Falke Anti Schwerkraft Motor

As my friend Bruce was doing his Ma.K's Hasegawa Falke, I have decided to help him along the way as much as I can. At that time, we were discussing about the possible designs for the Falke's anit-gravity module and engine. And as it just so happened that some time ago, he gave me some model parts as I expressed interest in them since I have never seen it up close before. As my job demands my concentration, there is no time for me to 'explore' my own Falke and so, I decided to try on Bruce's instead.

This is the model part which was given to me by
Bruce. After experimenting with the Iron Man toy
Arc Reactor, I have more confidence in doing these
type of mad soldering. In this picture, you can see
that I have started to solder a SMD LED onto the
newly made copper 'ring'.

With all eight LEDs completed, it is now possible
to move on to the next stage. There is a reason
why I soldered them in such was as this was the
only space available in the mode part. I want the
LEDs to sit flush or into the cavity of the model
part and not along the walls of the middle wall.
This would give a nice light effect and not the
common 'in-your-eye' effect which blinds you.

OK, this works nicely! Now, the next problem is the
wiring. eight LEDs means eight wires plus one
for the ground signal. How to fit all nine wires
into a model about 1 inch in size?

The solution is to sort of hide the wires inside the
middle wall and let it come out from one of the
two ends. To start it off, you need to cut a small
square big enough for all the nine wires to go
through it.

Measure the length you need for all the nine wires
before you do this. It is not fun to solder like crazy
halfway and then discover that you ran out of wires.
Oh, I am using single-core wire-wrapping wires.
But for the ground, I used a normal 7-core version
because I was afraid of the power load.
(After the burn-in, its safe to use the normal
wire-wrapping ones) as this would 'fit' into a
diorama.

All done!

This is the effect I was trying tell you. Originally, I
wanted the LEDs to be on both top and bottom,
running in opposite direction but this would mean
more components from the microcontroller side as
they are not designed to light more than one LED at
any one time without additional electronic
components. This would also mean more space.

Does that plastic part look familiar to you? Its from
the Mechanical base series I got from ICW. And so,
with only eight LEDs, I can now custom design the
microcontroller circuit board as small as possible.
(If I get it etched professionally, I would even save
more space but for this 'project' the space is enough.

I managed to fit in all the parts needed plus the nine

wires into this compact part. But the batteries
would have to be outside. There is another part
which I could save space, which is to use those
expensive resistors but at this time of night, the
shops are not open and so, I had to use normal
resistors instead. Luckily, they still all fit.

And there you have it. All working as planned!

But there is a mistake, which is why one of the LEDs

is not so bright. I have checked and its not the LED
itself but one of the resistors. Because of the way
the board was soldered, it would be very risky to
redo the soldering as it would mean other wires
could come loose. Moreover, its near my
bedtime... lazy, la.

For those who knows a bit about electronics, you would be asking why did I not use the conventional '555 and 4017' combo ICs as it would be faster and also save time. My answer is, that solution cannot fit into the small plastic part. Just the 4017 IC itself is already near the size of the microcontroller.

Moreover, I used the microcontroller because I wanted the LED to have variable speed in the sweep effects. It would start with a few slow rounds before speeding up and slowing down again. Something a conventional circuit cannot do and also at the current given space.

Oh, I also just realised that I did not take a video of it in action before giving it to Bruce...