Hey guys,

It was a long time coming (had various iterations on certain design elements), but I'm happy to declare my YT-1300 LED mod finally done. In some ways it was easier than my previous Shadow Caster mod ( https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/261077-arduino-led-shadow-caster-mod/ ) particularly since I had @Khyros 's excellent YouTube videos as a starting point this time, but conversely getting the engine properly diffused and implementing a nicer on/off solution than the Shadow Caster were both a bit tricky.

In any case, here's the link (pictures, video, description): https://photos.app.goo.gl/kQ1F3Hdr54eaRutz1

If anyone has any questions here I'm more than happy to answer. I'll again reiterate that I owe a lot of the inspiration here to @Khyros and others, so I'm more than happy to give back in any way I can.

Aside: For those wondering, I've started practicing painting smaller ships and once I'm starting to get happy enough with the results I'll eventually paint my modded ones

That's really awesome. I've seen a few done where the illumination was too bright and it overwhelmed the model, but I think you've absolutely nailed it.

6 hours ago, Parravon said:

That's really awesome. I've seen a few done where the illumination was too bright and it overwhelmed the model, but I think you've absolutely nailed it.

Thanks! It definitely took a lot of iteration so I'm glad to hear the end result looks good to people other than me

I'm debating toning down the intensity of the landing lights a little bit, but I'm going to wait until I play a few games in the typically brightly-lit stores to decide on that. The advantage of the micro-controller is I can tweak all this stuff at will.

Perfect!

Nicely done. I know I struggled big time with getting that nice gradient on the falcon, and though I believe my video series shows just the milk carton, I did tear it back open and put a glue stick diffuser before the milk carton to provide that two stage glow.

On 12/18/2017 at 0:30 PM, Khyros said:

Nicely done. I know I struggled big time with getting that nice gradient on the falcon, and though I believe my video series shows just the milk carton, I did tear it back open and put a glue stick diffuser before the milk carton to provide that two stage glow.

Yeah took a lot of fooling around, but the near/far diffuser thing helped a lot. Adding the reflectors also helped in my case; while the main purpose of them was to simply avoid light leaking through thin parts of the plastic as much as possible, they also let me angle the hot spots of the (rather directional) LEDs a bit "upwards" which further avoided visible hot spots at the back.

A lot of effort for a glowing bar to be sure, but I'm pretty happy with the result, and your work definitely put me on the right track!