Thursday, May 20, 2010

[DIY] light saber ver 2

Still remember my 15bux light saber i made couple months ago?

I made an upgrade of it, with proper light saber handle...It is kinda cool to take graduation picture with it!!!!But I did not dress up as obi-wan and bring it to the ceremony, it is too eccentric somehow.

I went to the mom&pops hardware shop trying my luck to get parts to make the handle, but some how, lady luck is not smiling at me. None of the parts express their enthusiasm to be modified by me. Then I went to tom&stephanie to buy present for my friends daughter and I bump into a toy that looks like a light saber and it is CHEAP. s$8.90 only.


I did put 3x AAA battery to turn it on and record down the animation. Did not upload it, because wanted to save me from the embarrassment of the toy. BUT, it is still cheap.

Since young, I have a knack of opening up things (+ forgot how to put it back!! haha) and take a look "under the hood". Being young, I have no idea what are the "innard" looking components and the wiring that are so intriguing to look at. My parents are  language teachers and can't really help much on the electronics/physics part. It is very important to have a mentor, a guide and somebody to teach the basics and principles of the working. Alternatively, I self taught by experimenting...... but that was a long time ago......

Here is how it looks like after it is dissected.
In the lower container, from left. small DC motor with counter weight to create vibrations when turn on. speaker, small IC circuit for sound & light.

while trying to cut out the excess plastic to make room for my modification, it snapped. So much for a s$8.90 toy. Luckily, it is not affecting the overall stability of the mod.



I got some tracing paper and transparent blue flim (2m  x1m) popular book store for s$1.50, but I only use 4" of it. the materials can be save for later use. Line them up nicely, secure with double sided tape and slide in the acrylic tube from the previous light saber. 3R= Reuse, Recycle, Re .... ahem...forgot....

After I finally got the LED strips into the acrylic tube that is lined with the diffuser and colour filer, 3 hours had passed...... I am running short of time to attend the graduation ceremony.....

Went to ah yap's lab to use his power tool to do some fabrication on the handle...
this is the final look of it.
 

some soldering, mouting and testing... the clock showed 5 pm.... i better get my shirt and tie ready....

boys & girls, May I present to you.... my s$23.90 light saber



this is how it looks under fluorescent light.



2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi, Sir. Sunardi here :)
Nice Light Saber haha. I have long time never support your blog. HEHE
Sir, I just wanted to inquire you if u know the way we could call the Windows Form from Console Application in C++ Language.
I am currently having some difficulties in calling Windows Form. I could call it when it is just a normal Form, but I would have to add a ActiveX Control Items into the form. So when I called this Form, I encountered some errors: STAThread, and some others. I know you could help me right sir ? Hehe.Or maybe you could give me some directions of how I could solve this problem. :) Thanks sir.

sjteo said...

hi sunardi,

for windows console app, there is no stdafx needed to run the program.

Since m$ uses MFC (Microsoft Foundation Class) for their "window" based program, which implied that it need stdafx too...

Hence, If you want to open a window, inside a console program the only way of doing it is to add an activeX component. Now you have 2 things to run, in 2 separate thread and since these threads do not have their memory space defined, need to do it manually. Hence the static part.

If you just need to call another exe program from the console application, things will be much more easier....