10026 UCS Naboo Light Mod
Technical Details
Here’s my electronic mod to the 10026 UCS Naboo Fighter to light up the engines and add to the realism. There is a blue LED in each of the engines wired to a 12 Hz timer chip giving a nice flickering-flame effect.
The animated gif linked above gives the general idea though even on my 1.5 GHz machine it doesn’t flicker nearly fast enough. 12 Hz is about perfect to make it look like a flickering flame rather than always on or flashing on and off.
MODIFICATIONS TO THE MODEL:
- Remove inside 2×8 bricks
- Remove inside 2×2 brick with technic peg
- Remove lower 2×4 no-corner plates from wings
- Swap 5L technic axels in engines for 4L
- Swap 1.5L dk grey technic pins in engines for 2L black friction pins (you should do this even if you’re not adding the lights ;)
- Razor a stud off of two pieces: a right and a left inverted curvy slope (may the lego gods forgive me…)
THE CIRCUIT:
- 555 timer
- Two T1 size Blue LED’s
- 10uF cap
- 220 resistor
- 1k resistor
- 5.1k resistor
- small piece of breadboard
- 50 cm 24 guage wire: nothing bigger, as 2 strands must fit through a black technic pin
- 3V battery socket (common to computer mother boards) and two batteries
DESIGN NOTES:
Blue LED’s require a lot more voltage than your typical LED – anywhere from 3.6 to 4.2 V, so to get the circuit to run and leave a little room for overhead, use at least 6 Volts. This works out perfectly, as even if I could have found a way to fit three AAA batteries into the chasis (without removing the black 4×8 plate which basicly holds the whole thing together), it still would not have been enough to drive the LED’s. Another option would be to run an AC adapter into it, but that would greatly hinder the swooshability. ;)
If you are actually making this, be sure you pass the led/wire combo through the necessary pieces before soldering to main circuit!
Using R2 as an on/off switch would have been cool, but there is a limit to how many parts I’m willing to put under the knife.
The more difficult to find parts can be gotten from Mouser Electronics. For instance, I ordered the battery clip and the very small push-on push-off switch there. The LED’s and other discreet components can be found at Radio Shack or any standard electronic parts store.
Propulsion
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Armament
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