It’s now week 10, which means there’s only 6 weeks left to go on this semester. Time is quickly running out, so let’s get started.
Tactical Espionage
I want to immediately get started on disguising this Arduino board, since I’m expecting it to be quite a process.
The idea I have right now is to just try and blend the edges of the box with the base of the terrain, so it helps hide the unnatural shape of it. My intention is to make it look like a piece of rubble, possible from the wall of the Piraka stronghold.
While I work on the design for this, I’ll be printing the case again but in a different color that should match the color I’ll paint the foam around it, since the bright blue makes it stick out a bit much. The best color that was available was one just called “Silver”.
With it printing, the first thing I need to do is refine my cutting technique, because, as I said in the last post, I have been unable to get any clean cuts in the foam so far. For this, I just looked it up online. There are a great many guides that suggest using tools that I don’t have access to, such as a hot wire, or jigsaw, but I did find this video on YouTube that shows off how to achieve clean cuts with a utility knife, which I do have access to.
In the video, he suggests using a square to help with getting straight cuts. While I don’t have one as fancy as the one he uses, the DKC did have a smaller one that would get the job done. I followed the technique he used in the video and…
It came out much, much better than any of my other cuts have. It’s not perfectly straight, but that’s fine for my use case. I don’t know any minerals in nature that have perfectly straight edges anyway.
I continued cutting bits of the foam, going nice and slow. It’s a tedious process, but I don’t have any other choice than to put up with it for the sake of quality. I kept at it until I had a bunch of rocky-looking chunks.
I’m quite happy with how these turned out. My process for creating them was to literally just cut the foam down into an appropriately rock-sized chunk, and then just keep cutting in all different directions until I had an appropriately rock-looking rock.
They’ll start really coming together once I paint them, but there’s something to do before that. Something I’ve been especially excited for. To really sell the rocky look, I can put some texture on the foam.
Now, depending on the material that is being created, the texture process will vary quite a bit. But the best way to get a rocky texture?
A bunch of actual rocks! I quite literally went outside with a baggy to the nearest gravel path, and just picked out a few samples (that I will return once I am done).
Now comes the fun part. I put all of the foam rocks into a separate baggy, placed them in a small bin, and then dumped the rocks into the bin with them. Then, I closed the bin and just gave it a good shake. And then after the shake, I took out each of the bigger pieces and patted them down with some of the rocks for some extra texture.
Try as I might, I can’t get the texture to show up on camera, unfortunately, so I won’t bother uploading a photo of the result. I will, however, get a proper photo once I paint the rocks, which is up next.
Edgeification
To paint the rocks, I first coated them with the classic paint and ‘podge primer combo. I went over each rock once or twice with a thin layer, which really helps them look more like rocks.
We’re not done with them though. To help them blend in more with the new silver case, I’ll give a couple of layers of grey paint to each rock once they’ve dried.
While waiting for them to dry, I started work on the platform raiser design I had in mind. It took a bit of work and was a slight hassle, but I came up with this in Blender:
My idea for it is to be a clamp of sorts. The top section has enough room for the foam to slide into (give or take; the thickness of the foam varied by about 2 millimeters), where a bolt will fit through, and then be tightened with a nut. The bottom section gives 15 millimeters of lift, and also has an extra hole so that I can tighten another bolt into the plexiglass that I plan for this to sit on top of.
To make sure it worked properly before going all in on it, I printed a test design of it, which gave me time to focus on the rocks again.
I gave them a coat of grey paint, making sure it wasn’t too dark or bright by mixing the two grey colors I had. While I didn’t intentionally leave the layers very thin, I think doing so helped make them look much better.
I think they could use a bit of extra wear along their edges, but I’m not certain how to go about doing that without exposing the pink foam underneath. So, at least for now, these will do nicely.
While the rocks are done though, I still want to toy around with painting the base board. I mentioned last week that it was looking a little bland for my tastes, and the first idea I’ve had to fix that is by carving some tiles into it. My thought process is that, because I want the Toa Inika to be storming the Piraka stronghold, it’s not unreasonable to assume there would be some sort of tiled floor.
I started by scoring some shallow lines using a ruler and knife, keeping the tiles generally wide.
From there, I took a random flathead screwdriver and ran it through the lines a few times to roughen the tiles up a bit. After that, I randomly started recklessly using the head to add some more wear and tear to the tiles, and pounded the handle somewhat randomly to add a bit of texture.
I made sure it especially put some extra wear on the corners were four tiles met up, but also tried to keep the distribution of damage somewhat even. I don’t think it was the best job, but the fact that I wouldn’t have painted the foam yet comforts me a bit. I expect that all of the visible foam in the cracks will be hidden by the black primer layer on the final product.
Borrowing again from Adam’s arsenal, I tried applying a brown wash across the tiles to really help add some grime to it all. To make the wash, I simply just took a bit of brown paint and mixed it with the nearest water-like liquid I had on hand, which was the hydrogen peroxide I’ve been using to dissolve the paint off the brush.
I tried keeping a decent balance between having it super watery and not very watery at all.
While it definitely helped a bit, I absolutely overdid it. I ended up not using enough peroxide in my mixture, and used too much of the mixture overall, causing me to have to spread it out a lot more than I intended.
I don’t think it looks bad at all, but it definitely is a lot grimier than I was thinking. I’ll leave it for a while and come back to it after some time has passed and see how I’m feeling about it. If I still don’t like it, I’ll try adding a bit of a light grey wash along some edges and corners to try and balance it out. If I still don’t like that, then I’ll know to use much less of the brown wash in my final product.
While I simmer on it, this gives me the perfect time to focus again on the platform raisers.
Building the tallest tower…
Looking at the printed result, it came out a bit differently than I expected.
I purposely made it thick for the structural stability, but this is much thicker than I was wanting. I also made the bolt hole too small and had to expand it a little bit to be able to fit the bolt through, and even then…
The bolt is too short to reach the other side, and even if it was, I wouldn’t be able to fit a nut in that tiny little space. I had to modify the design.
A little bit of tweaking later, and I got this much nicer looking support:
I made sure to widen the hole and thin the entire piece up overall. It definitely looks a bit nicer, but even with these adjustments, the bolt doesn’t have enough room for a nut underneath.
For this problem, I’m thinking I’ll just find a differently sized bolt, assuming the rest of my design does work. Since I’m fairly confident in it, I went ahead and printed three more of these designs to try out on the real base.
Printing all of the supports out, they do lift the base up enough as I hoped, but there is one issue that has reared its head. Despite the foam being advertised as the same size when purchased, it actually varies very slightly, so two pieces won’t have the exact same measurements. This normally isn’t a problem, but because I’m relying on it to be symmetrical in all spots, I’m subject to it.
In three of the corners, the designs fit generally well, even if I’m still not able to attach a nut to them. One corner is definitely a lot bigger than the rest, but I can at least squeeze it down. The same cannot be said for the last corner that is much smaller than the rest.
I tried my best to add a nut to an extra-long bolt, but no matter what, it didn’t stop the support from being shaky and loose.
I tried every other idea I could think of, between using washers, different sized nuts, and even creating a clamp design, but none of them worked at all. The only idea I have left for now is to just adjust the design I have so that it fits specifically on that corner, but I really don’t want to do that.
For now, I’ll leave it as is and come back to it when it’s time to install the plexiglass, since I still need to account for that no matter what design I go with.
Time’s Up
Unfortunately, I have to leave it all here as that’s all the time I have left for this week. I made some progress, but not as much as I’d like, especially considering that I still don’t like how the painted tiles look still.
My cables are supposed to be coming in any day now, so my first priority will be to get this paint job finished up so I can apply it to the main base and then get the Toa in place and ready to connect to the Arduino.
After that is all done, it will be time to deal with the Plexiglass. I have a plan created, but I still need to make sure it is within budget. This will definitely take me to the end of next week.
But with all that being said, I need to start cleaning up here.
In order to prepare for working with 3d objects (my plan for representing the planets), I wanted to familiarize myself with the tools in p5.js that enable 3d. As it turns out, they’re rather simple. You must simply declare the canvas with an extra argument (WEBGL), and then you may call commands such as orbitControl() which enables movement in 3d via the mouse.
To practice the placing of objects in 3d, I played around with the code snippets provided in the documentation. Firstly, it’s just a sphere comprising rings of cubes.
I added the ability to make concentric layers, here is 1 internal layer.
To ensure this looks nice I am scaling the size of the cubes, the distance between the spheres of cubes, and the line thickness of each edge of the cubes.
And at 9 internal layers, 10 concentric spheres in total, some interesting shapes and patterns emerge.
Below is the code that was used to generate these images. I achieve different results by tweaking the values I have passed into different functions, chiefly the scale of the main sphere and number of sub-spheres passed into drawCubeSpheres(50, 10); 50 being the size used for all of these images, and 10 being the amount of spheres in these final two images
function setup() {
createCanvas(1150, 750, WEBGL);
angleMode(DEGREES);
noFill();
stroke(32, 8, 64, 255);
describe(
"Users can click on the screen and drag to adjust their perspective in 3D space. The space contains a sphere of dark purple cubes on a light pink background.");
}
function draw() {
background(250, 180, 200);
// Call every frame to adjust camera based on mouse/touch
orbitControl();
drawCubeSphere(50,10);
}
function drawCubeSphere(scale, numSpheres) {
scale = ceil(scale);
// number of spheres of cubes
for (let i = 0; i < numSpheres; i++) {
// Rotate rings in a half circle to create a sphere of cubes
for (let zAngle = 0; zAngle < 180; zAngle += 30) {
// Rotate cubes in a full circle to create a ring of cubes
for (let xAngle = 0; xAngle < 360; xAngle += 30) {
push();
// Rotate from center of sphere
rotateZ(zAngle);
rotateX(xAngle);
// Then translate down (eg.)50 * 8 = 400 units
translate(0, (scale * 8) / (i + 1), 0);
strokeWeight(scale / 10 / (i + 1)); // scales down
// strokeWeight((scale / 10) * (i + 1)); // scales up
// strokeWeight(5); // constant
box(scale / (i + 1)); // scales down
// box(scale * (i + 1)); // scales up
// box(scale); // constant
pop();
}
}
}
}
What I’m working on next in this area is tracing 3d objects around a circular/elliptical field. This project is involving more math revision than I anticipated but i do welcome the process of refreshing my geometry.
Music
I must admit little progress has been made the last couple of weeks due to my failing to schedule time experimenting with music, I do however have a demonstration of the music in its starting state. I am working in Bitwig Studio as opposed to Ableton Live because I’ve found it much more stable and crashes far less often. The video shows one track per planet/celestial object and in this current state each orbiting body is introduced slowly to get the listener accustomed to the rhythm before further complicating it with more and more cycles of notes.
This week I will be playing more with the actual sound or timbre of each planet as well as trying more structures that the piece might work in.
I have figured out how to make the top menu look the way I want it to, and link directly to the StoryMap! It now has that, and there is also space to post the First Episode of the Podcast, which operated smoothly. I went into the road trips maps page and hyperlinked actual words with the links instead of just having the links by themselves to make it easier to know which one is which, and now all I need to do after posting Episode 1 of the podcast is add some pictures to make it interesting to look at. I think I am going to use some from my own travels for the pages, at least to start. It gives a more personal touch in my opinion. I just need to go through and figure out which ones are best. It actually looks pretty good right now I think, and I am excited to see how I can make it even better!
Final Podcast Edits and Publishing
I have cleared space on my hard drive now that I have access to my external drive again, so there is plenty of computer space to save the audio files I need. I figured all of that out and put the file into SoundTrap. I also looked for some other sounds to add in as opening and closing parts, I wasn’t trying to be too fancy for the first episode, just wanted to have something to bookend it for now. I like the sounds I found, but I do also think that as I learn more with this those sounds may change from episode to episode while I figure out what I like and what listeners like too. Experimentation with that seems like a good approach. To start out I went with the classic ballpark organ cavalry charge to open and the mid inning organ sound that also plays in ballparks to close. These are both really fun to hear, so hopefully it connects the ideas to the places for people, getting that preservation vibe. With that the only thing I had left was to put citations in the transcript, which I used Microsoft Word to make. I did have to do some editing and brush up after putting the audio file in the document, but that was minor compared to having to type it all out myself, although it helped me be more conscious of enunciation, which I think helped me in Gettysburg (more on that later). Anyway, after putting all the sources with the information I got from them, I copied everything into the draft of a post on the website, embedded the audio of the episode at the top, and now it is published on website. I hope it is good, I know I can improve but it is decent I think for a first real try outside of a class assignment.
Middle Atlantic Archaeology Conference
Gettysburg, PA. March 19-23. That was a long weekend. My Paper Presentation for my StoryMap project was at 8:50 AM on March 21, so we (Mary Washington Archaeology people) got there on the evening of the 19th and explored the battlefield and town of Gettysburg on the 20th while some workshops were happening as a way to take my mind off the presentation before it happened. I woke up on the morning of the 21st really nervous, which was a common feeling in the weeks leading up to it as I prepared for it. I guess jitters are normal, but as I went into the room where the presentation as happening I could not sit or stand still until I got up to talk. I led off the session, so that was nice to get it over with, and as soon as I got up there and saw at least a hundred people in front of me, I calmed down a lot. I would have thought that would freak me out more, but seeing that manty people there to hear me talk and see what the Negro Leagues were all about and why their ballparks matter, that fueled me. I started the presentation and just rolled through it.
Me at the beginning of my presentation, that was fun!
I spoke really well, which I guess makes sense because I spent so much time on it, I knew what I was talking about. I was also reading the paper out loud instead of having talking points, because that was what was recommended as the normal thing to do and since it was my first one I thought it was better to go with that option. I did really want to talk off an outline and have more audience engagement, as I do when I lead tours for places, but I see why this one had to be done like this too. After it was done I got really positive feedback from so many people. They told me how cool it was, asked where to find more information, offered ways to improve or add to the project, and just gave so much overwhelming support. I could not have asked for a better first conference presenting experience.
The crazy thing is, all of that was not even the best of it. Saturday evening, the 22nd, there was an awards ceremony where they announced the winners of the student paper/poster contest. There were three categories, one for graduate papers, one for posters, and one for undergraduate papers. I was surprised to see who won the undergraduate category
Me with the other winners of the Student Research contest and the organizers, that was a neat surprise.
I guess my hard work paid off. I am really proud of it and definitely excited. I was told there would be an opportunity to publish the paper with some fine tuning because I won, so I am going to see where that takes me if it is something feasible.
The conference ended with a CRM Skills workshop on Sunday, we dug Shovel Test pits on American Battlefield Trust land next to the National Military Park and learned how all that worked, so a pretty fun and hands on way to finish, That was a tiring yet awesome weekend. Thanks for the wishes of luck from my last post!
Next Steps
My next steps are first to take a break from the conference stuff. As cool as it was, it took a lot out of me and I need to chill. I think for this next cycle polishing the website with more color and pictures is a good idea, and maybe seeing if Michael Murphy is available to record the Preservation Overview Episode at some point and doing that. This seems like a good way to decompress after all I just did, and definitely a way to have fun with it. Until next time, thanks again!
Week 9 now, and I feel like time absolutely flew by last week, which means this week is going to be slower. Or maybe it’ll be two fast weeks in a row, followed by two slow weeks, I suppose we’ll see.
Passing the Time
I still haven’t received the cable connectors or paint varnish I need to continue the main side of the project, so I’ll go on a side quest to deal with another part of the project. I was going to have to get around to this anyway, so it works out.
The first thing I wanted to do from last week was add some support beams to lift the base of the display up. This would give room for both the screws in the Toa Inika’s feet, and a spot to place the Arduino board along with the wires running into it.
I figured the first step should be figuring out how I want to position the Arduino, which isn’t as simple as it seems.
In one pathway, I could keep it on the ground, with the wire outputs facing upwards, but then I would need to find some way to mount it to the ground so it stays in one place. I could 3D print a base, or use pieces of foam, but how would I connect either of those to the rest of the display? I could have a giant plate along the bottom of the display that also contains the stands for the foam in each corner, and then pressure fit the Plexiglass around it, but that would be quite a task to do with how small of a print area the 3D printers in the DKC have. I would have to split the plate up into multiple plates, which then presents the problem, how do I connect those plates together? It ends up being very convoluted.
Alternatively, I could flip the Arduino upside down, which would let me use its mounting holes to screw it into the foam, or into some sort of material between it and the foam, just like the Inika. The only issue this problem presents is the same as the Inika, being the stability of it and the foam. Ultimately, this is definitely the easier option in my head.
My idea is to either keep the board off-center on either the left or right side of the display, of course on the back side of it so that it is hidden away. So I got to testing out the position on the same foam block that Matoro and Nuparu stood on, but I quickly realized another issue.
The lip of the transparent housing around the board has an overhang on the side of the plugs. This gets in the way of both plugs pretty drastically. If left on, it would be incredibly difficult to attach a barrel plug, and would be practically impossible to attach a USB-C cable.
Thankfully, the board is easily removeable from the housing, so it’s no big issue, but I was definitely fond of using the housing if I could. But with it out of the way, there is no further issue.
The next thing I needed to do was measure how much space the board and cables needed. Even though I don’t necessarily know what kind of cables I’ll be using to plug into the board just yet, I opted to use some jumper wires which would provide more than enough space for any other type of cable.
With these in mind, I need at minimum 25.5mm of space between the bottom of the foam floor, and the real floor. It’s quite a large amount of space, so I’ll probably remeasure when I find out what the final cables will look like, but for now this will serve as a fine enough starting point.
I also had the idea of making a custom housing that the board can slide into. My idea is to copy the design of the current housing but remove the entire side with the lip and add additional overhangs around the remaining sides. This way, I can ensure the board is secure, while also making it somewhat easy to access in the event that I need to.
Before going ahead and grabbing measurements though, I opted to find out if there was a preexisting model that I could download to save me some time. While it wasn’t the first result, I found that this model suited my use close enough, I would just need to make some edits to it.
Building a Base 2
I chose to use only the base.stl model as it was closest to what I was aiming for. Before making any substantial edits though, I wanted to see how well the base design worked. I threw the model into Blender, added some mounting holes to the base, and printed the result.
I was fiddling around with it to see how loose it was, and surprisingly, I managed to get the board so that it fit just well enough to where it didn’t come out without some force. Initially, I thought I could just use this design as it.
But after further thought, and realizing I couldn’t get the board to stick like that again, I realized it’s probably for the best to just print the top of the case instead of making my edits. This is partially due to me being worried about potential accidents; if the board falls and hits something hard enough, I can’t guarantee that it won’t break something, so having a case would be some extra peace of mind. The other factor in my decision is due to the way the two plugs are nestled in the case. It’s not very pleasing to the eyes, and again, leaves too much room for error when plugging cables in.
So I printed out the top half of the case. Originally, I thought about making a modification so that the barrel plug was covered up, so that only the USB-C plug could be accessed, but I decided against it in case I ever need the barrel plug. It also saves me some hassle.
Revisiting the Rule of Cool
While waiting for the print to finish, I took another look at the poses I had each Toa in, because I just wasn’t satisfied enough with some of them. I started with Hewkii, since I had found an image of him in a pose that I really liked.
Something about it just caught my eye and spoke to me, although I’m not skilled enough to point out exactly what. It’s just a very satisfying pose.
From drab, to fab.
His old pose was VERY stiff and static now that I look at the comparison on my end, so I’m extra glad to have changed it.
It wasn’t as easy to copy over as I had thought, and while I know that the angle and camera I’m viewing it from makes a difference, I don’t feel I was quite able to capture each bit of the pose from the photo. But there’s still plenty of time to adjust it, so I’m not worried.
The next Toa that really bothers me is Jaller. I feel that his pose is too “elegant” and static, and doesn’t take enough advantage of how weird some of the Bionicle poses can be.
I messed around with him to see if I could make anything click. I thought about reusing his pose from the display tube, but I feel it was a bit too outlandish looking. It also just takes up too much space with how wide his stance is.
I ended up searching for images of him and seeing if I could find something I liked. I knew I wanted to go with some type of pose that displayed his inner Ta-Matoran* strength and courage, but I wanted it to be subtle and not going full into the “action hero main character” type of pose.
*Fun fact! – Elements and Prefixes
I was really desperate to put one of these here again, since it’s been a while from the last time I did one of these. This is quite a long one.
Prefixes in Bionicle refer to a character’s element. This originated with the first six elements using the first two letters of each Toa’s name, such as “Ta” coming from Tahu, “Ko” coming from Kopaka, “Onu” from Onua, and so on. This prefix is used when describing only Matoran and places (eg: Ta-Matoran meaning “Matoran of Fire”, or Ga-Metru meaning the water district of Metru-Nui), with Toa and Turaga simply using the straight English usage such as “Turaga of Earth” and “Toa of Air”.
Beyond the six elements of Fire, Water, Air, Earth, Stone, and Ice (corresponding to the prefix Ta, Ga, Le, Onu, Po, and Ko, respectively), there are also 10 secondary elements that were less common than the primary six. These include Light, Shadow, Sonics, Gravity, Plasma, Magnetism, “The Green” (aka, Plantlife), Lightning, Iron, and Psionics. Their associated prefixes are Av, Kra, De, Ba, Su, Fa, Bo, Vo, Fe, and Ce. These elements were typically seen only as additions to other elements or powers, but could still be the primary element of a creature (Such as with Takanvua being the Toa of Light, Makuta Teridax weilding Shadow, and Toa Jovan being the Toa of Magnetism).
The origins of these prefixes are quite fun, each originating from something in the real world, with the exception of Light and Shadow’s prefixes. “Av” comes from the Mask of Light’s name “Avohkii”, “Kra” comes from the Mask of Shadows “Kraahkan”, “De” is from the word “decibel”, “Ba” from the Greek word “baros” (meaning weight), “Su” from the word “superheated” (associated with plasma), “Fa” from the name of the scientist Michael Faraday (who contributed to the field of electromagnetism), “Bo” from “botany”, “Vo” from “volt”, “Fe” from iron’s chemical symbol, and “Ce” from “cerebrum”.
There’s so much more lore and uses from each of these elements, and I would be here all day writing about all of them. For more information, please see this page on biosector01.
There wasn’t really anything that caught my eye, just browsing on Google and Bing, so I went to BioMediaProject in case they had some extra material I hadn’t seen before. That’s when I saw this:
A render of Jaller, in the exact same pose I have Hahli in currently. I have no clue where this render comes from, and part of me doesn’t even believe its official, but I figured this was honestly the best option I had, again not including the display case pose.
It does cheat a little bit, as a majority of official Inika renders do. The camera is below the floor looking up at him, which makes him look like he’s balancing on one foot, and his sword also seems to go below the floor, but it’s definitely more tame compared to some of the others.
I copied the pose over, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied with the results as it just put his sword out of focus too much which, given how much effort I’ve put into making these swords light up, I definitely didn’t like. So I fumbled around with the pose a bit and came up with this:
(I forgot to take an image before re-posing him, so excuse the lack of a comparison)
I’m not sure why the perspective on my camera looks so off, but I can definitely assure that it looks much better in person. But I do quite like this pose a lot better than what I had before. It’s definitely more inspired by the display case than I had realized while making it, but I think I managed to pull out the good traits while leaving some of the bad traits of that pose behind.
I’m still really happy with Hahli’s pose, and while Kongu needs a bit of tweaking, I’m also still overall happy with his. And Matoro gets the only pass to be the stoic, heroic one of the group. So that just left Nuparu, who I really wanted to overhaul, but there really isn’t much that he can do given his claws, but I really didn’t want to leave him in the basic default pose he’s always in.
Looking him up, I wasn’t surprised to see almost every picture showcasing him two-handing (two-clawing?) his drill, so I again went to BioMediaProject to find extras, and found these two:
On the left is his stock photo. Every Lego set has one of these, but I’m unsure if they were ever used anywhere outside of the pages on Lego’s website that contain their instructions. But regardless, they clearly are taken by some third-party company, because a lot of them will have weird poses or even completely incorrect features (for example, Jaller’s stock photo shows him with his sword and Zamor launcher on opposite hands, and one of Thok’s photos shows him with his feet on backwards!). That being said though, sometimes that strangeness can be admiring, like in the case of Nuparu here.
Contrasting the real set photographed by people who didn’t understand it very well, is the digital render created by people who definitely had access to a style guide to follow. I’m again not sure where this render is from, or where it was used, but while it does feature Nuparu’s standard two-hand pose, there’s just something about it that makes it stick out from the rest I saw. I partially believe it’s in large part due to the way his eyes glow/shine, but I think having him be in a stance that’s a little more natural also definitely helps. It also only cheats one time, with his left arm being rotated in a way that isn’t possible with the real set.
I had a feeling that the pose on the right wouldn’t really translate well into real life, so I tried copying that first, and as I suspected, the appeal of the render comes in large part due to the way it’s stylized.
So I moved on to the stock photo pose. It definitely looked a little awkward, so I tried just messing around and seeing what I could come up with. I had a lot of trouble finding something for his open hand to do, and also finding a balance between showcasing his drill and his claws.
After a lot of trial and error, I eventually managed to come out with this:
I’m not 100% satisfied with it only because I can’t really explain the “story” of why he hit this pose. Granted, the Rule of Cool overrules this rule, but still, it’s not absolutely perfect.
I think what really makes it hard is that Nuparu suffers from the same issue the future sets from 2009 onwards would face, where his claws give him more of a realistic hand look, which can make unnatural poses look really awkward and noticeable, which isn’t a problem with the standard “hand” that the rest of the Inika have. Oh well.
Back to Business
I’ll let the Toa sit in their new poses for a while so that I can come back to them with fresh eyes and decide if I really like them all.
Now, full disclosure, the posing aspect took much longer than I thought it would, and it is now the next day from when I started printing the top case for the Arduino. This is all to say, the 3D print has finished.
I put the pieces together, and while the case looks and feels nice, the board inside is still entirely loose, which is exactly the problem I was trying to solve.
I solved this problem by attaching a piece of foam on the SPI pins on the back, and also adding the reset button that was provided with the 3D print. I also found some screws to fit on the mounting holes I added.
It’s not perfect, but it should get the job done. I also just really don’t want to reprint the case with a tiny modification.
But with that settled, I can go ahead and get more proper measurements to determine how much space I’ll need underneath. From a somewhat rough use of the micrometer, I came out to about 50 millimeters, which didn’t seem like too much. I attempted to simulate the space by using some wooden blocks that measured out at exactly 50 millimeters, and, well…
It IS a lot, way too much, in fact. Because remember, I have to cover both the foam, and the blocks. Some of that space can definitely be covered by the banner decal that will be wrapped around the display, but the paper for that is already so expensive as is. To cover ALL of this space, I would need to upsize to a massively sized paper, which would just end up making the design look awkward. This is not to mention that I would have all of that extra empty space sitting there for nothing, which makes it a complete waste.
I checked again and again, but I really don’t have the option to attach the Arduino like this, so I’ll need to reevaluate my plan.
The Tinker
I gave myself the requirement of keeping the board/case as hidden and as out of sight as possible, since it would just be lazy to slap it in the corner and call it a day. I know I can do better than that.
I managed to come up with two ideas that met this requirement. The first one I had was to put the board on top, where the Inika are, and disguise it as a stone, or something similar, that Kongu would be stepping on. His pose in the Piraka Online Animations, that I copied, seems to have him standing in such a way, which I think can definitely add to the coolness factor, give a bit of extra depth to the display overall, and help Kongu not get lost in the background.
However, it’s not a perfect solution. The first issue I ran into was figuring out how I was going to manage the cables. To this end, I had two more ideas. Either I can place them upside down and run them underneath the foam through a hole and then back up top into the Inika’s swords. Or, I could keep the board upright and incorporate some way to manage the cables in the design of the board’s disguise. I personally prefer the first method just for its simplicity.
Speaking of the disguise, that brings me to the biggest hurdle with this idea. I’m not entirely sure how I’ll create a design for this that works. Currently, I’m thinking that I can either redesign the 3D printed case for the board, or I can mess around with foam terrain. Both of these will require a lot of work and a lot of time no matter what, so that’s why I came up with a backup plan just in case.
My alternative plan is to keep the Arduino board underneath the foam base like the initial plan, but have it facing upright, and with a hole cut into the foam so that the cables can be plugged into it. This one is definitely less work overall, but it gives less ability to manipulate the cables so that they’re better hidden. I could have the cables run through the foam, but I don’t see any easy way of accomplishing that with my tools.
And just in case neither of these ideas work out, I have a third plan. Borrowing from the display case, I’d keep the Arduino board on the top of the display, and have wires running down behind a background, under the board, and then back up above into the Toa’s swords. The problem with this idea is that it would require fundamental changes to my overall design. First off, to hide the board at the top, I would want to add some sort of lid with a shield, just like the one seen in Jaller’s display, so that it’s not visible, but then that would mean the display couldn’t be viewed from above. It would also require me to add a background, again just like in Jaller’s display. And while I’m not entirely opposed to this, it will drive up costs, and I still don’t necessarily know if that’s what I want yet.
I’m still hesitant to fully dive into any option, so I want to prototype first.
Toiling Away
I chose to give a go at my second idea of putting the board underneath the base. Since the test foam I have already has some holes in it, I just borrowed one to test the idea so I wouldn’t have to worry about making another one.
As I expected though, doing it this way means the cables are very exposed. There may be a way I can blend them in, but it’s going to just be a lot of work that requires a more experienced hand, and a more organized mind, which I don’t possess either of.
So instead, I figured all of that effort would be better spent on creating a disguise.
First, I started with positioning so I could see what the final product might look like.
I’m honestly very happy with how this makes Kongu look. Quite honestly and plainly, it’s just straight awesome. I’m now certain this is the way I want to go, it’s just a matter of making it look good.
I also added some other Toa alongside Kongu, just to see if my theory that this would help him stick out was correct.
It was not, but I believe that’s due to him not actually being raised up at all. This may be a good thing, or I may end up changing it; I’ll see about it eventually.
Fun fact! – Kongu on the big screen
Wow, two fun facts in a single post. I must be spoiling you all.
While all of the Toa Inika made appearances in the first Bionicle movie (Bionicle: Mask of Light) as Matoran, some got more attention than others. Jala was the secondary protagonist, Hahli directly witnessed and chronicled Takanuva’s battle against Makuta, and both of them represented their village in the championship Kohlii match at the beginning of the film, with Huki representing Po-Koro in the match.
This left Kongu, Nuparu, and Matoro out, each of whom, as far as I know, were not seen at all in the movie. However, in the second movie Bionicle 2: Legends of Metru Nui, Kongu not only made a somewhat notable appearance, but also even had a few lines. His only scene was as the Le-Matoran working the chute system, that ran throughout Metru-Nui, being intimidated by Nidhiki and Krekka to reverse the direction of the chutes so the pair could catch the escaping Toa Metru Vakama, Matau, and Nokama.
Measurementing: The Sequel
I gave some more thought to my idea, and I was suddenly hit with a revelation. I had been worried about the wires sticking up out of the board, and while I figured I could hide them well enough in the disguise, I wasn’t sure how it would turn out.
But instead of that, I could essentially combine the two ideas I had by keeping the board above ground in a disguise, but flipping it over and making it so that the cables could go underneath the base, and then run directly to their respective Toa.
This provides two benefits. First, it of course makes hiding the cables much easier, but it also gives some use to the underside of the display, which in turn, will allow me to gather measurements a little bit easier, so I will try this design.
To get a prototype idea, I took the top part of the Arduino case, traced out the holes for the cables, and cut into the foam as best as I could while following the outlines.
It’s extremely messy, both in terms of the final outcome and the process itself. This is something I will need to fix if I plan to create the Arduino disguise out of foam. I’ll do some practice whenever I have a chance.
But, with these holes in the foam, I’m able to easily fit the cables underneath and make a separate hole for wherever they need to come back out of.
Looking at how much the cable droops, I feel that’s a good point of measurement, so I can assume that I only need room for the rest of the cables to be able to move a bit. Going off of this standard, I came out with about 15 millimeters of space; under half of the size of the wooden blocks!
To put it into a visual perspective, I found some rolls of electric tape that measured at 13 millimeters tall, so just slightly below what I want to do, and it looks much more respectable:
It still gives enough space for me to put cables underneath without them being practically glued to the foam, along with some extra leeway in case I find out I need a breadboard for whatever reason. It’ll also be much easier to design a decal strip for this amount of space.
So with that done, I must end the blog post here as I am out of time for this week. It wasn’t a lot of progress, but it was important innovations.
Coming Up Next
Cartland informed me that my materials have been purchased, but I should expect them to arrive the week after the next. This works out fine since I still have some progress to make on the foam side of things.
My plan for next week is to design a supporting beam structure to lift up the foam base. I currently have an idea of what I’m thinking of sketched out already, but I’m sure there’s something important about the design that I’m overlooking. Nonetheless, I’m confident I can finish it next week.
I also will practice more with painting and decorating the base, as the basic grey floor is too boring on its own. To this end, I’m thinking I can borrow some more techniques from Adam on YouTube, and I have some ideas already for what I think might look good.
And then, of course, I’ll need to figure out how I’m going to create this disguise for the Arduino board. I’m really, really not looking forward to this, especially with my extra foam being so limited. I know I can ask Cartland to purchase more, but again, I’m trying to keep costs generally low, again because of the upcoming Plexiglass and paper printing costs.
All of that should keep me more than busy enough to cover next week. But once I have all of those done, the only things left to do will be:
Finalize the ideas for the base paint and decorations
Get the cables attached to the Toa’s swords, and try to keep them organized
Apply both of the above on to the final foam base
Design and print the decals
Apply the Plexiglass
This definitely isn’t a fully comprehensive list, but it still shows that there’s not too much left to do. The hardest parts of this are nearly out of the way. With only 5 weeks left to go though, I definitely want to pick up the pace a bit.
Week 8 now, not counting spring break. This puts us at halfway through the semester. I feel like time has really slowed down now.
Updates
While I usually don’t talk about my personal life in these since it isn’t relevant to the project, I have a few things to bring up from spring break.
First of all, if anyone out there is looking to upgrade or build a new computer, I recommend not buying Nvidia GPU’s unless you have a really good deal on the high-end cards. Nvidia cards have been becoming increasingly overpriced compared to their competition, and their design choices baffle me. I had the cable for the 3090ti break on me because it’s been getting squished in every computer case I’ve had because the 3090ti is already so wide, and the cable just barely fits. And now AMD is producing the 9700xt which has amazing value for its performance.
Amazon also failed to deliver the replacement cable to my address, causing me to hunt it down the entire weekend despite getting overnight shipping, because the replacement wouldn’t arrive until today. Because my computer was out of commission, I ended up playing more of Armored Core 4 on the PlayStation 3, which has been really fun (after I got good at the game).
But besides that, there is one other package that arrived over the break that I have been beyond excited to talk about:
I managed to get my hands on the only Jaller store display I was able to find on the internet. It took some negotiating, some DoorDashing, and a bit of lucky patience, but it is finally in my hands at long last. This means I can now finally figure out how Lego wired up these swords.
The display, despite being in a bit of a broken state, poor Jaller, still lights up even brighter than some of my swords with new batteries in them. Despite my initial assumptions, it uses the same flashing feature as on a normal sword rather than a slow fade in and out, which already tells me that they still use the circuit board in the sword, so I worry that it will just be another case of soldering on to the custom board.
Nevertheless, let’s crack this open and find out for sure.
In The Flesh
Full disclosure, I had already opened this up just beforehand just to make sure I knew how, so the screws are easy to remove now, but they previously required some force.
Taking off the lid, the underside reveals that the button is connected to cables that plug into a cable connector, absolute shocker.
Beyond that, the cable that this connector plugs into runs behind the paper background, but I’m uncertain how to remove it currently (which I will have to figure out to be able to repair Jaller’s head).
Something I’d like to point out is the sheer amount of glue that is on this display. Every single joint, pin, pin hole, axle, axle hole, and even each Zamor sphere are absolutely encased in this stuff, almost to a comedic degree.
As Cartland said, “They really didn’t want this going anywhere!”, which definitely checks out. Between the PET-G plastic casing, the glue everywhere, and the security ties around Jaller’s waist and neck, I have to imagine it wouldn’t even budge even if a kid threw it on the ground and jumped on it like a trampoline.
At least in 2006 anyway. It seems that joints are commonly broken on these displays today, from everything I have seen online. No matter though, this display is safe in my hands now and I will do my best to treat it with the respect it deserves.
I already went through the process of purchasing some replacement parts for both the currently broken joints, and for any other joints that may break during this process. But before tearing any of it off, I would like to find out what type of glue is used on these so that I can find something similar for the replacement.
The glue is oddly springy, transparent, rubbery, and it looks like it flowed very well with how precise some of it fits over these parts. Still though, everyone I have asked so far hasn’t had any clue what it could be. I have a feeling Michael will know though.
Continuing the dismantling process to reach the sword, I took off the bottom cap thinking that it would let me take the plastic barrier around Jaller, but unfortunately, I was wrong.
Jaller, the background, and the plastic are all connected together somehow. I’m still mostly uncertain how, so I continued to take apart what I could.
There are a few things on the back side worth mentioning. First is the clamp that was used to attach the display to store shelves, which is screwed in with a massive flathead screw. Furthermore, there is also two small Philips screws, and what seems to be the security band around Jaller’s waist wrapped around two bolts screwed on by nuts.
I decided to remove the smaller screws first, which, besides making me realize how sharp they were (and putting a few tiny holes in my skin), did a lot of nothing, so I opted to remove the nuts next.
I untied the security cable, which made me a little uncomfortable, but not too worried since it’s the same type of cable used for bread bags. From there, it was as simple as unscrewing the nuts with a wrench. Unfortunately, this also led to nothing.
So I decided to try removing the clamp, thinking that it was hiding some other screws behind it. I was able to take off the bottom part just by turning the screw on the bottom, which loosened a nut that was hidden on the top part.
Doing this… also revealed nothing new. I wasn’t really sure where to go from here, so I just tried prying off what I could.
The transparent white piece, that the initial two nuts kept in place, moved a bit but didn’t come off. Although, it does look like it is a separate tube and cap piece, so maybe with some more force it may be persuaded to come apart.
Before trying that though, I tried to see if the entire black strip would budge at all. While it did move in the corners, it does seem the piece is glued on, which makes me hesitant to remove without knowing how I’ll be able to put it back together. I’ll see what Michael has to say regarding this.
It looked like my only option was to try taking off the white block from earlier, so I got to work. By twisting and turning while gently holding Jaller and pulling it, it did come out, but not in the way I was hoping.
Instead of just the cap coming off, the entire tube came out. I’m assuming this is going to make it more difficult to put it back in later.
But with it out of the way, Jaller is now much looser, but still held down by the wiring. The wiring goes behind the Inika background, to a space between it and the black strip on the back, so I have no way of taking it out without removing the glue.
Since I won’t have a chance to talk with Michael until tomorrow, and it’ll be even longer until I get the replacement glue, I decided to just try and wrestle Jaller out of the case as best as I can, and open the battery cover from there.
I removed the cable around his waist and pulled his broken neck socket through the cable around it, but I still couldn’t get him out of the case, until I spotted a rather well hidden cable wrapping the wires around his arm.
It was a bit of a pain to get untied at first since I couldn’t find the point where it stuck out, but after some prodding with tweezers, I was able to get it untied and pull Jaller out of the case.
Thankfully, there was no glue on the battery cover screws, so they came out incredibly easily.
At long last, I’m able to pull it off and finally discover how it was done by Lego, and…
It’s… nothing special at all?
It’s literally just the normal component that’s in every standard Inika? That’s it?
I mean, I suppose my guess was correct, but I was really hoping I would be wrong. Learning this discovery has dampened my spirits quite a bit. It’s starting to seem like the best option, or maybe even the only option, will be to solder my cables together. I’ll have to brainstorm incredibly hard to figure out a solution.
But, with this discovery made, I have no more use in tearing this display apart anymore. I’ll work on fixing up Jaller as a side project and keep the progress chronicled on here, but other than noting what glue is used I’m guessing that’s about all there is to this display. Although it will still serve as a good inspiration of what I want my display to look like.
While reassembling the case, I first forgot to put the battery cover back on to the sword, and then had a lot of trouble with the two nuts on the back of the case. I discovered that they were actually attached to Philips-head screws behind the paper background, and I wasn’t able to tighten the nuts back on because the screws became loose. So, I unfortunately had to damage the paper a little bit to fit a screwdriver in and allow me to tighten the nuts on.
Thankfully, the damage is mostly hidden behind Jaller, but I absolutely want to avoid something like this in the future if I can help it.
Besides that, I didn’t have any trouble putting the transparent rod back in, which was good, and the rest of the case was just as easy to put back together as it was to take apart. I’m still not sure what those two smaller screws on the back were used for; they didn’t affect anything coming out, and they screwed back in without any issues, so I know they weren’t just keeping the paper background flattened, or something.
As I said before, I’ll work on repairing this as a side project, and it’ll still be useful to have for references, but I’m still a bit devastated that I wasn’t able to find any more clues on how to tackle the wiring.
Back to the Start
While I was working with the display case, I tried coming up with solutions to my wiring problem, and I did come up with something. I don’t believe it’s a good something, but it’s better than nothing.
Every time I’ve dug around the electronic part boxes in the DKC, there’s been one cable that has caught my eye:
This oddly short cable connector. I’ve seen some that look similar to it, pictured on either side of the connector below, but I’ve been unable to find any similar connector that is as short as it.
I wasn’t really sure how to look it up, so I asked ChatGPT about it.
The AI told me that it’s most likely a modified version of the cable connectors seen above. This would explain why I can’t find one of these length’s out of the box, and why it also has tape, or perhaps a shrink-wrap, around the cables.
With this knowledge, I attempted to try making a modification myself. I took two of the single wire connectors (because I couldn’t find any of the 2 pin ones), wrapped them together in electrical tape, and then just tried cutting them in half with cutting pliers. I then wrapped the cut point in more electrical tape, and was left with this:
It’s not the best, and the terminals inside the plastic housing are trying to fall out, but it should technically work.
I tried to fit it into Matoro’s test sword, but unfortunately the design is still too long, and the tape isn’t flexible enough to fit in, but I also can’t remove any more of the housing or tape since the metal terminals will fall out, so this design does not work.
It seems my best option is to just use one of the basic white 2 pin connectors commonly seen on Amazon, so that’s what I’ll have Cartland buy.
Doing the same thing over and over…
While I await the arrival of the cable connectors, I opted to continue refining the prototype I have now.
I took the only available cable connector here and modified my LED block until it fit properly, giving me this result:
I also switched out the yellow LED that was previously in it to a blue one to match Matoro’s sword. While it looks similar to when it had the yellow LED, there are two key changes.
First, I removed a section of the leg splitting bar in the middle. I found that it was incredibly difficult to remove the yellow LED and then insert the blue one because of the bar, plus it also limited the agility of the legs which wasn’t ideal. Going forward, I will incorporate this change into the initial design of the block.
And second, I removed an extra corner by the wires. This was because while trying to fit it into Matoro’s sword, the cables needed a bit of extra space to be flexible enough to bend the way I needed them to. I won’t be able to apply this change to the base model though, since the side the cables run through will change depending on the position of the Toa’s sword. Whatever way will hide the cables the most is the way I’ll orient them.
I also plan to add a proper lid to this design as well. While removing the leg splitter allows the legs to move more freely, it also causes the LED to fall out fairly easily. Adding a lid would solve this problem with no hassle. For the lid, all I need is a 1mm thick plate in the shape of the bottom of the block, with some pins to keep it locked in place, just like the original design.
I printed the design a couple of times and messed around with it, but unfortunately I discovered a few flaws. First, the pins on the LED block itself made the whole thing awkward to print, and no matter which way I did it, the pins never came out round enough to fit into the lid. And the lid itself was too weak, snapping open each time I tried fitting it onto the LED block pins. I also generally struggled to keep the wires contained within the block and sword compartment.
I’m not sure if increasing the internal density of both the block and lid would help, or if I just need to make the pins bigger, but regardless I wanted to take a break from it while I wait for the rest of the cable connectors to arrive.
Back to Base-ics
I wanted to focus again on the base of the display, since I felt a little worried about how little progress I’ve made on it.
I did some painting on a separate piece of XPS foam again just to get more practice with the actual colors, now that I’m more confident in what I need to do for it.
On the underside of the test piece of XPS foam, I coated it in a mixture of Mod Podge and black acrylic paint, painting two layers on it, to act as a primer. It dried super quickly, giving a pretty satisfying result.
There are a few bumps along the surface that I want to avoid when creating the final product, but I’m not entirely sure what’s causing them. My current guess is that it’s just the brush that I’m using. I’ll probably try cleaning it out as thoroughly as I can and hope it helps.
But, continuing onward, I painted a layer of gray over the primer mixture. While the idea I have in mind is to have a metal-like floor, and the gray I’m using is matte, I’m assuming adding a semi-glossy paint varnish will help achieve the look. If not, then I’ll have to order specifically a silver color paint.
While waiting for this layer to dry, I began printing the bolt and nut idea I had from awhile back, so that I can hopefully ground the Toa without worry. As much as I’d like to use the same technique from the Jaller display case, it unfortunately won’t work too well in my larger case.
Results
The first thing I noticed after it came out was that it’s just a tiny bit small.
The screw does fit within a pin hole, so that unfortunately means I can’t really make this design much bigger, and because of its size, there’s a lot of imperfections on the bolt so that it won’t screw into the block without a lot more effort.
As I was fiddling around with it though, I suddenly realized I’m just trying to do the exact same thing as seen on Jaller’s display, just with a different looking nut. So, I went digging for some nuts and bolts.
I also grabbed some basic screws just to see how they would work, and tried them first with Matoro.
Which worked surprisingly well. I’m still a little worried about the long-term stability of this solution, but I’m thinking that I can place a block of wood, or something of similar material, underneath the foam for the nails to dig into. I’ll only do that if I feel like I really need to though, as getting nails of appropriate length, along with specific sizes of some material to screw into will be annoying to deal with.
But regardless, I did the same with Nuparu just to try the method with his feet. While the pins in his feet are a bit more troublesome to access, the technique works just as well.
This now means we have a solution for both the anchoring problem and the wiring problem. The only thing left to do is practice hiding the wiring around the Toa and running it through the foam to connect to the Arduino board. One I’m confident in doing so, I’ll be ready to start putting this thing together.
And since I can’t move forward without those cable connectors, this will be a good stopping point for the week. I really feel like I’m heading towards a conclusion with this project, even if there’s still so much left to do.
I’m still incredibly worried about the Plexiglass casing, and I can’t even say “I’ll worry about it when the time comes” because that time is coming up very soon. I imagine I will be dealing with it in no more than three weeks. And beyond that, there’s still the issue of the printed graphics and such, which will come up just as fast as the Plexiglass.
But there’s nothing I can do about it right now except get some rest and prepare for the upcoming challenge.
While looking back on some old projects, I dug up something wonderful. It is a simple idea, creating music from the ratios found among the orbital periods of stellar bodies.
Each body (planet) has a single note assigned to it, this note is selected from a scale and the organization of the pitches is based in either the mass or diameter of the celestial body.
It has been at least three years and I have yet to find the notes I took on this idea so I will have to recalculate what the ratios are.
The rhythm of this musical idea comes from the orbital periods, or how long each planet takes to orbit the sun. I took Mercury as my reference point since it orbits the fastest. One orbit of Mercury’s was then used to find a ratio of all other planets.
Finally, the note duration was determined by the distance from the sun, this was purely subjective as I thought it gave a nice balance between the persistent ticking of mercury and the rarer and more impactful low tones of Saturn and Jupiter.
At the time I was making this I thought it would be very cool to have a visual to accompany it, well, here’s the perfect opportunity.
What I am going to change:
The initial project was relatively rough, I used a very similar sound for each note which makes it cohesive but I don’t find it particularly compelling. As I take the time to edit the project and work on it further, my main goal will be doing more sound design. I would like to characterize the planets more with their sounds and make something more generally pleasant sounding.
I also want to spend some time turning this from an endless loop into an arranged piece of music, which conveys a stronger sense of direction.
What I am going to add:
As stated above, I would like to visualize this, I think a very direct visual of abstract planets orbiting a sun will work wonderfully. To begin illustrating this idea, I have made a new p5.js sketch that simply shows a rough orbit for each planet. The scale is roughly accurate in that the orbits represent the average distance from the sun for each planet, though, they are perfectly circular and flat. Below is the output of that sketch, that tiny little spec in the middle is the sun (at this resolution the sun isn’t actually visible, the planets themselves will be orders of magnitude smaller) and the largest circle is the orbit of Neptune.
I think I will have to spend some time discovering a good balance between accuracy and legibility, I don’t imagine I’ll keep the sun this small and the planets will be impossible to see at this scale (as they are, in fact, incredibly small next to the sun).
Below is the code that produced the above image
const diameterOrbitScale = .075;
function setup() {
createCanvas(diameterOrbitScale*3000, diameterOrbitScale*3000, WEBGL2);
noLoop();
}
function draw() {
background(225);
stroke(color(0,0,0)); // Black outline
strokeWeight(1); // Thin outline
// The Sun
push(); // begin drawing group with isolated styling/effects
fill(color(255, 255, 0)); // yellow
noStroke(); // No Outline
circle(width/2, height/2, diameterOrbitScale*1); // Sun
pop(); // stop drawing group
// Inner Orbits
noFill(); // No fill color
circle(width/2, height/2, diameterOrbitScale*42); // Mercury orbit
circle(width/2, height/2, diameterOrbitScale*75); // Venus orbit
circle(width/2, height/2, diameterOrbitScale*110); // Earth orbit
circle(width/2, height/2, diameterOrbitScale*165); // Mars orbit
// Outer Orbits
circle(width/2, height/2, diameterOrbitScale*560); // Jupiter orbit
circle(width/2, height/2, diameterOrbitScale*1000); // Saturn orbit
circle(width/2, height/2, diameterOrbitScale*2000); // Uranus orbit
circle(width/2, height/2, diameterOrbitScale*3000); // Neptune orbit
}
I spent a lot of last week working on midterms for classes, so I wound up having to do both weeks worth of tasks over Spring Break. This is not a bad thing, as I enjoy working on this project and I was mostly hanging out at home anyway. The only roadblock I hit with that is that my computer drive is too full to download the new audio file for Episode 1 and my external drive to put things on and clear space is at school in Fredericksburg, while I am at home in Fairfax. I need to be able to download it to put it in Soundtrap to add music and other transitions to the audio, so it seems like that will have to wait until the next round as the last step before publishing this episode.
I still had plenty to work on though. I built out the website more, linking the StoryMap to one of the pages and starting to make road trip itinerary maps for another page. To link the StoryMap, I could not figure out how to make the title card for that page bring me directly to the StoryMap, even Google was no help there, so I wound up writing a little bit about the StoryMap and its purpose on that page and providing a physical link. That can probably change pretty easily to make it better, but for now it seems like it will work. For the road trip maps, I used google maps to outline a possible trip and linked to each google maps page so if anyone wants to change order, add, or take away for their own use, they have that ability. So far I only have 3 maps. One is for ballparks on the National Register, one is for ballparks on the StoryMap not on the National Register, and one is for baseball related museums. I am going to add more, I am just not sure what would be good yet.
A screenshot of the map for National Register listed ballparks. This is one possible choice out of a few on the website
As far as the podcast prep, I have spent a lot of time with supplemental material. I listened to the episode again to find what I needed to elaborate on and wrote some information to go on the website for those things, and I found sources to back it up and cited them. That part was easy, but also the most time consuming. I also found the rest of the sources I need to cite in the transcript once I get to that, so that will make it easier once I get to it. I am storing everything in Zotero, which generates citations on its own. This really helps the process go quicker, and makes it easy for me to go back to different sources. I also listened to some of the stock music in Adobe Podcasts, and while some of it is okay, it is not quite the vibe I am looking for so hopefully Soundtrap will have something better.
Conference Prep Some More
Wednesday February 26 was when my paper was due for the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference, so I turned that in then. Really it is due when I present on March 21, but I entered a student contest for it, so that is why it was due sooner. Now all I have to worry about is the presentation, and I have all my pictures, I just need to make a PowerPoint and prepare what I am going to say. I went to the Southeastern Archaeological Conference in Williamsburg, VA in November, and a lot of presenters just read their paper like a script. I could do that, but as someone who does a lot of interpretive programs I would rather have an outline for myself and talk more casually about things than read a script. I feel like it makes it more engaging and a better quality conversation overall. I am going to use the paper to make that outline, but it will be more bullet points for the presentation. For the Powerpoint, I am making it really simple with just pictures to back up my talking and show the audience the ballparks, people, and other resources I am talking about. I have a lot to show, and I may have to find some different pictures to go in it, but I have most of what I need already so that should be attainable.
Next Steps
When I return to school, I am going to clear the space on my computer to download the audio and finish that, then I am going to fix up the transcript for spelling and punctuation errors and cite everything in that. When that is done I think it will be ready to go up on the site, so hopefully that will be part of the next update. The Conference will also be included though, since that is at the end of the next two weeks, so time might hold me up a little bit, but I figure I can shoot high and be humbled if needed. That is part of the fun, and I learn something regardless so I consider that a good thing. Wish me luck in Gettysburg!
Week 7 now, hopefully it’s a little more organized than last week went.
Painting Update, again
Starting off this post, I’m happy to report that the acrylic paint I applied from last week has dried fully and successfully.
The gray acrylic paint is as dry as the brown oil paint is, in only a fraction of the time.
Of course, I need to thicken it quite a bit so that the streaks and primer aren’t visible, but this is good knowledge to have.
Furthermore, I have found that it is best to paint on the mod podge primer instead of just straight black paint or on to the board directly. The primer is effective in keeping the paint stuck on, and it doesn’t rub off on to my finger like the other two applications do.
I’ll apply some extra layers and see how it turns out, but we finally have a conclusion on this saga in sight.
Mind the Gap
Keeping to the theme of the XPS boards, something I failed to do last week was apply hole filler to the gap of the display board, which I will remedy now.
The seam is a lot smaller than I remember it being, and the hole filler putty I have is meant for much larger holes, but I’ll make it work. I opted to use the tip of a skewer to dip into the putty and fill the crack.
I had some trouble getting the putty to come off the skewer and stick to the foam, but a little bit of persistence changed that up. I also came to the realization that the putty wasn’t just going to fall into the seam on its own, so I opted to place some “little wormy dealies”, as Adam so lovingly refers to them as, along it, and then smoosh it down with another popsicle stick.
While it and the paint dry and set, I’ll do some more digging into cable connectors.
Forming a Connection
After multiple hours of research, chatting with ChatGPT, more research, daydreaming, and finally some experimentation, I discovered that the best option I have, if I don’t want to solder wires together directly, is to readjust my LED block design.
The problem I was facing is just the lack of space to work with. Without any changes, my only option is to have items be custom made for my needs, which I want to avoid. Thus meaning, I have to make some fundamental changes.
While throwing ideas at the wall, I ended up forming the idea of turning the LED on its side so its legs are facing to the left or right of the block, when looking from up top. This would then let me fit a basic 2 pin connector in the empty space.
A very rough prototype
To accommodate for the changes made in my prototype, I switched the LED leg separator to be on its side rather than facing upwards, which will give me the freedom to lay the LED on its side, while still being supported from underneath, and hopefully also keeping the legs from crossing over each other.
I also added a base to one side of the empty compartment so that I can create gaps in the sides of it without compromising the structural integrity of the block.
I’ll need to make some more tweaks, but a fuller prototype looks as such:
I opted to use a yellow LED since I was worried about running out of other colors
I worked to try and fit this contraption into Matoro’s empty sword, but I had some serious design flaws that stopped me. Notably, I had trouble getting the LED to stay connected to the connector while I was fitting it into the sword.
It frustrated me a great deal, so I opted to take a break from it for a bit. I have something cooking up in the background that will hopefully solve all of my problems here, but I’ll wait until I have tangible results to announce that.
Based? Based on what?
To pass the time, I decided to move back to the display base. I originally intended to paint it now, but I realized it would probably be a better idea to figure out how I’m going to keep the Toa positioned on it before that.
I brainstormed ideas for a bit, and I figured it would be easiest to make use of the pin holes that are on the Toa’s feet already. I came up with the idea of having a custom printed pin with a stopper on top of it that would connect through the foot and into a Lego pin connector that is under, or within, the foam. I also thought of making a web of Technic rods underneath the foam that the Toa would connect into, but I don’t believe it would be very stable.
I continued on the pin stopper idea and eventually thought of a design that was literally just a normal screw, which gave me the brilliant idea to try drilling a screw in. Attempting this with the small screws from the sword’s battery cover yielded acceptable results… Until I gave the slightest bit of tugging which ripped the screws out, as I expected.
To remedy this, I thought back to my small experience with theater set creation and home improvement. When you want to hang something up by means of screws in a wall, you either check to make sure you’re drilling into a stud, or you use an anchor.
I searched up to see if there were any screw anchors I could 3D print, but while browsing through them I suddenly thought of an alternative idea on how to keep the Toa in place.
Anyone who has bought a Figma or Nendoroid before will be familiar with the idea of having a transparent stand that connects to the figure to keep them from falling over. I thought about trying this idea, but I realized very quickly that it still leaves me with the same problem. How do I stabilize the stand? Screwing it in seems to be the only option.
So I continued looking for information about anchors.
That Ship Sailed
I searched to see if anyone had tried putting anchors in foam before, and I came across one blog post where someone was asking about just that. Unfortunately, most of the responses said that it just isn’t going to work, because foam doesn’t have enough structural integrity to keep even the anchors in place.
So it was back to brainstorming. Keeping with the screw idea, I came up with using a bolt and nut style design. My idea is to have bolts that run through the pin holes on the Inika’s feet that will then screw into a nut embedded into a plate underneath the foam.
My thought process for putting the nut into a larger plate is that it’ll add more surface area to prevent the nut from tearing a hole straight through the foam. Furthermore, I’m thinking that I can embed the nut design into a larger plastic plate so that there’s even less of a chance it’ll damage the foam. But before that, we need to try a prototype to make sure the idea works at all.
I used a free nut and bolt model and made the necessary modifications to each of them in Blender.
I ran out of time for this week, quite suddenly, might I add. Next week is Spring Break so it’ll actually be two weeks before I return to this project again. I’m looking forward to the refresh.
Issues have been resolved! It turns out a combination of needing to clear out space on my computer because the hard drive was full (it would not download the audio and I could not figure out why, gotta love troubleshooting and independent problem solving!) and needing to change the audio file from a .WAV file to a .mp3 file were all I needed to do. I used Sound Trap to do this, just putting the .WAV in and exporting it as a .mp3 and putting that into Adobe Podcasts. It transcribed easily and now I can use that to edit. Huzzah! Now to tolerate listening to myself talk. I am thankful I could edit out all the um’s, uhh’s, like’s, and dead air space without having to listen because that would have been torture, and I cut about 9 minutes off the episode by cleaning all of that out. That is wild, I thought I was a better talker than that. Anyway, progress is being made, so now I can have some fun playing with everything.
The Editing Workspace for Episode 1 on Adobe Podcasts. It’s a pretty cool system to use.
After cutting everything that was just filler space out, I listened to it again to make sure it still flowed smoothly, and I feel pretty good about where it is at. I do have some small issues with enunciation, but that is not something I can fix with editing, I just need to work on that in future episodes, and that will come with practice.
Creating preservingourpastime.com
This is progressing too, slowly, but it’s getting there. I installed WordPress on the domain and then had absolutely no clue what I was doing. A DKC consultation appointment came in clutch there. They showed me how to add pages to the site, how embedding things works, and a basic overview of how to put other things on the site. After that I started playing with it, put in pages for the StoryMap, Podcast, and some road trip ideas, and now I need to populate these pages with content. I have some preliminary road trip maps already made for the ballparks I researched, so that will start that page. I will put the podcast up once I finish editing and making the extra content to go with it. Embedding a StoryMap gave me a challenge, so I will have to figure out how to do that too. It seems fun to build out so far, and I’m sure it will be more so once I figure more features out.
The shell of what the website will become, Seems like a good start
Side Quests for the Project
During this stretch of the Fellowship, not one but two side quests came up. The first is that I started writing a paper to present my research from the StoryMap at the Middle Atlantic Archaeological Conference in Gettysburg, PA in mid March. That is pretty awesome and not at all stressful, but I have had help from my Archaeology professor to know how to format the paper and what kinds of things I should write about. Now just writing the paper with the research I have already done is pretty straight forward. I have been trying to find ways to emphasize baseball as something to care about while appealing to preservationists who may not care about baseball specifically, so that part had been a fun brain puzzle. I wrote a draft and am now working on refining the paper to make it coherent and captivating. Now that I’ve written something, I’m getting pretty excited for the presentation even though it is not for another month, but that allows me to make sure it is as good as it can be.
Side Quest number two is that one of my former history professors is teaching an American Studies class this semester called “Baseball in America” and this week is about Historic Ballparks. He asked me to come teach his class for a day (Friday, February 21 if you were wondering), so I agreed because he has taught a couple of my favorite classes in the past and it is a chance to show off what I have done so far with the project. I have been brainstorming that, and preparing ideas for how to best use it as a teaching tool in a classroom environment. Going to the actual class I just had my StoryMap and an outline of basic points, figuring I’d just talk about things and make it more of a discussion. I actually used the part of my Preservation Overview podcast episode outline about integrity as a guide for my discussion, using examples from the StoryMap of how the different aspects of integrity are used in different ballparks, and that seemed really well received by the class. After talking about integrity, I talked about adaptive reuse and how ballparks that are no longer in use can still serve a purpose for their communities. That was an even better discussion and the class had a lot of really good ideas. I am really proud of how well I did, and the professor also had positive things to say, teaching is cool, and I hope I get to do it more. I guess in a way that is what I am doing with the podcast, so that is a big added bonus.
Next Steps
For editing the Podcast, now that I have gotten all of the clunky audio jibber jabber out, I can start adding transition sound effects and other things to make it a polished episode. That should not take too long, and once that is done the audio file itself will be ready. I am going to use SoundTrap for that, since it is a little more intuitive for what I know already.
For the supplemental content, I need to put the final file into word to transcribe again, then edit it to make sure things are spelled right with good punctuation, then I need to cite my sources. I also need to write a little more context for some of the things I talked about to make it make more sense for the webpage for the episode, so all of that will take a little more time.
For the website, I need to put the StoryMap and Road Trips into those pages, and maybe write some stuff and add pictures for the homepage too so that it actually looks appealing for people that might want to use the site.
This seems like a lot, but it is manageable and I think will make it look and sound a lot better. That’s all for this update, baseball is fun.
Kicking off week 6, I did not manage to get acrylic paint over the weekend, so I will have Cartland order some off Amazon, where it will hopefully arrive quickly.
I don’t have anything witty to say while writing this, so let’s just get right into business.
Solving the Enigma
Because there is still some time before I can print on the 3D printer today, and because I can’t paint the base like I intended, I decided to look into the cabling process again, since I will need to figure out how to run these cables to the LED lights soon.
I just decided to look at the official Toa Jaller tube display, to get some ideas.
I initially was having trouble finding some pictures of it that showed more than the front-side view, but eventually I ran into this amazing video on YouTube that goes into a lot more detail for the tube:
At around the 3:46 timestamp, the reviewer provides this perfect, fantastic shot which shows off the wiring:
From the frame, we can see that Lego made some small holes at the base of the sword, just large enough to run some wiring through. This process proves to me that I won’t really have another option other than to make holes of my own on my swords, so I will need to find the proper tool to do so.
Furthermore, I also reached out to the Instagram account bionicle_sealed_history to ask if he had any more information on these displays. While he didn’t know specifically how the cables were run through the sword, he did inform me of some very important details.
For one, I was made aware of a larger Inika display that shows off Jaller, Matoro, Nuparu, Hahli, and the Piraka Vezon and his cursed Fenrakk. While I knew that there were other Inika displays like this, this one specifically had a light up function for the Toa which I did not see in any other Inika displays (it was also seemingly triggered by motion!).
Fun fact – Vezon and Fenrakk
Story spoilers for Bionicle 2006 in this fact! I’ve tried to keep spoilers light for any of those who are interested in tackling Bionicle’s story in chronological order, but this will be an exception because I have the urge to write one of these facts.
Vezon (pronounced “vey-zon” and not “vee-zon”) was the secret seventh Piraka, created after Hakann used the Spear of Fusion on Vezok (also pronounced “vey-zok”), causing him to split into two. Vezon was (somehow) more insane than Vezok, and would eventually betray the Piraka to try and beat them to finding the Mask of Life on Voya Nui.
While the Piraka, and subsequently the Toa Inika (and most likely also Toa Jovan’s team), had to face multiple trial chambers on the path to reach the Mask of Life, Vezon was allowed to freely pass all of them and take the Mask of Life.
However, the Mask had tricked him into becoming a guardian for itself. Instead of granting its powers to Vezon, like it would with a being who was destined to wear it, it fused itself to his head and became chained to an enlarged Fenrakk spider, cursed to be a guardian of the mask and never leave the Chamber of Life.
On top of this, I was told the following regarding both the larger display and the Jaller tube:
“The cable was routed along the arm to the back of the Toa. In the case of the small display, the cables were routed underneath the background paper. For the large display, the cables were routed through the Toa’s leg and under the base.”
While I’m unable to spot the cables in the image due to Instagram’s horrible compression methods (which is probably a good sign?), I at least have a good enough of an idea to figure out how to set up the cables for myself; the specifics of which I will figure out once I reach that step.
But first, I need a drill, and a very, very tiny drill bit.
A slight aside
Further regarding the display case shown above, it also provides a good example of what I’m wanting my final product to look like. Notably, I’ll be reusing the paper background and the small set information displays at the base of each Toa (and Vezon).
I plan to have the chain-link fence around the edges of the display by using armature wire, as previously mentioned in another blog post, and I plan to have a strip of paper running around the bottom. In the case of this display, this strip only has the Lego logo and a hand motion icon, but I have some ideas to make mine stick out a lot more.
I also particularly like the addition of the Inika logo on the top left, so maybe I’ll consider adding it on to my display. I’ll see how I’m feeling.
Checking up on a friend
I still have some time before I’m able to use the 3D printer, so I decided to check in on the XPS boards I had glued together a couple of weeks ago, because I just realized that I hadn’t done that.
They seem to have set well enough. They feel sturdy, but I wouldn’t be comfortable with applying a ton of force to them. The seam in the middle is bothering me quite a bit though, but I can figure out how to seal it up.
I went back to check North of the Border for some references, because I remember that he has a certain way of creating mud for his displays, and I planned to use whatever mixture he uses to fill in this seam.
Luckily for me, he just recently created a creative display featuring the popular Moo Deng (my beloved) and another pygmy hippo battling it out on an outdoor terrain.
While creating the base for Moo Deng, instead of using his typical combination of Mod Podge and some other items, he just used hole filler to create the mud. It’s so simple, it’s genius. So I now will buy myself some hole filler to seal the gap between my boards (and also to just have on hand).
Also, while I was scrolling through the video to see the mud process, I spotted Adam using the exact kind of drill I was thinking of using for the Inika swords. I suppose I had just forgotten I got that from him. I checked the description to see if he linked the exact drill he used, but no luck. I assume it doesn’t really matter which one I use though.
Fun fact! – Moo Deng’s name
Moo Deng is a pygmy hippo in Thailand, and as such her name is of Thai origin, with “deng” meaning “(to) bounce or spring”, and “moo” just meaning pork. So Moo Deng quite literally means “bouncy pork”!
Looking Out for the Little Guy
At long last I have the 3D printer available. I immediately put my sliced LED block model to print. Thankfully because it’s so small, it doesn’t take very long at all, even at the highest quality. This will be crucial for making the most of my time.
After a short time, I got this result:
Not bad for a first draft, but it definitely can be improved upon. The studs on my block are a little bit taller than the original, and seem to be just barely thinner in diameter. The LED slot is also too thin to fit an LED in without some damage. As for how it fits in the sword…
As they say: “Like a glove”. This surprised even me, as I fully expected to have more than a few measurements off by just enough to make a difference, but even the clips I designed are doing very well at their job.
There’s even enough extra room for a circuit board between the block and battery cover!
It isn’t perfect however. Like I said, I’ll need to readjust the tube where the LED will slot in, because even putting some force on the LED doesn’t make it slot in very well, and it also expands the plastic, meaning the block won’t fit in the sword as is.
I’m also thinking about making the battery compartment on the block hollow. Right now I just have it filled in completely solid, but hollowing it out will both reduce the print time even further, and also allow me to fit the cables in.
I applied these adjustments to the model in Blender to get this:
For the sake of documenting my changes, I hollowed out the battery casing but left a divider so cables would not touch, added a slight curve to the inside of the LED tube by using an elongated sphere to hopefully fit the LED better, and I also added a slight bevel to some edges for decoration and for (hopefully) an easier time putting the LED in the block.
These changes only removed a minute of printing time (down from 11), which is less than I hoped, but it’ll probably make a bigger difference with higher qualities.
But, after a few micro adjustments, and a little bit of a printer hiccup, I came out with this:
There’s a tiny bit of wiggle room for the LED, but it’s not noticeable enough to where I can confidently make another adjustment to the sizing, so this is fine enough.
But with that, we can now work on a functioning prototype block.
A Conundrum
I originally thought of using a cut to size perfboard to solder the LED and cables on to, but unfortunately, I discovered that perfboards are about twice as thick as the original circuit board in the sword.
It’s not really possible to cut them in half, or sand them that much, and I can’t afford to change the dimensions on my LED block to accommodate them, so I will have to reconsider my approach.
I tried to find a 1mm thick board online, but they are nearly impossible to obtain. It’s not going to be viable to have a company custom cut them, due to costs and time restrictions.
My next idea was to use connectors of some kind. The thought is that I would plug the LED “legs” into one side, and then have the power wires on the other, with the connector sat in the hollowed area of the block (which would require a redesign). Ideally, this would make it so the LED is secure and also so that it doesn’t have a chance of crossing wires and shorting out, while also making it more replaceable than if I were to solder the LED legs and wire together directly.
I dug around some of the electronic parts bins around the DKC for some ideas. Nothing really clicked for me until I found this beautiful cable:
I’m not entirely sure what it was, but something about this cable spoke to me. I had my doubts that it would just work or that it would hold the LED properly, but sure enough…
It works beautifully. I don’t think I’ve been so glad to be proven wrong.
Following off this success, I had a “eureka” moment while fiddling with the LED block. I removed the divider meant to keep the cables separate, and also created holes so that the legs could stick straight down without curving around anything, which led to this:
I think this is the way to go. It has everything I want, while also having the benefit of not needing to deal with solder. The only issue with this set up currently is that the cable is too large to fit in the sword.
Either of these two types of connectors would be my ideal option, since they only have two pin slots and are a lot smaller, meaning I can fit them in the swords much easier.
I’ll take a look online and see what I can find in terms of these.
Another Distraction
While brainstorming some ideas on how I could get this LED to fit, I ended up playing around with the Arduino coding and made a script to flash the LED in the same exact way as the original circuit boards.
I haven’t mentioned this up to this point, partially because I couldn’t be bothered to record it, but the Inika swords have a specific way of flashing for the extra cool factor, rather than just turning on or turning off.
Below is a video of Hahli’s sword performing this flashing (left), and my custom Arduino program controlling Matoro’s sword (right):
My camera’s framerate was a little low for this, but I can confirm that the lights flash in almost the exact same frequency.
I think this could be a fun addition to add to the final display. The normal state of the lights would be on or off, but I could have an additional, physical, button to cause this flashing. To see all six of the Toa with their swords flashing like this has always been somewhat of a dream of mine anyway.
Adding this as a separate function will require me to learn how to use inputs on the Arduino, but I am very confident it will be of no issue.
A Final Quick Update
The paints and tools I needed arrived on Friday, and despite having enough progress for this week to be satisfied, I decided to at least try on the new paints.
I applied some layers of grey paint on various parts of my test block of XPS foam, making sure that I would be able to see where the paint looked best. I put a layer on the Mod Podge primer, the straight black oil paint primer, and on the foam directly itself.
The oil paint I had applied earlier finally seemed to be dry, but hopefully this new acrylic paint will be fully dry after the weekend so I won’t need to wait weeks before being able to use the foam.
As for my other plans next week… I imagine it will take some time for the cable connectors I pick out to arrive, so in the mean time I’ll start planning how to attach the Toa to the foam board, and how I will hide all of the wiring on the display. I’d like to also start taking a look at how I’ll encase the display, and finally tackle the issue of the Plexiglass problem.
Should I become overwhelmed with that, my backup plan is to start planning out a design for all of the cosmetics I plan to print onto paper, and do research into the paper I’ll need. From my previous findings, this is going to be by far the most expensive part of the project just due to the sheer cost to size ratio of paper.
