Garden Railway Forum

This is a project from a few years back, when I was doing some non-train animation using servo motors.

I wanted a man sitting on a log outside his tent, with a fire. His right arm raises a drink to his mouth and his left arm moves a ‘stick’ to ‘poke’ the campfire. At the same time the fire will ‘flare up’ using flashing LEDs. Two servos provide the movement, all controlled by a Picaxe micro controller.

This is the result:





Read on if you want to see how I did it……

I started with a cheap figure holding a briefcase, here on the right. I cut the briefcase away and sliced off both arms at the shoulder.
I pivoted the right arm at the shoulder with a small screw. I cut the right hand off and rotated it to hold the mug made from a piece of plastic tube. The right arm is operated but a thin rod recessed into his coat, under his arm. The screw head holes will be filled in someday.
The left arm is pivoted at the shoulder and elbow. I had to make the forearm & hand from polyclay so I could get the correct angle for rotation. (the upper and lower arm have to overlap for the screw pivot). Movement is caused by the ‘poking stick’ pushing the arm. The stick is just a piece of brass wire.
The hat brim is 0.5mm styrene around the existing cap.

The tent was made from clay by my wife, and houses the batteries, circuit and servos. The whole scene is mounted on a piece of 2mm styrene, with the operating rods and linkages underneath.
Four old NiMH AA, 2200 mAh batteries are used. The circuit is just the Picaxe, a diode and a capacitor!

The fire has the 5 LEDs, with bits of aluminium foil ‘scrunched around them and then some red cellophane also scrunched around. The wood is real twigs, burnt in a candle flame.
I used polyclay to makes the rocks around the fire and the axe.

Very nicely done, Greg.

Ingenious! Or maybe just genius!

Rik

Greg, love it some people are just so inventive.

Fantastic work! Love it!

A wonderful little animation. It's the sort of thing that keeps youngsters fascinated for hours at exhibitions.

Thanks for the comments everyone.
I was planning to do more, but I found the sound of the servos operating impossible to hide. Maybe I need a speaker with campfire sounds to mask them. Or someone singing Waltzing Matilda?

I wonder what other cameo scenes could be animated. I'm sure that somewhere on here someone animated a signalman waving a flag from a signal box. Didn't you animate a fireman on one of your locos, Greg?

I've often wondered if I could animate a guard giving hand signals when shunting, but the problem would be that he would have to be portable to move from siding to siding.

I've noticed on a couple of preserved ng railways I've travelled on, that the guard in the rear coach signals to the driver with a flag when the last bogie has cleared the pointwork on leaving each station. Not sure how common this practice is, but I think that might be relatively easy to animate, Mayer triggered with a magnet on the track at relevant points and a reed switch in the guard's van?

Rik

ge_rik wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:03 am . . . with a magnet on the track at relevant points and a reed switch in the guard's van?

Rik

gregh wrote: ↑Tue Jul 07, 2020 11:24 pm . . . I was planning to do more, but I found the sound of the servos operating impossible to hide. . .

These two quotes sequentially reminded me of an aborted project. I had a small digital video camera from Maplins (now low resolution but okay for the time). I created a platform to which it was fixed. The platform was mounted to a wagon via a servo. A picaxe controlled the servo such that it anticipated curves and turned the camera into the curve so it would (hopefully) stay cantered on the locomotive. I used Rik’s very idea so that track placed magnets triggered the servo to look hard left. The magnets were supposed to be placed so that the camera would pan to an interesting scene, hold for a few seconds, then pan back to the locomotive.

For the record the magnet triggers work well. But the Reed switch needed to be suspended below the wagon and was prone to knocks. I even got as far as constructing a frame that suggested a brake-van veranda end as the camera panned.

The project was abandoned due to time, increasing obsolescence of the camera resolution and the frankly awful racket of the servo transmitted from the structure the camera. I still have the box of parts on a shelf. The clickety-clack between servo bursts was quite nice though.

For the life of me I cannot remember how it anticipated the curves

Sorry if this is drifting off topic but I thought the experience might help anyone contemplating similar servo based reed-switch projects.

Andy

Just amazes me Greg where you pull these ideas from and carry them through to a working model. The campsite is just brilliant and a joy to watch. Could you try a dog barking to hide the sound, which for me was ok, but I suppose it does detract from your superb model.

ge_rik wrote: ↑Wed Jul 08, 2020 8:03 am I wonder what other cameo scenes could be animated. I'm sure that somewhere on here someone animated a signalman waving a flag from a signal box. Didn't you animate a fireman on one of your locos, Greg?
I've often wondered if I could animate a guard giving hand signals when shunting, but the problem would be that he would have to be portable to move from siding to siding.
Rik

Yes I have done some other animations.
here's a loco fireman shovelling coal..



and the driver in this loco always changes to face the direction of travel..



and there's my semaphore signals controlled by servos that have realistic 'bounce'.....



I like your idea of a shunter waving a flag. Maybe there could be a small shunter's cabin housing the batteries and servo that he stands outside and the whole thing could be lifted up.

Rik - How about your loco shed doors to open and close? Or some movement in that magnificent timber mill you have??

FWLR wrote: ↑Fri Jul 10, 2020 10:10 am Just amazes me Greg where you pull these ideas from and carry them through to a working model. The campsite is just brilliant and a joy to watch. Could you try a dog barking to hide the sound, which for me was ok, but I suppose it does detract from your superb model.

Very good idea - it would only have to bark when the servos were operating.


I would like to do a workgang scene, with detonator sounds when the train approaches and then a flagman holding a red flag in one hand and waving a green flag to allow the train to proceed. But on my single track it would have needed too many train detectors and at present I don't have the motivation to do the necessary 'surgery' on another man's arms to get the movement.


Andy- re the camera movement. I don't know if you saw my recent post here on a RC camera panning scheme. here's the link
https://gardenrails.org/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=12848

Just left some comments on your Youtube videos Greg.

GENIUS......