remember these cool little 3D printed uh stage lights that I put together a few months back
oh I think it's time to give them a few new friends and to that end I've
gone searching around thingiverse and I found a couple of actual moving lights
and these ones use servos in them to do the pen and tilt which seems like a pretty cool
idea so I downloaded this one and this one and I have done a bit of printing
so let's see if we can put a couple of Lights together and have some fun with
this so I think I'm gonna do the big one first just because it's probably going to
be a little bit easier to get into so we have the base the Yoke which does the pan we have a
little back cover for the base we have the front of the top and the back of the top
now in the files there was two different backs I printed the one that has an optional Servo motor
in the back of it but that I'm finding reading through the documentation such as it is isn't
actually necessary it's a future thing that he hasn't fully implemented yet and the other thing
that happened here is when I was cleaning the supports off I broke the little mounting tabs so
I think just for my experiments here I'm going to just tape this together glue it together or
something but we may want to reprint that in the future if this works out so that goes on there
that mounts on there and that mounts on there as I said before
so inside this top Barrel there's a little Notch for one end of a Servo motor to go on and there's
another notch that matches up with it so your standard little 9 gram Servo will mount in there
let's get that wire out of the way for now actually it's going to have to go through
that hole and then the other tab just goes on there and then there's supposed to be a screw
that goes in there into the tab that I broke off but we'll just tape that together for now
so yeah as I said the wire goes outside there and this is kind of clever on the side of the
Yoke there is this little crescent there that matches up with that Crescent there
and the side of the yolk is actually Hollow and that Hollow spot comes down to down to here
so you can run the wires through and since these servos only move through 180 degrees
that should in theory if you align them up right not pinch off the wires so that's pretty clever
and then down in the base you can see that there's another mount for a Servo there
and a little cutout for the wires to stick out there so this should be pretty easy to
put together there's even a hole there for a screwdriver whoever designed this has thought
of thought things through fairly well I think so let's get this first Servo mounted in here
and I hope this goes in Fairly easily you want to pinch the wires doing this
that works pretty well I think M3 screws will be what's called for here that ought to do the job
no it's not going to do the job actually I think maybe I want some of these smaller
self-tapping screws that came with the servos that might be a better idea
there we go that's a good place to start so now then it looks like this
yolk mounts with one of these horns on there except for it's too long
cut it down that's okay I have plenty of these every Servo comes with three
different shapes and sizes of these things so that'll go on there but that hole is huge
if you don't think it's going to work very well because it needs to accept this
tiny little screw that goes in there which are more of these screws that came with the servos
so that's a small little screw there but the head of that screw is much larger than that
and this thing is nice and thick too so I think what I'm going to
do is just attach this Servo horn with a bit of hot glue and hope for the best
and we should be able to stab that guy down on top of there put the screw in and
foreign
I think I'm gonna have to take that off to thread the wires through there yeah probably will
the next thing to accomplish is this uh connector won't fit up through that
little chassis hole uh Mount thing so just pop the wires out of the connector from this servo
just got to lift up the plastic tab just a little bit not so much the uniform it just
enough to get it out of the way and you pull these pins out and then we should
be able to thread them through there and down through here catch them out the bottom
there we go use enough of the right tools that's not too bad I guess I have to come
up with some kind of a light for this thing too don't I before I get too carried away
now the guy didn't really make any provision for mounting the light on this I'm discovering
so I wonder if we can mount something right up front here will that fit Maybe
something like that what else have we got these little star-shaped ones no it doesn't work
um what about these much brighter ones that doesn't really work either oh
I've got these lenses all that lens fit in there
well that's pretty Costa perfect okay so maybe I can put that in there with just a drop of hot glue
but then as I said there's no real provision for mounting a light behind there
so I quickly went and tinkercated up some circles just you know millimeter thick plastic circles in
various sizes from 17 18 20 30 and 35 millimeters and I think I can fit one of those back in there
it's a little bit distance behind the lens and I can put an LED on that I think
the LED of choice I think is going to be a neopixel AK AWS 2012 addressable LED
that way I can get RGB out of just three wires instead of needing four
for our GB like I normally would this often happens things didn't go exactly to plan but
it's going to glue this guy in here quickly notice that I don't have the lens in there I
may attach it from the outside if I decide that I want to use it but again this is just a first
test if this light actually works or if I like it better than the other one then I'll probably make
a few modifications and reprint it a little bit better because I I just used mostly draft mode on
here and as you can see I ran out of filament so I changed colors Midway through so yeah let's just
see how this works before we get too carried away shall we well that was a bit of a struggle getting
those wires through there think for the smaller one I'm going to use skinnier wayer than that so
I know the next thing we need one of this kind of Servo horns to go into this little slot over here
and then the servo itself clicks down into there
and actually I guess we could probably put that on first and then slide it in there maybe
want to put the servo into its mid-range I think when we put that on and actually
want that pointing the other way this way so that when that goes on it's facing that way
yeah I think that's what we want and then screw that through there
that didn't hold what happened okay new plan we'll screw this on first
and then mount it in there maybe that's what it needs
if we can do it without breaking anything okay there that is in
it kind of holds although I think I probably should have glued it in there
would it be sloppy for now
and the wires seem to move without getting tangled so that's good I think I want to screw
through there yeah I think I want to screw through there just because that's flopping
okay that'll have to do for now and then the last bit run that over that way
and put this on the back to hold that Servo in place
that's pretty good and because as I mentioned earlier the tabs are broken off there I'm just
going to tape that together for now yeah I know janky what are you gonna do I might glue it but
I probably want to get back in there a few more times so this will do for now and kept on tape
holds the other half of your electronics anyway doesn't it why not do this too
okay now how am I going to get that in there
hmm
do you see my dilemma I can get this to sit down on top of that servo
but I can't get at that screw to put it in anymore hmm
I wish this guy had put a little bit more thought into
a manual instructions for putting this thing together I'm guessing that it's probably not
a completed work I'm thinking it's still a work in progress but that looks pretty cool
I think so that works that works it's just held together by friction that way but it works
let's see if it actually works under power so I've coupled together a little uh sketch here
for the Arduino based on you know basically just some example sketches that I've abused
and whatnot uh server library neopixel library One LED it's on pin two we've
got a pan Servo and a tilt Servo uh some variables brightnesses and fading numbers
Adafruit stuff straight out of the neopixel demo Library and then just a loop to
do some uh some movement I'm not sure where I crib this out of some place I can't remember
where exactly and then the pixel stuff so let's fire this up and make it happen I haven't tried
this yet so let's see what will happen I mean I've tried the software and I Know It Works separate
from this but this is the first time plugging this guy in whoa there it goes it's moving
and are the colors changing on the LED yes they are oh that's pretty cool
I mean there's a lot rough about this um my printing my assembly all the rest of that and
as the guy said in the description on thingiverse it is still very much a work in progress he's got
a lot to do yet but it does the thing oh that is very cool unfortunately it's a little bit of
a scale for these guys so I think since it's getting late I'm going to save this one for
another week maybe not next week but another week and I'll put this one together because I think
it'll be closer to in scale with these guys but in the meantime it's a thing and it works
um yeah uh questions comments down below as usual I will talk to you later
oh yeah because I'm sure somebody's gonna ask tonight's beer has been a little brown
jugs Stout just Stout and there's the tasting notes a smooth and robust Stout
with chocolate and caramel flavors but they all come from the Brewing process
just the standard beer ingredients nothing fancy going on here very nice beer though