The discussion of the Alien series of films and the props used in them is the aim, but if it's got Big Bugs and Big Guns, then they are welcome too!





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 Post subject: Re:
PostPosted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 3:24 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
CrashDown wrote:
Great work Rich - watching with interest, i'd love to be able to retire the MR tracker to its display case and use this!

Just thinking aloud about power and on/off buttons, there's various locations on the tracker i can think of that may work (although some would be practical only on a real parts or MR one)

1) The Hama Self timer box (the pill box) on the left side of the tracker hinges and opens - could put the power port and on/off button inside?
2) The shutter release and darkroom lamp have working buttons.
3) The small knob on the base of the tracker - power port here, and the knob with a 'false' plug on - so you remove the knob to charge, and replace the knob after.
4) The flashgun meters - hide the ports and button under one of these, secure with magnets?


some really good ideas there. thanks for sharing. My current problem is that I've gone down the route of trying to do this without too much thought about power. I've therefore bought one of these to power the unit:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1

it works really well but doesn't give me the option to wire a remote switch into it. i'll have to do some more research but a quick google revealed this, which I could probably use a smaller lipo battery with and wire in a remote switch and charge point.

https://blog.adafruit.com/2015/12/18/ho ... aspberypi/


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PostPosted: Sat Aug 20, 2016 12:06 am 
I CAME IN LIKE A WRECKING BALL...
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Location: Essex, UK
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You could always open the USB cable that runs from the battery pack to the Pi, and connect a simple switch/button to the red power wire (USB should have 4 wires from memory, positive 5v, earth and two data). then you could run usb 'extension' cable (male and female) from the charger 'in' to wherever you want, along with the switch.

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 Post subject: Re:
PostPosted: Sat Aug 20, 2016 1:51 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
CrashDown wrote:
You could always open the USB cable that runs from the battery pack to the Pi, and connect a simple switch/button to the red power wire (USB should have 4 wires from memory, positive 5v, earth and two data). then you could run usb 'extension' cable (male and female) from the charger 'in' to wherever you want, along with the switch.


That's a pretty good idea. I'll look into it further


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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 9:37 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
Hi all,

Is there any information regarding who in the aliens universe would have manufactured the motion tracker? Armat, Weyland Corp, Arious??? (manufacturer of the alien isolation tracker)

I like the idea of having a boot screen for the tracker that displays a manufacturer (maybe animated). I started off by breaking up the weyland yutani logo for animation but got to thinking if anyone here has more info?


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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Mon Aug 22, 2016 10:43 pm 
'Nuff said.
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Location: Effingham, Illinois
Service Number: A08/TQ0.0.12146E1
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I plan on having a charging port like my light sabers. I am looking at the cell phone power banks. I have a large Iron Man knock off that was super cheap and would fit in the housing.

Thanks!

Greg

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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 3:29 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
had a truly terrible weekend trying to miniaturise the project. bought a load of DuPont connectors but none of them would attach to any of the components. while i'm waiting for some inspiration I've gone back to what I know and added some start up screens while the program initialises.

hope you like them (assuming we're all happy the WY builds motion trackers :) )

https://youtu.be/HN0AJ2iwPms

let me know what you think

cheers

Rich


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 7:36 pm 

Country: United States
I always figured WY made them, too. I was making a nameplate for the bottom of my Kango handle with their logo on it as well :)


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 Post subject: Re:
PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 8:10 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
veektohr wrote:
I always figured WY made them, too. I was making a nameplate for the bottom of my Kango handle with their logo on it as well :)


I can't find any reference on the web to a manufacturer of the tracker in the aliens universe. Kind of assume that WY are as likely as anyone else to manufacture them.


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PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 10:17 pm 
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I threw out an idea a while back (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16038&hilit=kango+jobo) about making a company name by combining the initials for Kango, Jobo and Hama as those are the primary source companies for the components. Weyland-Yutani is fine, but it makes the universe kinda small when *everything* has their name on it.

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Last edited by retrogarde on Wed Aug 24, 2016 1:04 am, edited 1 time in total.

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 Post subject: Re:
PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 10:36 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
retrogarde wrote:
I threw out an idea a while back (viewtopic.php?f=3&t=16038&hilit=kango+jobo) about making a company name by combining the initials for Kang, Jobo and Hama as those are the primary source companies for the components. Weyland-Yutani is fine, but it makes the universe kinda small when *everything* has their name on it.


actually a really nice idea. I like it a lot. I agree that Weyland-Yutani is an easy out with respect to who made it. I don't think that it would be Armat but then again a major defence contractor might well make such items.

I kinda like the idea that the company mentioned in alien isolation (Arious) could be involved as well.

Attachment:
tracker.png
tracker.png [ 408.24 KiB | Viewed 8838 times ]


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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 11:37 pm 
'Nuff said.
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Location: Effingham, Illinois
Service Number: A08/TQ0.0.12146E1
Country: United States
Thought I saw a manufacturer name on a plaque before on ebay. Cannot recall off hand. Only thing I know is the model number. M314 Motion Tracker.

Thanks!

Greg

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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 11:45 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
gman666 wrote:
Thought I saw a manufacturer name on a plaque before on ebay. Cannot recall off hand. Only thing I know is the model number. M314 Motion Tracker.

Thanks!

Greg

Probably armat or wy I would guess. Should get one for my pulse rifle really


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 1:07 am 
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I like using the Isolation company name too.

should the startup screen look a bit like the Sentry Gun terminals? Not the color but the layout?

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PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 9:55 am 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
retrogarde wrote:
I like using the Isolation company name too.

should the startup screen look a bit like the Sentry Gun terminals? Not the color but the layout?


yes it could possibly look a bit like that. i'll have a look


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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 11:00 am 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
how about this:

Attachment:
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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 2:13 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
and this

https://youtu.be/c5nuOMDZv3o


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 24, 2016 4:44 pm 
Prop Churner Outer
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Neat!

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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2016 3:21 pm 
They mostly come at night... mostly.
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Location: Middlesbrough, England
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I'm really interested in this thread. Great work Rich!

I read you may be releasing the source code once it's done, so I might have a play about with that, if it happens. What's it written in? I made a Sentry Gun program, but that was made on my Amiga in AMOS Pro many years ago, so it needs an emulator to work on modern PCs.

Regarding the startup anim, I guess if you let us know the file name and format, we can either create our own and put it where it needs to be, or you could supply a few you have made and we can rename whichever one we want on the Pi. We could share them here if people make others.

This may just make me finally finish my MT. I got as far as needing the pump, then stopped.

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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Sun Aug 28, 2016 3:34 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
necronom wrote:
I'm really interested in this thread. Great work Rich!

I read you may be releasing the source code once it's done, so I might have a play about with that, if it happens. What's it written in? I made a Sentry Gun program, but that was made on my Amiga in AMOS Pro many years ago, so it needs an emulator to work on modern PCs.

Regarding the startup anim, I guess if you let us know the file name and format, we can either create our own and put it where it needs to be, or you could supply a few you have made and we can rename whichever one we want on the Pi. We could share them here if people make others.

This may just make me finally finish my MT. I got as far as needing the pump, then stopped.


Hi it's written in python using the pygame library. Nice language to code in.

Yes I'll be putting up on github when I'm satisfied with it. There is scope for swapping out images as I'm just loading and displaying a sequence of images at run time.

Loved your sentry gun program by the way.


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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 6:49 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
finally got a bit more done after a long weekend away.

https://youtu.be/DCb7LjMxQdA

I wanted to do a kind of proof of concept by moving everything off of my prototyping board. So as you can see it's all looking a lot more feasible now.

I'm moving on to trying to configure my raspberry pi zero now. This is going to require some soldering as well as a full install of all of the operating software. ughhhh. I also have some hopefully neat cable coming to connect the pi to the lcd screen.


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PostPosted: Wed Aug 31, 2016 9:10 pm 
They mostly come at night... mostly.
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Location: Middlesbrough, England
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That's looking great!

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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Thu Sep 01, 2016 10:13 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
ok, so I've really been able to cut the project down to size now.

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tracker1.jpg
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Attachment:
tracker2.jpg
tracker2.jpg [ 63.91 KiB | Viewed 8606 times ]


it's pretty tight in there with the battery I have. I might try and get a smaller one. I need to figure out how to mount all of this now but I'm hopeful my 3d printer will help with this. my main worry now is with sound. I am hoping to get a small Bluetooth speaker in the casing but i'm not sure it'll fit.


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 2016 7:47 pm 

Country: United States
I think a bracket could be printed that sits where the rubber gasket is on the Kango that would include a small mounting lattice inside to mount the Pi to. It would make it secure with minimal-to-no hot glue, and more critically - no unnecessary drilling into the housing.


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 Post subject: Re:
PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 2016 7:53 pm 

Location: Derby
Country: United Kingdom
veektohr wrote:
I think a bracket could be printed that sits where the rubber gasket is on the Kango that would include a small mounting lattice inside to mount the Pi to. It would make it secure with minimal-to-no hot glue, and more critically - no unnecessary drilling into the housing.


Hi, yes I reckon that's the way to go. I need to spend a bit of time installing the software on the pi now to make sure it all works ok but i'm getting there.

I have had a couple of ideas about how to miniaturise the whole thing so it'll fit in the hama viewer but I don't want to get too carried away until I know it'll work. Parts on order :)

cheers

Rich


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 Post subject: Re: motion tracker for raspberry pi
PostPosted: Fri Sep 02, 2016 8:31 pm 
You tell me man, I only work here.
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Location: Los Angeles
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I don't mind helping developing printed bracket options.

I have all the parts to build a tracker.

Looking pretty good!

My only suggestion would be drop the WY part in the start up screen.


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