[MOC] My OcTRAINber submission

[Phil B]

Here is my submission for this year's OcTRAINber, as run by www.brickmodelrailroader.com:

(click on the image to start the video)

Spoiler

Here is how it all works:

I know I am pushing the boundaries of the intent of the competition, but according to the rules this meets the objective, and I had fun with it :)

[LEGO Train 12 Volts]

Top notch work!

Lovely work nicely done!

I like your panorama parallactic movement! 

[Modeltrainman]

Cool! What's it do?

[Phil B]

13 minutes ago, Modeltrainman said:

Cool! What's it do?

Click on the first image to watch the video, and I think you'll know what's it supposed to do :)

[Modeltrainman]

@Phil B That is super cool! Reminds me of a Disney cartoon!

[zephyr1934]

That is hilarious, awesome and insanely cool. Indeed, like a cartoon from the 1930's. Still though, I just wish you had pushed it to the breaking point at the end, with bits and pieces flying off (I noticed that one of the telegraph poles was kind enough to abide with my anarchistic wishes). The clouds were a an excellent touch too.

[Paperinik77pk]

Great!!! Very funny and original! A zillion of thumbs up!

[Hod Carrier]

That's brilliant, and I think entirely within the spirit of the contest. I love the way that the single viewing portal allows you to use forced perspective to give the illusion of depth, aided by the slower rate of progress for the hills and clouds in the background.

If I had to nit-pick I would say that it was a shame that the track ties couldn't have been added to the scenic track as they are conspicuously stationary. That incredibly minor point aside, I think you've got a very original and therefore strong entry. Best of luck!! 

[Phil B]

Thanks all for the great comments and praise!

11 hours ago, zephyr1934 said:

That is hilarious, awesome and insanely cool. Indeed, like a cartoon from the 1930's. Still though, I just wish you had pushed it to the breaking point at the end, with bits and pieces flying off (I noticed that one of the telegraph poles was kind enough to abide with my anarchistic wishes). The clouds were a an excellent touch too.

That wasn't a telegraph pole, that was my custom built tree :) Good eye though!

I limited the speed to 70% in the video, but before I did I had it set to 100% and that did lead to some breakage. No video footage unfortunately.

2 hours ago, Hod Carrier said:

That's brilliant, and I think entirely within the spirit of the contest. I love the way that the single viewing portal allows you to use forced perspective to give the illusion of depth, aided by the slower rate of progress for the hills and clouds in the background.

If I had to nit-pick I would say that it was a shame that the track ties couldn't have been added to the scenic track as they are conspicuously stationary. That incredibly minor point aside, I think you've got a very original and therefore strong entry. Best of luck!! 

Moving the track ties would not have looked good, for 2 reasons:

1) Without a lot of work in building supports for guiding wheels, the track undulates. That's not a problem for bigger objects such as fences, trees and hills, but for the ties, being so close to the foreground, it would have made them look really awkward

2) Moving the ties would also mean moving the track, and those track pieces are too long and would look really weird "flopping" around the turns.

If you focus on the engine, you see more things that are not moving when they should (e.g. the front wheel). The thing is that your eye naturally tries to take in the whole scene, and you don't focus on the engine typically. This makes these non-moving parts less noticeable.

[Hod Carrier]

Yes I agree that the general feeling of movement is not spoiled at all.

I still think that it's an original and innovative build. Great fun too.   And it's always nice to see Mindstorms getting a look-in on the trains board. Did you chose this power and control option to give you the variable speed needed for the moving scenic parts rather than opting for PF/PU and an extensive gearing system?

[Phil B]

17 minutes ago, Hod Carrier said:

Yes I agree that the general feeling of movement is not spoiled at all.

I still think that it's an original and innovative build. Great fun too.   And it's always nice to see Mindstorms getting a look-in on the trains board. Did you chose this power and control option to give you the variable speed needed for the moving scenic parts rather than opting for PF/PU and an extensive gearing system?

Two friends of mine built a computer without a CPU a while back (www.gigatron.io). Their design philosophy was to keep the circuitry simple, and do the complexity in software. So their board has only 40 TTL chips, and an instruction set with 10 commands (give or take), but they've then used this to build a vCPU in software which is much more complex.

For this build I subscribed to the same principle: do as little gearing as possible, but instead put the speed differences in code. So each belt has its own motor (with one motor powering 2 belts with a very simple gearing mechanism: one belt gets driven 24:40, the other 40:24) and the speed differences are maintained in code. There is a global "speed" variable, and the relative speeds of each of the belt motors are set in relation to this global variable. One loop keeps updating the motor speed, another loop gradually increases the speed variable until it hits max speed (70% at the moment). This creates the start-up sequence you see in the video.

[Hod Carrier]

That's an excellent idea. I would guess that the slow start-up helps to preserve the moving scenic elements too. 

[Roadmonkeytj]

PhillB this is brilliant ... I love the moving picture box approach ... I do believe you could animate the track however to make it look right you would have to legthen the belt so as your eye never sees the track elements fall into place.  

I do believe this "fits" the spirit although not what they may have had in mind lol

you should add flex tubing inside your tree to help keep it together