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World Control Panel
Superheros, Evil Mad Scientists, Supervillains, Trilateralists, Bilderbergers, Meteorologists, Oligarchs, Generals, Demographers, Spymasters, Epidemiologists, and well, who couldn’t use a retro sci-fi command console to monitor and control their worldwide concerns?
My son Harlan and his friend love to play “agents” and he asked me if we coud build “a panel that has a bunch of switches that turn on some random lights”. We worked on it for about 3 weeks, and this is what we came up with. The panel boasts the following features:
Main power switch
Home base indicator
World Cities indicator (blue)
Cluster1 (red)
Cluster2 (orange)
Global Red Alert Situation (backlit 555 flasher circuit)
Message record and playback ($10 Radio Shack digital recording module)
Larson Scanner ($13 from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories)
We used a combination of ready-made, kit, and custom circuits to achieve the lighting effects. The Larson scanner on the right – so named for Glen Larson who developed the effect for the Knight Rider and Battlestar Galactica TV shows – is available as a kit from Evil Mad Scientis Laboratories. The voice recorder module is sold at Radio Shack. The “Global Red Alert” flashes thanks to a circuit built around every beginning electronics tinkerer’s favorite little chip, the 555 timer IC. The flasher and it’s LED’s are mounted to the inside of the back cover, and shine onto some diffusion material which covers the map holes. The rest is just, well… a bunch of switches that turn some lights on and off. These other LED groupings are made up of 3mm blue, red and yellow LEDs that poke up through the holes in the map, Light Bright style, and triggered by thwacking some mini toggle switches.
The cabinet is made from some scrap Ipe wood, and some scrap aluminum. Ipe is beautiful wood, but very difficult to work with. It contains lots of natural waxes and resins that gum up drill bits, and no glue seems to stick to it. If you don’t have your pilot holes just the right size, screws will either bind, or snap right off like mine did.
Great to see you back.
And you’re a fabulous dad!
Thanks, HH!
I know, Finkbuilt ain’t what it used to be ;)
Now that’s AWESOME! I’d like to order 100 of em’
[...] Lodefink shows us this awesome World Control Panel he built with his son. My son Harlan and his friend love to play “agents†and he asked me if we [...]
Pretty awesome from design through execution. Now I want to see where it’s going in your house.
We’ll keep it in the living room.
“Harlan, hand me the remote, I feel like putting on a show, BuwahhaaaaaAAAAHHHH!”
Will you be my dad?!? JK! You have one lucky kid. Great work and props to you son for giving credit where credit is due!
[...] Control Panel – [Link] Tags: Control, Panel Filed in Led | 1 views No Comments [...]
Oh! wonderful. Me want to make. Can you make a tut? that would be awesome!~
i love this :D
what’s that music on the first video?
that’s pretty cool. but how come Australia looks like a poodle?
Matt,
The tune is called “8 foot breakers”. Grab yourself a copy!
http://www.finkbuilt.com/blog/garage-surf-motivational/
This is by far one of the most awesome things I’ve seen!
Might I suggest that you etch those icons directly into the aluminum?
http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-etch-aluminum-panel-labelsdesigns-with-a-r/
Michael,
Nice! thanks for the tip.
Yeah, the icon part kind of sucks. I used Testors Inkjet waterslide decal paper, but you have to put a clearcoat over the decals. My clear coat ended up looking like a strip of scotch tape ;(
The next one will be CNC engraved.
I dare not show this to my boys, I’m so totaly incapable of building this and they would so want one.
It’s a masterpiece. There are no better applications for technology than building space-age control panels for your kids.
With that marvel of engineering my evil genius daughters could rule the world!
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[...] The article lists parts used and has a lot of pictures to help you build your own. PyroFactor: Read Permalink | Email This [...]