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Hey Orks

This was also posted at BoLS, but I'm hoping to get some more input.

Ever consider how cool it would be to have electronics built in to your 40k tanks? I have, and I am currently playing with the idea of designing and producing such electronics for 40k vehicles or other models with the sufficient internal space.

Now, I have some ideas of my own, but what I would really like is some community input on what people would like to see, and also what price they would be willing to pay for an electronic product for building into their miniature tank or whatever else they can imagine.

Some of my own ideas:

Movement like an RC car, controlled from a smartphone

Light and sound effects when a weapon is fired. Bang, followed by whistling of flying grenade, followed by explosion.

Light and sound effects when the vehicle is shot to pieces. Explosion, followed by a continuos burning sound and glowing orange light from inside.

Laser sight showing fire arcs, like what you can get already with a special laser pointer, just built into the gun turret.

Assume anything is possible!

I'm looking forward to reading your funny/good/ridiculous suggestions :-)

Bobpanda did rc tanks a while back. The thread is here, but the videos seem to have lapsed.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/223160.page

Sound effects would be a step up from the usual (as far as electronic additions go) LED lighting. Actually, with more and more people wanting to add that something extra to their models, I could see a market for basic pre-wired lighting kits with appropriate modeling instructions (if you could manage them without running into IP issues), even without expanding into sound effects or laser sights.

Honestly, some of the ideas seem rather impractical, but lights and sounds are definitely doable. I would start, at least, focusing there and muck around with more advanced projects a bit later on. An RC Baneblade is incredibly cool, but I think there's a much better market for lighting (and possibly sound) kits, due as much to consumer desire as to the comparatively low cost and complexity (on their end, as well as yours).

By all means, gather feedback and wishlists now, but I'd strongly advise that you start simple to get yourself running. Personally, I doubt I would ever do more than lighting on a model, whether it was intended for gaming or purely for display, so I won't add any new ideas to your list.

I've r/c'd a land raider AND put LED lights into it (the guns were not r/c because of the lack of suitable small servos in my price range.).

Infantry figures aren't worth the effort to light up internally.

I also have a valkyrie, monolith and Tau skyray also lit up. The electronics is neither complicated nor hard to install.

I think vehicles would be the best market for doing LED and things inside as infantry figures are too small to do anything... unless someone has examples to say otherwise?

I wouldnt mind small laser pointers that aim out of the barrel of a vehicles turret or other cannons or lascannons and what not so that you can actually pick your target Possibly linking this with a small turn on/turn off button that works by simply being a turret cuppola or something disguised as the button that you either turn or press or twist a little to turn lasers on and off.

As for pricing I have no idea what anything like this could possibly cost or how it would take to wire it as I have no electronic skills with wiring and such, Im more an ideas kind of person

 Marine_With_Heart wrote:
I think vehicles would be the best market for doing LED and things inside as infantry figures are too small to do anything... unless someone has examples to say otherwise?

I wouldnt mind small laser pointers that aim out of the barrel of a vehicles turret or other cannons or lascannons and what not so that you can actually pick your target Possibly linking this with a small turn on/turn off button that works by simply being a turret cuppola or something disguised as the button that you either turn or press or twist a little to turn lasers on and off.

As for pricing I have no idea what anything like this could possibly cost or how it would take to wire it as I have no electronic skills with wiring and such, Im more an ideas kind of person

Space Marine torsos are the perfect size to cram a 5mm LED in, as long as you carve off the top of the legs and the neck on the head. I've done it with Thousand Sons. Carving a 5mm diameter ditch into a metal torso front is time consuming and painful, although thankfully you can get round files in exactly the right size.

Huh... well ill be a monkey's uncle. Thats sounds pretty cool, what did the lights do inside? Glow the eyes?

Not my work, but a very impressive bit of electronic modding:

I managed to fit an led into a terminator. In my view the hardest part is hiding the battery for infantry models. If you could solve that reliably (cast resin bases with wiring holes and battery recesses?) You might be onto a winner.

Thanks for the input everyone :-)

I should probably have said that I am an electronics engineer by education, so starting small with an LED and a battery really isn't what I'm looking to do :-)

What I am thinking is to make somethibg really cool that could potentially be sold as a kit for people to build into their own 40k vehicles. Like the stuff I suggesting in the OP or what about a remote control with an iPod style scroll wheel an a red fire button that controls the turret, and shoots 45 degrees of laser while pressed. And a roar as the battlecannon fires. And smoke!

So what would you like to put in your 40k vehicle? Remember, the sky is the limit and you need no expertise to install or use it. The other thing is, if this great idea that you have was available at your LFGS today, what would you be willing to pay for it?

if i were to do anything more than LED lighting i would make a Trukk/Battlewagon have an "explode" effect where its held together by weak magnets or something strong enough to keep it together but when a spring activates the vehicle flies all over the place.

@Jacob: Heh, you don't need to be a fully qualified engineer to put electronics into a model - you need a modicum of skill and the ability to use tools and a smidgin of common sense (there are websites that will calculate all the maths and tell you what components you need and HOW to hook them up these days).

@ Vineheart01
Hah, that's a great idea

@ chromedog
I think you mean like modding a finished RC car to have a land raider exterior for example, in which case I agree. For that matter, if you have enough will to learn, then you don't need a degree for anything. Building an original, working system with remote control, custom sounds, lasers, etc. from scratch, in a way that is cheap enough to sell, does take more than the ability to read an electronics hobby website though

Ive seen laser pointers inside of leman russ barrels (for line of sight), and i assume stuff like that would be easy to do. With the electronic stuff, basically you just need your light or speaker, connection wires, and a power source. The trouble isn't how to get it to work, its how to fit it inside the model and make it look good too.

My Adepticon display board has red LEDs in it (as does one of my teammate's) to make the cave areas on it glow.

I picked up a Raspberry Pi with the intent of doing some fancier stuff to the board, but I don't think I'll have time at this point.

I don't have a lot of ideas for tanks or vehicles but as a nid player, I would love to have my MC eyes light up. Things like carnifexs have fairly hollo bodies so fitting batterie in wouldn't be a problem. Magnetize the top carapace to come on and off to replace the batteries. Something I'm planning to try this summer is hollow out a trygon to fit in some small good quality speakers and a headphone jack to plug in an iPod. It might be easier and cooler with a land raider, model the puts out what you want to listen to while you crush some poor army. I think the cast resin bases is a good idea, you don't need too much detail, maybe some simple rocky ledge or something, with enough height to fit the battery and switch.

 Marine_With_Heart wrote:
Huh... well ill be a monkey's uncle. Thats sounds pretty cool, what did the lights do inside? Glow the eyes?

Pretty much. Hollow out the (metal) head, drill out the eyes and put it all together. You get a glow out the eyes, around the neck and a slight reflected glow out the bottom of the torso because the head is metal. Snip the legs of the LED real short, run wires down the inside of the legs and make a battery clip in the base out of the cut off legs of the LED. Unfortunately no room for a switch, so you turned them on and off by popping the batteries out. Which was a huge pain in the ass, so the magic of glowy mans wore off pretty quickly.