I was looking into micro controllers, but I don’t quite know what to look for. Would you recommend building something else or do you think I should buy a pre-made board? I am a newbie when it comes to both lights and servo kits. But I am extremely determined to bringing my shell to life. :mrgreen: :whatever:
I was chatting on an electronics message board and they said all I would need to control everything is a PIC microcontroller. Does that sound correct?
i dont know if anyone has found this yet but check it out… http://cylandprops.com/PKEmeterp1.html these are supposedly the first ones made
Time will reveal another option…
And…Bump. Anyone had any luck with this. This is the one prop I really feel I am lost on. I am a real novice with electronics, especially motors and servos. I can’t even figure out how to use the lego gears to make this work! lol
I’ve had some thoughts. Mostly it would involve a manual slider for the wings simliar to that awesome lint brush PKE and I thought of just adding a yellow LED to the end of each wings and a single green led for the screen and a pulse control.
Hey, I remember that Lintbrush PKE! 
I’ve had a bit of an idea for the wings, but I don’t know how stupid it is!
Straight out of my scribble book (colourised for clarity). Who needs art class?
Does this actually make some sense to anyone else? 
Red button to open, green to close. Lighting would be a seperate circuit, maybe using a push-to-break microswitch to power the lights fixed next to a wing, so it comes on when open (fridge-door method).
Maybe need a diode or LED inline with the buttons to stop the power going through the other half of the circuit, but I’m certainly no specialist!.
Coz.
The exciting thing is that the scratch-build I’m working on (it’s been a long process) uses pretty much the same kind of setup! I have a toy monorail train set from Disney World, or I should say, HAD one. I noticed that underneath, two wheels hug the track and turn in towards one another, to make the train move…exactly the same mechanism that could make the PKE wings go up and down. So I took it apart, and got a motor with a gear piece just like the one in your illustration. It is inserted into a little gear transmission box, that has two posts sticking out of it for the wheels. So I’m going to slap two small gears on them, set it up so that they turn larger gears, and the gear reduction should slow down the wing speed enough. If it doesn’t, I’ll just throw on a resistor or something.
I formed the extension for the faceplate out of bondo (I’m using a real iona), and I need to make a faceplate. I scratch built one wing out of sheet styrene already, and it’s slightly large. I kind of like it, though.
As far as lights are concerned, I figured out how to make a circuit that uses a 555 timer and a 4017 decade counter. The 555 timer sends out a pulse that can be adjusted. Every time the 4017 recieves a pulse, it sends out a single to the next output in sequence, up to 10 (hence “decade”). This is how to rig flashing lights. Since there are 7 lights on the PKE, you wire the 8th output to “reset” and the counter resets after pulse 7. I could write up a lengthy description of how to accomplish this. I was an english major in college, and I comprehend it on a functional level, so it can’t be THAT hard.
Here’s a diagram I drew to better explain what I was talking about in the last post, including a basic wiring diagram for 7 blinking lights with a variable 10k potentiometer that can be attached to the thumb wheel, to vary speed.
Edit: I forgot to add a “y” on the end of the word “battery”. Whoops.
What is the actual pattern of lights the one in the movie follows? I was looking on youtube and can’t find it and short of peicing together clips from hulu.com, I don’t know.
The diagram you drew Astantax would have one light on at a time per side, assuming you wired the output of the 4017 symmetrically with correct resistor values. I know the pattern is slow (your pot will take care of that) when no ghosts are around and the light pattern is not in order of their placement on the meter. However when ghosts are around, is it the same pattern just faster? From memory I thought more than one light per side was on ath the same time, although it could just be so fast it appears to be more than one.
So i guess the questions are, given the lights from the movie, in what order do the blink? Is it the same pattern all the time, just different rates?
For one thing, I wrote on the diagram that each of those LEDs for “wing lights” are actually simply single lights, but metal posts, or “leads”. 3 wires are soldered to each lead, and go to the corresponding LED on the each wing and screen. so basically each lead will fire 3 LEDs at once - one on the screen, one on the left wing, and one on the right wing, just like in the movie. You can have the actual LEDs fire in any order you want, if you simply remember what wire goes to what lead. I have it laid out the way I do because of the extremely annoying configuration of the 4017 decade counter. It’s the easiest way, for me anyway. If you have any suggestions I’m open to them, as electrical engineering is a relatively new hobby of mine.
Cyland Prop’s page (volguus?) has a detailed series of pages about the PKE meter, it’s construction and history. It’s very interesting, and details the 2 different light sequences on the wings (it was changed after GB1).
edit:
to further answer your question, the original prop just went real fast. There’s a thumb wheel under the handle. No 2 lights were ever on at once, except in GB2, when I think 2 of them were shorted together. I learned of this from cyland props webpage, as mentioned above. Sorry that I don’t have the link.
ps. My diagram wasn’t going for 100% screen accuracy - I value the “look and feel” of something much higher over exacting attention paid to the insane details. I’m much more of an eyeball-it-and-wing-it type dude than measure-twice-cut-once… 
Im sorry. I communicated poorly. I was saying the same thing you said in the first paragraph. When I said only one light was on at a time i meant per wing. Thats what I meant by one at a time per side symmetrically.
The second part to your post: that resource is great (cylandprops.com). I had no idea that existed. Just to post that info (for anyone looking on it but most importantly me for quick reference), the sequence is found at http://cylandprops.com/PKEmeterp3.html
So my memory was wrong (again). Only one light is on at a time per arm.
So I with that information, if I were to design a circuit, it would be the same as yours.
Thanks for that handy site.
EDIT: On the bottom of the main page it said not to repost without permission. Even though before I edited I gave full credit and a citation, I don’t want to get on someone’s bad side (especially since I’ll be following the pics and notes) so I removed the quote and just replaced with the link.
No problem. I hope i didn’ t come across as rude. I am at the end of a very, VERY trying week.