Just curious, is anyone doing animation on their HO layout? Looking for a few ideas to keep me busy at my workbench this winter when I’m grounded with arthritic pain in my ankles.
I have a few servo controlled goodies on my layout that work pretty good. Remote doors on a couple of stalls on my roundhouse and a worker banging a hammer in my diesel shop.
An 8 RPM water wheel.
A moving elevator cable on my coal mine.
She doesn’t move, just has a flashlight in her hand.
Haven’t figured out where I’m going to put her yet.
I have several Lambert solenoid turnout motors, low RPM gear motors, 3g and 9g servos and a tortoise that could be used for animation.
A half dozen Arduino UNOs.
I’m currently attempting a pair of wig-wag signals using a low RPM motor, couldn’t get a servo to work realistically.
My only pure physical animation is a grade crossing with gates. I do have an operating coal loader and my old Tyco clamshell doors hoppers can then dump the coal into a box below the tracks.
I like the Miller Engineering animated signs, which provide the illusion of motion with no moving parts.
I have the lighted Fire Station from Menards and 3 lighted fire trucks from East Coast Circuits. Trying to upload my video since it’s not on YouTube, to no avail…
A list buddy of mine from Down Under, Laurie “Scoop” McLean MMR, has a bunch of videos on various animations he’s done. He started in HOn3, but has since moved on to On3, but there is a wealth of material showing both the animations and how he does them if you follow the first few results in this search.
The only animation on my layout occurred when I couldn’t reach all of the track on this part of the partial upper level of my layout, when I needed to paint the far-sides of the rails…
…and animation was fairly minimal, as I was lying on my side while painting.
I could reach and see the near-side of the rails, but often take photos with the camera on-layout, facing aisle-wards, so the painting of the normally unseen side of the rails needed to be fairly neatly-done.
The stuff seen in the photo was, of course, removed before I clambered into position, but that’s the totality of my fling with animation.
In this age of small screens and microprojectors we’re getting close to realizing my old dream of ‘human’ full interactive crews on locomotives and a great deal more besides.
One thing I expect is to see some of the Disney Animatronic idea used on stationary figures. You’d need strategically located small projectors, and some care with masking to eliminate stray light, but I suspect some remarkable lifelike effects might be possible without having to coordinate push and turn with motors and servos.
Mel, you might try a combination of dashpot and brake to get servo motion ‘modulated’ for better realism. I suspect you could combine both with magnetorheological fluid and a voice-coil analogue wrapped around the dashpot.
Haven’t there been experiments with the ‘technology’ used for the HO scale bicyclist to get the effect of people walking? In groups with different legs the ‘same speed’ effect might be less noticeable; for single figures some very complex effects might be possible…
That’s out of range of Mel’s expertise. Sounds neat but not doable by me. I can do pretty good with Arduinos and LEDs or servos even the tiny gearmotors but past that is beyond me. Thanks for your input!!!
I do like the windmill and I’m going to try a few more figure animations, I rather enjoy messing around with the tiny figures. I’m going to try making arm sockets like Scoop does with his figures, much more realistic.
I have a welder working on a newly installed pipeline. I still need to get his welding truck in place but I have arduino that flashes a blue and white led out of sync so they look like a welder.
You might need to click on link to see the video of it in action.
I’ve played around with a LED welder in the past, yours looks very nice. Mine didn’t look right in either my diesel shop or roundhouse so it’s in my project box.
A orange and yellow LED using the same process works pretty good for a fireplace.
I made mine spin using a motor out of an electric toothbrush. I’ve postioned it so the motor isn’t too obvious as you can see. Also a few other animations mostly lights.
Another way to make the windmills turn is to hide a small motor with propellor up under the top valance and blow air at it - si it moves by wind power. Or a small fan, like a computer fan. Driven at variable speed, so it’s not a tornado every day and your scale girl and scale dog can stay firmly on the ground in farm country.
I didn’t look at the composition of the kit until it was long ordered, it’s looks like metal castings so I don’t think your idea will work using the supplied fan blades. I don’t think I have it in me to make a light weight fan assembly. I have a box full of robotic gears and have an idea how to drive the blade from the bottom.
I’ll just have to wait and see, it might just become a static windmill.
