Other Dave's Hartnell/Troughton Console

[galacticprobe]

Um, I have no words and if I do, everyone else will follow with them. Thats amazing!

I agree with this statement, and what everyone else has said! (And you got to meet all of those great people!)

Okay, maybe I have one thing of my own to say:


Oh, and definitely a build!

Dino.

[Other Dave]

I've been fine-tuning the movement of the weights and pulleys and got one of the weights tangled in with the rotor arm and BLAM! blew a fuse in the motor controller.  And of course no one has one of those little glass fuses!  So I found some on e-bay and will resume when it arrives.... sigh. 

I used an app I found called VeeScope.  I did a quick render in Blender of the room which I had made a long time ago. I never had time to see if the angle was right until we were at the show and all set up. And of course it was wrong!  So now that I'm back home and after that darn little fuse gets replaced, and I can put it all back together again (!),  I will do a Really Nice and careful render!

Funny thing about that Cardiff Tardis.  The more I look at it, the more I realize that they didn't get a single thing right!  Not one!  For all the work that was put in to it, you would think that they would take a close look at the photos or all the info here on TB!  I had a co-worker years ago who's motto was: "If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right."  That has stuck with me all these years later. Maybe they were on a tight budget and schedule...

So one of the guests was some guy from the BBC. He told me that the Experience is shutting down in June due to poor attendance and the owners are anxious to do something else with the property.  So go see it while it's still there!

The BBC guy was saying that the Tardis replica there was "absolutely accurate".  I just smiled and looked impressed.

- Other Dave

[galacticprobe]

So one of the guests was some guy from the BBC. He told me that the Experience is shutting down in June due to poor attendance and the owners are anxious to do something else with the property.

I don't want to derail this thread, but, poor attendance at the DWE? That's odd. I'd think people would be flooding the place. When our daughter was at Uni of Bath for her spring semester, she visited the DWE and said it was full of people. Granted that was three years ago, but I can't imagine why attendance would drop off that much since then. I'd almost bet that attendance would pick up once Series 10 started, and maybe even once the Christmas Special airs. I'm surprised it hasn't picked up since "Power of the Daleks" started airing.

(How much does it cost to get in? Could it be the cost of admission that's keeping most people away?) Maybe if they relocated the DWE to some BBC-owned property they could lower the admission cost (by not having to pay someone else rent for the space), and that might entice more people to visit the DWE. (Maybe someone could suggest that to a BBC member if there is another chance meeting like this - hopefully before the DWE shuts down?)

Dino.

[fivefingeredstyre]

I've been to the DWE a few time ( ) and its always busy, so I doubt very much its down to poor attendance.

Dave, you should replace those fuses with fluid links, they're so much more reliable... 

[Other Dave]

Maybe if I just reverse the polarity....

[Other Dave]

So as promised, here's some more detail on the Rotor Motor!  It took a little looking around various places, but I finally found this:



It's a used Bodine industrial DC motor.  Here is a closeup of the label:



This is a geared motor.  Which means it has a bunch of gears inside to slow it down, yet still retain the torque (power).  The motor is whisper quiet! Along with the motor, I also got this motor controller:


This converts the AC power to the 90 volts DC power for the motor. AND and has a handy little dial that allows me to crank the RPM down to what I need.  Normally the motor goes 21 RPM which is just way too fast.  I dialed it down to the 20% mark which seemed good.  I could also put it very slow in order to test things out.

I got both of these from a place I found on ebay called Elrad mfg in Ohio.



I mounted the motor on a scrape piece of wood and secured it to the base using angle irons.  The hexagonal base is separate from the larger base.  I just slide it on and it stays put between the 2 halves of the plinth.
Plus it makes it a lot easier to tear down and transport.



For my vertical posts, I used drawer slides.  They're nice quality and the ball bearings are rigged in place, so they don't drop down to the bottom when mounted vertically!

But whatever you do, DON'T buy the self-closing type.  You will fight with it and regret it!

Here is a view looking down into the rotor area. It all works well, but if you put any weight on it, it doesn't work well at all!  I struggles to push the weight up, and then slams down on the downstroke.



So the solution was to provide some counterweights.  Like in a sash window.  In fact I looked around for sash window weights, but they were too tall and way too expensive.

The navigational array and cover totaled about 24 pounds.  (weight that is, not money!   about 11 kg)  So I needed to have 3 weights of about 8 pounds each.  After a lot of looking around the web, I ended up going to Target and in the sports section, I bought 3 8-pound hand weights!  Perfect!




You can see the pulleys I added in the previous picture. In this pic, you can see the weights suspended from the pulleys.

I wish the hand weights weren't quite so tall - it was very difficult keeping them in the range of not hitting the bottom,  and not hitting the pulley on top. In either case, the platform would shake or deform!

After a lot of fine-tuning, I got it all working well, but there was still a problem: The drawer slides.

The slides are segmented into three sections.  As the motor goes up - the first (and lightest) section moves.  Then it pulls the next segment which is a lot heavier.  So whenever that would happen, the rotor would shutter from the extra weight.

I finally came up with a good solution:



I drilled a screw through the first section and into the second - thereby creating one long section. 

Now it moves nicely!

Here's a couple of videos:

- Other Dave

[Angelus Lupus]

Wow!
That is an amazingly smooth movement, there! You weren't kidding about it being quiet, either! I turned the volume right up and all I could hear (apart from the hiss of static silence) was a tiny little 'clunk' that may be the weights moving rather than the motor.
Needless to say, you could add sounds to your console and they wouldn't need to be very loud at all to cover the mechanical noises. And - bonus - with that control dial you can easily tweak the speed to match the sound!

[davidnagel]

Nice! Thanks for the details, worthy of an article here at TB

[warmcanofcoke]

This is the information I needed to know. I have kept sash weights around for this very purpose. I knew I needed a really slow RPM motor but I never knew a make and model number. Thank you for this information.
Amazing work.

[DoctorWho8]

Your console is glorious!  If you are in Illinois, can I bring a few friends and play?  I couldn't go to Chicago TARDIS, but was slack-jawed when I saw pics of it.
Bill "the Doctor" Rudloff

[TheMasterRichman]

Wow, amazing and you have nearly done it and it's only taken you 3 months, that's a new world record

- Rich

[russellsuthern]

Have to agree was all of the above.
Simply beautiful!

Russell

[Other Dave]

Wow, amazing and you have nearly done it and it's only taken you 3 months, that's a new world record

- Rich

Well no, it was more like 5 or 6 months.  I it was in April that I really started to collect things, and make a few small controls, etc.  I was also experimenting with a possible motor setup.  I tried a system of pulleys that didn't work out. By August, I decided to really dive into it!

Now I'm still trying to finish up/improve several aspects and will post that progress soon!

Off topic:  My wife bought me the new animated "Power of the Daleks" DVD for Christmas - not realizing that it was only for the European market, not USA.  It's PAL, not NTSC and I'm sure my DVD player will refuse to play it 'cause it's the wrong region. Sigh.  The USA version will be out in April.  So if one of you over there across the pond would like to have this, send me a message and I'll mail it over to you.

- Other Dave

[troughtonstrousers]

It's a truly beautiful build hence why I built mine, and that rise and fall is as smooth as silk however I myself have not made mine do this as I want the intermittent rise and fall like the original beautiful nonetheless

Troughtonstrousers

[Other Dave]

I had time on Saturday to spend on some improvements.  On panel 4, I needed to redo the electronics for the meters and for the spinning lights of the "movement sensors".   

What I had before was powered by a Raspberry PI and just wasn't doing what I wanted.  I replaced it with an Arduiono Uno.  The meters have a small servo in them that move the needle.  Previously, the needle was programmed to randomly jump from place to place - and it was fine for the moment. But I wanted the needles to sweep from spot to spot. Plus they made a LOT of noise jumping around.

For the 'chaser' lights, the LEDs were too dim and not all the lights lit up.   I discovered that the LEDs were wired in series instead of parallel.  So I rewired them.  Took forever.  But now each light gets the full brightness instead of being cut in half. And now they all blink!

I also added code so that the speed and direction of the chaser lights would occasionally change.



For the four round meters, since I could not find anything that even came close to the size of what I needed, I decided to fabricate them. I sliced up a 6" PVC drain pipe that I found at Home Depot. The inside is 6" and the outside diameter is 6.25". For the base, I cut round circles out of flat PVC plastic. 



For the big meter, I cut the PVC pipe bigger, and then cut down a Christmas cookie tin to form the larger base!

The wood blocks shown in the first pic (when glued in place) hold up the meter face - which I printed from Tony Farrell's plans and then glued onto foamcore.  (There was plenty of room in the big meter for the servo, but for the other three, I ended up cutting a rectangular hole in the bottom of the base for it to stick out a little.  I also had to cut a corresponding hole in the panel.)

I also used cut-down clock hands for the dials.  (hats off to Gregg Nowling for that idea)

 
So here's what the panel looks like from behind:




I have a speaker at the top. Underneath that is the Arduino.  Below that are the backs of the two 'Movement Sensors' with the leads from each LED bulb sticking out of small holes drilled in the thin plywood backing.
On each side, is the cutout for the little servos for the 2 meters.

Below all of that is a wood plank that holds the 12V bubble lights. And finally the back of all the switches.

Here is the front:



And here is a video of all of it in action!

More to come!

- Other Dave