Akihabara Station » Akihabara Station

Scratch-Building in Brass

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 05:27:15 +0000

…is harder than I thought, and I originally thought it pretty hard. Spent some quality time cutting brass and flesh tonight, and then burning brass and flesh in an attempt to fuse certain bits of it together, and the results are pleasing…or would be if I hadn’t assembled it backwards. No matter, it’ll do. [...]

Akihabara Platform 1/2N: Brass!?

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:19:28 +0000

Not many updates to share; October has been a surprisingly busy month. Should I have been surprised? No, of course not. I knew it was coming.

To the point: I had originally planned to construct the platform shelter out of styrene, but quickly discovered that such a structure would be at best very flimsy, [...]

Akihabara Platform 1/2N: Texturized

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 19:17:35 +0000

I’ve decided to focus on a tiny sub-diorama of Akihabara Station. The platform section that I’m working on represents the very northern end of platform 1/2. This section of the platform has a relatively simple roof and support, and so should be a nice, easy introduction to scratchbuilding.

The bit I'm working [...]

Baby Steps

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:39:28 +0000

I’ve been overwhelmed, lately. Or, at least, I haven’t had much spare time. Hence, I’ve gotten almost nothing accomplished. Inspired by one of KenS’s posts on JNSForum.com, I have decided that I need to start with something small to get the ball rolling—very small.

I begin with only this:

What is (or [...]

Detailed Photographs of Akihabara Station

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 18:50:08 +0000

gmat of JNSForum has a job that requires him to travel all over Tokyo (lucky git!); he also has an eye for great trackside detail photography. He recently passed by Akihabara Station, and took some amazing detail shots for me. And he’s got plans to take more. Thank you Grant!

LED Driver: Test-Type Complete

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 02:52:10 +0000

Test-type in Cylon training school.

A couple of nights ago, I hooked my custom LED Driver up to an Arduino running some custom software, and 16 LEDs. And, who’d have thunk it: Worked on the first try! So many things could have gone wrong between the circuit design, the hand-soldering (jumpers, burn-outs), and [...]

LED Driver: Custom Circuit Boards

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 14:36:40 +0000

The boards I received in the mail, about two inches long by one-and-a-half wide.

I built a prototype. Then I designed a PCB. This weekend I received a set of my very first custom-designed circuit boards. It’s quite a thrill to hold an item manufactured to your own specifications. Best of all, I [...]

LED Driver

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:43:02 +0000

LED Driver Prototype 1

So, what is this monster power supply going to power? LEDs, and lots of them. Some of these LEDs will always be on; some will be on under certain circumstances (e.g., on a day/night cycle); many will have special effects (e.g., traffic lights). To accomplish all of this, I [...]

Kitbashing a Power Supply

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:59:03 +0000

Time to catch you up on what I’ve bee doing lately.

Homebrew power supply

The title is something of a mixed metaphor, but it will serve. An important step for installing a ton of LEDs into a layout is having a solid power supply. So a couple of weeks ago, I converted an [...]

Small Successes: SMD Hand-Soldering

D.E. Goodman-Wilson — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 05:24:15 +0000

Hand-soldered SSOP microchip in breakout board

I suppose that not all is bad, previous posts notwithstanding. Illness has conspired to prevent me from sharing much of what I’ve done lately, but as I’m feeling better now, here is something new.

Tonight I discovered that I can solder SSOP SMD components by hand with [...]