OK, this is a filler post if you want to call that. To me, the engine lighting for the Razor Crest is the most significant feature of the craft. It was also the most frustrating. I was looking for off-the-shelf solutions such as the COB (chip on board) LEDs, LED rings and even flash light reflectors but to no avail. They were either not the right diameter, uses 12 volts, could potentially heat up or even require a much beefier microcontrollers.
THE SOLUTION
In the end, I opted to design my own lighting. The challenge was to get the engines as uniformly lit as possible while sipping on battery power. In the end, there are about 33 LEDs per engine and about 12 more around the ship. This means collectively, they would be consuming a theoretical current of 1.26A (1260 mA) of current. Using a 10,000mAh Mobile Phone power bank, the model would stay lit up for about 4 hours or less.
This is where microcontrollers come in. Using PWM techniques, I was able to cut down the current consumption to about half of that. Still, once the USB Voltage tester arrives and with the model fully completed, I would be able to know more.
I think It has to be RGB because the shades of warm white is at a slightly different colour temperature compared to the ones I usually get.
If this is true, then the diameter of the LED ring is 48mm. For the 1/72 Razor Crest models, the effective diameter was about 39mm.
