I bought a Nexus S on T-Mobile.
Now, I wasn’t really one of the people who hated AT&T. Their service was ok, and it served me well. I had no major gripes with it. My service with T-Mobile has been about the same, and maybe even a little more reliable in my apartment.
So far I love my Nexus S. One particular feature really came in handy last night, the built in Wifi Hotspot. This was a god send last night as we were having power issues all last night. It started with rolling blackouts. I don’t know if they were intentional, or the result of interference with the power system (a tree branch or something), but the effect was maddening. The power was cycling every 5 minutes or so, sometimes quicker than that. Finally, after a couple of hours of this, we lost power completely for about an hour and half.
At this point, my phone was pretty low on juice, to the point where I didn’t want to use it too long. I was in the middle of trying to watch a show on the web though, so I implemented a backup plan. Using my laptop as a power source (yay full battery!), I got my wifi hotspot going, and proceeded to watch the show in the blackness of my apartment. I have to say, even though I could use MyWi on my Jailbroken iPhone 3GS, I don’t think I would have been able to get a solid stream out of the AT&T 3G connection in my apartment. The T-Mobile connection was solid though, able to support a 400kb/s stream from TWiT Live’s Bit Gravity feed. The stream didn’t hiccup or anything, it was like I was streaming off my home internet. I was seriously impressed. All this with just 2 bars on my phone’s reception meter.
I’m solidly an Android fan now. I no longer own anything from Apple other than the apps that are still on my iTunes install. I sold my 3GS on eBay, and I’m happy to be rid of Apple’s restrictions.
So I didn’t make as much progress as I wanted to this weekend. I did manage to get all the LEDs in place, both the inner and the outer rings. You can see the results on my Picasa Album (with comments).
I made one distinct improvement over my previous iteration: I actually thought out how to route the negative wires from the LEDs this time. Before, I just routed them over to just under where the LED driver would be, and then poked them out and hooked them up. This was very messy. This time they are all routed over to the space where the Momentary Switch goes (the only break in the center ring, so the most logical place to route them), this will allow me to route them into the small channel the center ring LEDS reside in.
There are two problems that will present themselves when I put those wires in place. The first problem I will have to overcome is that the wires will interfere with the momentary switch when it is installed, unless I take measures to keep them out of the way, which I’m pretty sure I can do. The second problem is the negative wires when routed to the LED driver, might interfere with the Lighting put off by the Center LEDs on that side. I’m hoping this won’t be too much of an issue, and that the wires will be above the main focus of light coming from those LEDs.
The next step is connecting the positive side of all the center LEDs to the approrpirate LEDS on the outer ring. This won’t invovle a lot of wire, as they will simply be hooked up to a nearby LED on the same segment. I will probably be doing this Monday night. After that I’ll be starting on the Circuit itself.
As for the guide I was working on, it has taken a back seat now that I am actively working on the project itself. that said, working on this new iteration of the disc will help to further refine my thoughts on the guide, so it should produce a better guide in the end.
Ok, so first things first: I worked on mounting the LEDs for the inner ring of LEDs. It turned out better than I hoped. I’m very happy with the results. It’ll be a bit before I’ll get to light it up, but I did test each LED as I installed them. They should look good when done. 16 LEDs in total for the center ring.
As the title states, the outer LED ring is now done. I made it a bit wider, and went conservative on how big a gap I made for each screw post. The result is a solid ring. Just as, if not more solid than the ring I made for the first disc I modded. One more change I made was to up the number of LEDs from 30 to 40 (2 added to each segment, for 8 total on each segment)). The total number of LEDs right now will be 56, which the LED driver should have no problems driving (it’s made to handle 64). Because of both the center ring and the increased number of LEDs on the Outer ring, I’ll have to pay more attention to how I do the wiring, otherwise it will become a nightmare.
Next is adding the LEDs to the Outer Ring. After that, I think I’ll work on the Netduino/LED Driver circuit.
You can check out pictures from all this work in my Picasa Album, I have uploaded quite a few, both from the first attempt at the ring, as well as the final success on it.
Ok, so the issue with communicating with my new Netduino Mini has been resolved. I’m now using a serial connection rather than a USB TTL connection via the FTDI board, as I believe that’s fried. It’s a little slower programming it, but it works, and that’s the important part.
I made a couple changes to the code to resolve a couple of issues that I was trying to resolve at the time I lost communication with the last Mini. There are a couple more issues that still remain, but I’m going to work on those later. I’m eager to get started working on the hardware again.
I started working on the LED ring for the new Disc last night, but failed in my first attempt to create it. I’m not kidding when I say this is the most difficult part of the project for me. In my previous iterations I’ve probably attempted to create these cardboard LED rings like 10 times. It’s a delicate balance of making the ring small enough to fit in the slot it needs to fit in around the disc, and making sure it’s not so small as to make it structurally unsound when the needed holes are cut into it. The problem that is posed is the intersection of where the screw hole posts are, and the adjacent holes cut out for the LEDs. and I only made it worse with the newer version, as I am going to be upping the number of LEDs on the outer ring to 40 from 30, to give a more uniform look to the light coming from the blade.
Another change I’m making is the color of the LEDs. I’m switching to White LEDs rather than Blue. I’m hoping that the combination of the White LEDs and the blue Blade ring will provide a more accurate color for the Blade. If it doesn’t turn out how I want it to, then I can always replace the ring with the blue version from the previous version of the Disc Mod.
Yet another change, that is in the planning stages at this point, is the addition of 16 LEDs around the center C. I purchased some smaller 3mm (rather than 5mm) white LEDs to use around the center ring. I do not believe I will be mounting those LEDs on a cardboard ring like I am with the outer ring. Instead, I’m going to be hot-gluing the LEDs in place around the center ring. I just think they will turn out better that way.
I got the idea for how to mount them from Orphex’s work on his own Disc Mod. He is in the process of producing discs for the business he’s starting up around this type of Disc Mod. It’s clear from YouTube comments on the various mods out there that there is a lot of interest from people wanting to know how to do it, or just want someone to do it for them. While I am not in a position to offer those kinds of services, and I don’t have any real desire to, I’m more than willing to help people do it themselves, and that’s why I’m posting here about it. I don’t mind helping him figure it all out to get his business going. So far we’ve have a good information exchange via our blogs. He linked to me, so I don’t mind linking to him and his services. His disc won’t have all the features mine will have, but he is trying to make it as close to the movie as possible while still keeping an eye on what will make producing them efficient. (so he’s not going to the lengths of say, sportly3, but his will probably be the next best thing to that from what I’ve seen)
One final change that I made to the charger, was the addition of a barrel connector to be used with a wall charger. Now I just need to enclose the circuit board to protect it and make it look a bit better. Yes, that’s means the charger is *almost* complete.
I know I posted that I would be posting a guide to my experiences modifying my Tron Legacy Disc. I have been working on it, but I’ve made a couple of changes to the design and need to test them. The problem is, I made a mistake while diagnosing a problem with my disc, and ended up frying my first Netduino mini. It is completely unresponsive to anything I try to send to it. So the project is dead in the water right now.
I do have parts on order to duplicate the project though. I’ve gotten a lot of the parts but due to the Blizzard we just went through here in Chicago (I got 20 inches at my apartment), I’m still waiting for 3 more parts packages to arrive. They’ve been stuck in the FedEx and UPS systems for 2 days now and only just got moving again. I’m not expecting them until tomorrow. After I receive those I’ll be able to start putting it together again. Once I do that I’ll be able to finish up my guide which will include best practices and a complete parts/tools list for doing this mod. I want to make sure that what I post answers the questions that I was left with after the original guide was posted by the Harford Hackerspace guys. I spent far more money on this project than needed to be spent on it, and I want to save people the trouble I went through.
Update: I’ve now setup a dedicated page to the mod with what I have written so far. It has the entire parts list, or at least what I believe to be the entire parts list. You can also find this link via the Projects tab up top.
Update #2: I received all the parts, and it seems like my guess on what happened to my Netduino Mini was off a bit. I can’t get the new Netduino Mini to respond to programming I’m trying to send. It just results in the Transmit light on the FTDI basic board flashing every couple of seconds. So either the new Mini is dead too, or the FTDI basic board is shot. So I can’t really make any progress in the programming department.
Based on this:
Tron Disc with .NET Microframework
My version:
A thread I’ve been commenting in about my work.
Still working out some issues with my version. I’ve expanded upon it a bit. The video above was just the first time I got it working like it was supposed to work. I’ve made some additional modifications since then, and I have plans for more. I will be providing my insight on the guide put together by the Harford Hackerspace guys. There was some needed detail left out, I intend to cover it all.
So tomorrow there’s a Verizon event planned in New York. Everyone says it will be the Apple iPhone finally coming to Verizon. The two people who are hated the most by Apple for doing things Steve doesn’t like (Leo Laporte for streaming an Apple event, and Gizmodo for snagging the iPhone 4 off of the bar) never got invited. That tells me that everyone saying it’s the iPhone, are probably right on the money.
So what happens when Verizon gets the iPhone 4? I’m betting Verizon will get an influx of new users finally getting out of AT&T hell, only to be swimming neck deep in a new layer of hell. But, I also think the issues will get sorted quickly. Verizon knows this is a possibility, so they will have prepared for it. So in the end it will be a week or so of people complaining, and then it will no longer be an issue, for either carrier. After a week, it will be a non-event. people will move on with their lives.
What will I be doing? Moving to T-Mobile and a Nexus S, retiring my 3GS and going to Android finally. I’m not completely ditching my 3GS, as I still intend to use it, just not as a phone. I’m hoping the T-Mobile network will be just as good as AT&T has been, and hopefully better. I’m kind of tired of having virtually no signal indoors at both work and home, yet right outside I get great reception. I’m hoping this issue is limited to AT&T , but somehow I doubt it.
