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I'm sort of bushed now - it's been a long day. But I want post what I have to spur myself on tommorow, and I promise you, I'll do a actual writeup sometime this weekend with a parts list.

Looks good so far. I look forward to see how this ends up

I like the idea but thats about it.

The blinking is very distracting and will annoy people while they game. If possible try to get just the right amount of light coming from the model and have that static. It will give that "spooky" alien feel this way.

If you do want some sort of light "pulsing" then have it dim slowly on then slowly off. At least this way it wont annoy anyone. The "off and on" effect also seem unrealistic or cheesy. Mmm cheese.

EDIT: Try to make sure the light is all green. No white light. Will look 100 times better. Maybe put some extra layers of green plastic within the window bit?

OoieGoie wrote:EDIT: Try to make sure the light is all green. No white light. Will look 100 times better.

I'd agree if he goes with the typical paint schemes. If he goes against the grain, then white lights may be the way to go. I'll need to see the intended paint scheme before I can say for certain.

I really like the concept. I wold love to know specifics like what materials you're using and where you puchased them from as I want to do something similar with my Necron Monolith.

Looks cool. Can't wait to see it all painted up!

Looking good so far. I would agree that the light seems a little white so far, but that's not necessarily a problem.

Moving this one over to the Blogs section, as I'm assuming it's not finished yet

Cool.

I remember seeing some time ago a Necron army where every model had LEDs in. Even the Scarabs . . . it was freaking awesome. Now if you could do that Manchu I would love to know how =p

Good work so far, and good luck with the rest of your Monolith. =D

Agreed about the flashing, that is just too seizure inducing.

Try to make sure the light is all green. No white light. Will look 100 times better. Maybe put some extra layers of green plastic within the window bit?

maybe see if you can get some green LEDs instead of white ones?

Yeah, kill the flashing, but evrey thing else is awesome!

No no no! Keep the flashing, just slow it down.

OK, I did some more work on it. I think it's better. To be honest, I never expected this to talk as long as it did, but I was distracted by classes, work, and more interesting models (sadly, not in that order). Here's where I am now.



None of the green elements are glued in yet, they're just on with blu-tack. I'm about halfway through the drybrushing on the panel lines. This is very tedious. I do it for about 15 minutes and get bored.

I'm using Tamiya markers to fill in the panel lines. Only one side is done so far, but it only takes a few minutes to do that. I'm doing it last, since I need to cover brush wanders with it.



Still have to do decals, weathering, and washing.

I got the electronics locked down though! I removed the sound module that was in originally, changed to green LED's, and switched to a pulsing module instead of a flashing one.




I saved this video directly from Windows MM direct to Youtube, which was nice, but it reduced the video quality quite a bit, which is less nice. It also appears to make it look like there is a green sun in there. It's not as bright as it looks, and it's not distracting in daylight like the other version was.


The light board that I used was (now) the Cowlalicious Universal Fading Eyes Deluxe. You can get the module for $12, or $9 as a kit (and with the amount of soldering you'd need to do, you'd be a fool, or love soldering, to get the kit). This ends in bare leads.

I got the LED's from Future Electronics, which I cannot recommend - On my $31 order, they put in 3 random dollar amounts totaling $40 and I had to chase them for a refund on the overage. Not cool. I used a few LED's - 3 per side, one on top, one in the back, and 4 in the front. They're clear LED's that light green. I'd give part numbers, but a green LED is essentially a green LED, and like I said, I can't recommend my vendor. All Electronics or Electronic Goldmine seem to be better.

You'd need minor soldering skill to be able to get the lights together, but there is so little soldering involved, now that I removed the sound board, that you might be able to get by with that http://www.google.com/products?q=conductive+glue[conductive glue. I've not used it, but heard it works OK.

The pulsing module works really well!

I think I'd have to play every game in the dark if I had this.

That is very very cool dude, well done.

Looks much better, and thanks for the link.

wow, that lith is really cool! Great work

I'd gladly play a game in the dark just to watch that thing glow. XDD In the video, I didn't see your hand at first so I thought the thing was rotating on its own.

Remote control Monoliths.. now there's an idea.

Great looking Monolith! be cool to see someone light up the destroyer hover base one day

Now all you have to do is make the guns work... now how would you do that?

OK, this is finally finished. I have uploaded a finished video to the youtubes, which is below. I have removed the audio from it, as my camera's audio has the sensitivity of a fine hunting dog - translating ambient "silence" into "ear-rape".

Additionally, I'm a pretty poor photographer, so in at least one pic the glare from the shine makes it look like there is glitter or something all along the edge. I probably should take better pics but I'm stoked from finally having finished my first really major project, at the sime tame I finished my Necron Warrior to Immortal conversions.

For the paintjob, I wound up highlighting the edges with goblin and then scorpion green, and then washed it with badab black 3 times. Then I sprayed it with 3 coats of a high-gloss finish, to make it look different then the rest of my Necrons. I also changed all of the LED's

I didn't change any of the electric package, sticking with the Cowlalicious pulsing light, other then replacing the 9v battery with a stack of 3 button cells (I have a ton of these). I did get some fiber-optic wire, and did the front with 4 little dots of it, but it was too complex to do the whole thing at this point without taking it apart again, so I resolved to use them again in a different project.

I made kinda a lot of mistakes when building this monolith, so would consider trying again with what I learned.

Video:



Pics:

This is awesome, I really like your paintjob and you did a great job on the LED lights.

Ouze that's freaking awesome. I hope being on the tabletop does it justice.

How long is the battery life do you reckon? I mean they don't look to difficult to change, but batteries aren't cehap everywhere =p

Oshova

I haven't the slightest idea how long the batteries will last At one point, after getting tired of always needed "just one more" button cell for my various stupid projects, I wound up getting a tray of batteries from one of the electronic suppliers I use. It's 25 or 30 batteries and it cost like $10. The monolith uses 3 of these, or it can get a 9v. I suppose at some point I really should test the battery life out. I know the Killa Kans I have done will last a minimum of 3 hours of continuous use with no pulsing, because that's about how long I had them on for in a game - so at least that long, and they're still going pretty strong, so who knows.

That doesn't sound too bad then. I mean you can buy them off Amazon and eBay aswell, but for someone who doesn't really do a lot of internet buying it just seems a lot of hastle (especially as I don't want to risk stuff getting sent through the Uni post service )

Oshova