MadMan's lighting questions
Posted: Sat Feb 24, 2018 12:15 pm
Hello gents!
It's been a while, and I had to step away from my Reliant build for a few weeks, but I'm getting back into it now, and I've come to realise that I need to start planning out my lighting before I go too far with the build itself.
Now, keep in mind: I've never lit a model. I've never programmed a circuit. I've never even touched a soldering iron in my life.
So, needless to say, I'm going to have a looooot of questions, so be patient with me please! Going forward, any lighting questions I have, I'll contain in this thread.
THE IDEA
The general idea is for me to get a custom stand made (or, if I'm brave enough, make it myself from custom-cut wood ... I've never done woodworking, either. ), on which there will be a series of six switches. As it currently stands — according to my research — rocker switches will be the way to go for me. So, with that in mind, here's what I'm thinking for each switch:
I've decided that I'm going to use Arduino to program everthing, and I want to use a wall adapter as a power source. I'm sufficiently adept with JavaScript and old-school ActionScript that it doesn't look all that unfamiliar to me (yay, for having spent part of my career as a web designer!).
So, the first round of questions:
It's been a while, and I had to step away from my Reliant build for a few weeks, but I'm getting back into it now, and I've come to realise that I need to start planning out my lighting before I go too far with the build itself.
Now, keep in mind: I've never lit a model. I've never programmed a circuit. I've never even touched a soldering iron in my life.
So, needless to say, I'm going to have a looooot of questions, so be patient with me please! Going forward, any lighting questions I have, I'll contain in this thread.
THE IDEA
The general idea is for me to get a custom stand made (or, if I'm brave enough, make it myself from custom-cut wood ... I've never done woodworking, either. ), on which there will be a series of six switches. As it currently stands — according to my research — rocker switches will be the way to go for me. So, with that in mind, here's what I'm thinking for each switch:
- 1. Main power (to the whole model)
- Off
- On
2. Internal lights - Off
- On
3. Flood lights (all of the Raytheon lighting) - Off
- On
4. Formation and anti-collision lights - Off
- On
5. Propulsion - Off
- Station-keeping (thrusters only on)
- Impulse (thrusters + impulse engines + impulse crystal on)
- Warp (thrusters/impulse engines/impulse crystal off, warp engines on)
6. Photon torpedoes (I may split this up to two separate buttons, rather than a single rocker switch) - Off
- Forward
- Aft
I've decided that I'm going to use Arduino to program everthing, and I want to use a wall adapter as a power source. I'm sufficiently adept with JavaScript and old-school ActionScript that it doesn't look all that unfamiliar to me (yay, for having spent part of my career as a web designer!).
So, the first round of questions:
- 1) Should I go with a 9V or 12V wall adapter?
2) Can I run this many switches off one circuit board and, if so, which Arduino board should I go for?
3) In my research, I've seen that multi-position rocker switches have the middle position as the off position. For example, a 3-position switch would be on-off-on. Are there switches that are off-on-on? If not, can they be re-wired to reflect that sequence?
4) Is there such a thing as a 4-position rocker switch?