Mk 16 Capital Ship MDM

It has been a crazy push the last 48 hours, We have gone from more or less a bunch of plastic parts and wires to a work demonstration model. All the parts are uploaded, the code works, and there is some form of documentation.

Catatonic Man has spent the last few day learning the limitation of the Arduino we had available and working around it to create a magnificent light show.

I think we have both learn a bunch on this project and look forward to working on another longer term project together.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1POd5k3NOQLyC4SDClqM-32kKq3NVj4JdU-bsBIcl7P4/edit?usp=sharing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEo16fq3USQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg4Xuf5LMrA

https://mega.co.nz/#!7ExilCwb!u0CslLI7CuWpHuYXrKW9tGG4rDE2EKfF0qyEzSQjKts

http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:313341

Mid-day update: April 20, 89 PD

While over 75% of the internal parts are finished printing, but there is still too much to do. We have started wiring up the reactor with LEDs but it is slow going (25% done). We have not even started on the code to drive the lights or any interface stuff. This is starting to feel like my senor design project all over again; work every minute you can and then when it is a week before it is due, time for no sleep.

Plans: 

- order: plastic for impeller ring and Laserhead Telemetry Array; flex tubbing; caffeine 

- Finish the Impeller drive today

- Finish nuke today

- Start RCS ports today

Other notes:

Not everything that can be drawn can be built (words to live by). I have cut the number of nodes per ring from 8 to 6 because there is no way to get 8 properly scaled Impeller drives in both the stage 1 and stage 2 rings. I may redesign the drivers at a later date to do an 8 node design.

Morning update: April 13, 89 PD

After a long night of fighting with 123D make and my 3d printer, we have our first put together. To see very bad pictures of the Main Power/Data Bus (MPDB) look at step 2 of the instructions. After getting put together, I realized I do not want to get stopped by a member of law enforcement with that on my person, many questions will be asked. 

Today's plan is to get the parts put together for the the Fusion Reactor so that I can hand off this part of the project to CatatonicMan, so that he can start adding the electronics.

If all goes to plan I will start working on the hack to trigger the camera flash in the warhead late this evening.

CAD work and fabricator begins today. It is our hope to start piecing together the first parts this afternoon. It is going to be a long push up hill from here, but we do not have a scope change, yet. As soon as we have the first parts done we will start posting pictures.