Random thruster effect

[Shizman]

Hi all,

I think I saw a thread on here at some point about this, but can't find it now.

I want to have some random thruster effects on my Star Trek ships where I want it to look like the ship computer is trying to maintain the ship's position.

Anyone know how to do this?

[tetsujin]

Hi all,

I think I saw a thread on here at some point about this, but can't find it now.

I want to have some random thruster effects on my Star Trek ships where I want it to look like the ship computer is trying to maintain the ship's position.

Anyone know how to do this?

It seems to me like a fairly involved problem. It has to start with questions like "what kind of external force is out there requiring the ship to respond with thrusters?" Additionally, I think a display like this would look pretty strange, given that the ship, in the display, is not going to be moving - thus it may not be clear what those little flashing lights on the hull are supposed to be... You could solve both problems at once by making the external force acting on the ship part of the display (a giant hand, for instance...) - then the people viewing the model know why the ship is firing thrusters, and also why they're apparently not working...

My approach would be to wire groups of thruster LEDs to a microcontroller, establish where each thruster is and which way it's facing - and write code to light LEDs corresponding to certain maneuvers (yaw left, for instance, would fire starboard-facing thrusters at the front of the ship, and port-facing thrusters at the aft) - and then write another layer on top of that to implement the "behavior" of the ship: sequences of commands like "fire 2 seconds to roll left, off for 5 seconds, then fire 2 seconds to roll right" - or whatever sequences I came up with that I thought looked good...

If you're looking for randomization - you might want to see my post about LFSR's... You can use an LFSR circuit to produce "random" blinking, or implement an LFSR in a microcontroller as the basis of "random" decisions... I don't think thruster firings should look too random, however - the ship is trying to accomplish something, so its efforts should look a bit more organized...

[TazMan2000]

tetsujin is right. That's going to be difficult to replicate on a static model, even with a random light effect. I would think it would look like navigation lights. Now if you incorporate movement with your model, as in trying to avoid a collision with another ship or asteroid or breaking a hold of a tractor beam, then the random thruster effect with LEDs would work...sort of. However it would have to have a complicated mount, that would "wobble" on an axis, and the wobble would have to correspond to the thrusters force to look real. Have sound effects might improve the reality.

Good luck.

TazMan2000

[DLMatthys]

I like these ideas...
Like as want to be used on the Enterprise Refit.

I have been looking for a random LED effects for the Babylon 5 Starfury...It's front and sideways trusters.

Another application, AMT's TOS Enterprise bridge. Random buttons and control screens flashing.

[Madman Lighting]

Who else is looking for this kind of effect? I'm pretty sure nobody produces one now.

If there's enough interest, I might write some code and create a product.

-John

[Scott Hasty]

Will this do?

http://members.shaw.ca/novotill/FireLig ... /index.htm

[Madman Lighting]

Yes, that will work.

But, it will only drive one set of LEDs per circuit and it will have a higher cost and part count that what I can do.