Happy New Year to you. Hope the car repair and house maintenance is going OK. Haven’t had much time for boats during the past week, too busy building a new website for an organisation i’m involved with. I got the job of Webmaster, as no one else was prepared to take it on. Don’t know much about building websites, so it has been a steep learning curve. Went live yesterday, and seems to be working. I suspect that I still have 90% of the work to do!
Boiling water sounds an interesting approach. Will be really neat if it does away without having to carry, and refill with glycerine. I hope to have a go with the air reservoir controller tomorrow. Will be nice to get back to some practical activities after a week in front of a screen😁.
Just waiting on the arrival of my eldest son, his wife and our youngest granddaughter (3 months). Staying overnight on their way to the other grandparents in Scotland. I’ll be able to get back in the workshop after breakfast, once they have left👍
I did wonder about storing smoke in the balloon. Not sure how well that will work. Will it just condense and make a mess. Worth an experiment though. I’ve written some code for a PIC microchip to control this air capacitor/solenoid set up. It will use a single RC switched channel. The first switch activation will turn on the coil and pump. The pump will then be switched on/off to maintain air in the capacitor using MS to monitor balloon inflation. Subsequent RC switch activations will operate the solenoid to release stored air/smoke. If there are no activations for a period ( maybe 10 seconds) then the coil and pump will turn off. The software will allow adjustment of the pump speed, the solenoid open time, and the overall timeout period using buttons on the pcb. Now I just need to debug the code and get it working.
The yacht is progressing slowly. I’ve been somewhat diverted to domestic issues. My eldest son decided he needs to borrow the family cot for his new daughter and wants to collect it this week when he visits. Being over 40 years old it needs a bit of maintenance and cleaning before he collects it (it is solid oak and was made by my father in law).
I bough a laser cut wood pack for the yacht thinking it would make assembly easy. Wrong! It has been quite disappointing to find lots of problems with the assembly as the ply parts are too thick in a number of areas. However the basic hull is now assembled. I’m using two part epoxy to seal the ply, and with added filler to filet the joints between parts. It’s taking several days to harden as I can’t maintain a reasonable temperature in the workshop 24/7. I have a wood burning stove to keep it warm, but it won’t stay in overnight. I’m also short of some bits and pieces which I won’t be able to get now until after the holiday period.
I used to do all my own car maintenance, mainly because I couldn’t afford to pay someone else to do it, but not anymore. Modern cars are too complex to work on, and I have too many other, more interesting things to spend my time on.
The supplier has promised to send me a replacement, hopefully it will be electronics this time😉.
I'm using a simple resistor to drop the volts for the LED at present, but it is a 1W LED so doing it that way is wasteful on battery power. When I get this converter it will be a lot more efficient. I hate wasting battery power unnecessarily and the converter cost less than £1 - it also came with a free packet of seeds!🤣😂
I don't understand these big models. I suppose they attract attention and are good for public shows, but as you say potentially dangerous and very impractical in terms of transport. At least with boats we don't have the same danger issues for the public.
I couldn't resist having a go with a balloon. Works fine with a solenoid and would be realistic for battleship guns. The solenoid is a normally open one so I was having to disconnect it from the power to release smoke.
A few thoughts on the implementation for this. I'd want to monitor the balloon inflation and keep it within two values, max and min using a couple of limit switches. The pump would be controlled on/off to keep within these limits. I don't think leaving the coil on, with no airflow is a good idea. It will likely overheat and possibly burn out, so I'd want to switch it on just before use, and off afterwards. Also saves on battery power! So I'd envisage switch pump on/coil on together. Wait for balloon to inflate between limit values. FIRE! (repeatedly). Switch it off after a few seconds of inactivity. Another software job 😀
Hopefully you will get the heaters before too long. I have been waiting on a constant current LED driver for the Crash Tender searchlight. A package arrived eventually, the customs declaration stated ‘electronics’ but inside the packet were seeds - don’t know what they are, but I have my suspicions. Not something I should be smoking! 🤔
I was just about to mail you suggesting using a micro switch to control the inflation when your mail came in 👍 I think it’s a better idea than the timed on/off control. Like the bottle with a flap implementation, I hadn’t worked that out.
Have you seen the Dec 19 Model Boats article about smoke for gunfire? That uses hot (230c !) metal chamber to instantly vaporise smoker fuel when it is squirted into it. I’m sure it works, but at the expense of heavy power consumption. I think the balloon based solution looks just as effective, at a fraction of the power requirement.
Now I’ve started the yacht build, I’ve run out of space in the workshop to try any more smoke experiments until I Han get the hull out of the way.
Thanks for the video. It looks effective. Does the balloon self limit on inflation? I.e. does it reach a point where the pump isn’t strong enough to pump any more air in? Would hate for it to explode inside the boat....
Addictive this modelling 🤣 I’m tempted to get in the workshop and have a go, I have a few solenoids lying around, but I really must finish a few other, non modelling related things off first.
Shotcut is free here. Interesting if it is different in NZ. This from their homepage:
About
Shotcut is a free, open source, cross-platform video editor for Windows, Mac and Linux. Major features include support for a wide range of formats; no import required meaning native timeline editing; Blackmagic Design support for input and preview monitoring; and resolution support to 4k.
The version I have installed doesn’t seem to be a trial time limited version, time will tell. I did try another package before Shotcut which worked OK for a few days and then started demanding payment before it would let me do anything.
I like the air capacitor idea. I think I’d want to make it auto fill and stop when ‘full’. Wouldn’t want to overfill it- that could be quite dramatic! Love the idea of a row of solenoids connected to a series of guns, appeals to my technology interests. Almost tempted to build a battleship just to have something to try it on.😆 Another project to add to the ‘to do’ list.
It will have to wait though. Christmas preparations, and the new boat build will fill all my spare time for the next couple of weeks.
Glad you like the video. I decided I needed to combine different clips so I could include them in a single post. Didn’t want to have to do separate posts to cover the different settings.
I’m new to video editing so I found a free editing app, Shotcut. The merged video is my first attempt. It took a few tries before I worked out how to use the app, but it wasn’t difficult in the end.
Hope your house maint is going OK. Can’t do much outdoors at this time of year. We had snow yesterday, and rain all day today. Trouble is, it isn’t good weather to go sailing either. Started a new build today, simple yacht this time.
I thought about a Blog, but again, only the originator would be able to post new items to it. I think a simple forum post will give most flexibility for us both to add to it. I have just edited several videos together so I can put different examples into one post.
