By now, most of you would have heard about the news of Revell’s upcoming 2013 line of model kits which will no doubt bring a lot of joy to both Star Trek and Star Wars fans. For the first time, there will be a 1/30th scale X-Wing and also, a JJPrise. This is the name I discovered on the Forums given to the 2009 Exterprise NCC-1701 so as not to be confused with the original TOS version.
So, why did I bring this up? Well, this links back to my first original board design which I wanted to make for a few friends who had the 1/350 Polar Lights Enterprise NCC-1701A. I ended up making a lot more due to the PCB manufacturer’s minimum requirement. Not only that, I did not ‘miniaturise’ the board since 1/350 ships are big enough to fit inside. And because there were a lot of memory left in the chip, I programmed it to have four different lighting sequence for the following ships:
- NCC-1701A Motion Picture,
- NCC-1701A Star Trek VI:The Undiscovered Country,
- NX-01 Star Trek:Enterprise, and
- NCC-1701 2009 Enterprise (JJPrise)
The board was designed in such a way that all you have to do is just connect a 9volt battery, the LEDs and set the correct jumpers. Simple, isn’t it? Yeah, but its actually a pain in the butt to crimp and solder all the different LEDs that is to be included into the kit. But now, I am still undecided to either sell it or wait until I have done the other modules of the 1701-A Enterprise such as:
- Photon Torpedoes (need to ouput design to prototype PCB)
- Deflector Dish (R&D on programming)
- Warp & Impulse systems
- A control board with ‘spotlights’ to control all the modules together.
This is because I have designed each module to run independently or they can be controlled from a main board. I mean, it is a bit weird to launch Torpedoes, while both Impulse and Warp Engines are on, plus with the Deflector Dish warming up and shutting down all the time 😛
Anyway, here is a video I took ages ago:
